Getting non-testers to Test: Helping them to help you
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Slides from Lalitkumar Bhamare's 2017 Fall OnlineTestConf session – Getting non-testers to Test: Helping them to help you. Without a doubt, the role of a tester in teams has been changing like never before (check out State of Testing surveys to know more). More importantly, software industry’s perception of quality, its ownership has been changing too. A shift seems to be happening “We don’t need testers” mindset to “Skilled testers are valuable assets” realization. What kind of things these skilled testers are doing that makes them valuable assets to their team? Do they work as “lone guardians of quality”? Do production releases get blocked when they are not around? Do their teams feel empowered by their work or they feel paralyzed because of their absence? If the answers are “no”, how exactly they help others to get helped in the hour of need? In this session, Lalit talks about his experiments around getting not-testers to test, challenges he faced and how did he overcome them. Join him and sail with him in what he calls as “intellectual voyage”. For more visit: www.onlinetestconf.com
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Getting non-testers to Test: Helping them to help you
- 1. Getting Non-testers to Test Helping them to help you Lalitkumar Bhamare @Lalitbhamare @TtimewidTesters - November 2017
- 3. Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world The Second Coming – W.B.Yeats
- 4. When tester in a team suddenly disappears… Runaway system Less skilled people put to work all of a sudden (Positive feedback cycles) Collapse [Feedback Effects : Runaway, Explosion and Collapse – from “How Software is Built” by Gerald M. Weinberg] Lack of skilled testing -> degraded feedback to controller
- 5. Why Whole Team Testing?
- 6. When Whole Team contributes to Testing… Testing is about exploring to obtain true knowledge about system. Human senses have limitations that can mislead and keep us away from true knowledge. More skilled humans working together on a task may decrease the probability of misunderstanding, misinterpretations and help us fight those limitations better. Seven kinds of Testers – James Bach (Each team member different kind of tester more perspectives Better Coverage) Full- time tester can focus more on important/high risk areas Tester and team achieves more than “checking” (human or tool assisted) To contribute to testing one needs to understand it first. Better understanding can help to avoid collapse.
- 8. ACT EARLY, ACT SMALL [Feedback Effects : Act Early, Act Small– from “How Software is Built” by Gerald M. Weinberg] To act early, you must sharpen your powers of observation. To act small, you must sharpen your understanding of the subtleties of human behavior.
- 9. Understand their “NO” loveisaspiritualforce.blogspot.de Not knowing “What to test” and “how to test” Prejudices and stereotypes around testing Lack of testing mindset Mistaking mere checking for testing
- 10. Help them shape better perception of you (tester)
- 11. Do not force sell! Look for signs, act when it’s time At what stage you propose “whole team testing” is important. Propose when non-testers show interest in testing and see value in your work as a tester.
- 12. Take them to your world … one step at a time
- 17. Hitting the brick-wall [ Tip - http://www.talesoftesting.com/blog/interviewing-programmers-for-quality-mindset ]
- 18. 1. It does not happen overnight. Please be patient and let it happen with time. 1. At-least, get familiar with “their” craft if you want them to understand yours. 1. Dedicated testers still remain service provider for the team. Getting non-testers to contribute to testing, enables them to serve project team better. 1. “Loops turn technical debt from a simple shortfall into an economic collapse” (says Michael Bolton). Hence we better learn to control them better. 1. Act early, act small
- 19. Credits, References & Special mentions Special thanks to James Bach, Michael Bolton, Rikard Edgren, Joel Montvelisky and Griffin Jones for peer review. References and Recommended Resources – • How Software is Built- Gerald M. Weinberg - https://www.amazon.com/How-Software-Built-Quality-Book-ebook/dp/B004KAB9RO • Where does that all time go? http://www.developsense.com/blog/2012/10/where-does-all-that-time-go/ • Why is Testing taking so long? - http://www.developsense.com/blog/2009/11/why-is-testing-taking-so-long-part-1/ • Seven Kinds of Testers - http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/893 • A Test is a Performance - http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/1346 • Cake, Coffee and some POT - http://www.talesoftesting.com/blog/cake-coffee-and-some-pot • Session Based Testing in Agile/DevOps Environments - http://www.talesoftesting.com/blog/session-based-testing-in-agiledevops-environments • Interviewing Programmers for Quality Mindset - http://www.talesoftesting.com/blog/interviewing-programmers-for-quality-mindset Image credits – mrockenbach- http://cs.astronomy.com/ http://www.directapproachdesign.co.uk/ http://i130.twenga.com/ http://www.priceperhead.com/ https://c1.staticflickr.com
- 20. Questions? Happy to help! Lalitkumar Bhamare @Lalitbhamare @TtimewidTesters editor@teatimewithtesters.com www.talesoftesting.com
Editor's Notes
- I would like to open my talk with this beautiful poem by William B Yeats. I was referred to it by James Bach while we were discussing system collapse. And that’s what I would like to talk about first today. Imagine that you are only tester in your agile team, like typical agile team and in the middle of the sprint you fall sick all of a sudden….
- If you are a part of typical Agile team, you probably already know what happens next if not everyone knows how to test. CHAOS! That’s correct! Confusion, uncertainty, impacted deployments, tickets piled up for testing, buggy deployments, frustration. Weinberg beautifully describes such collapse of a runaway system when we fall for typical fallacies. "Loops turn technical debt from a simple shortfall into an economic collapse” – Michael Bolton I would note that “normal operational mode” is to run the system on the edge of “run away” - which tells me something about the control system. The loss of skilled testing degrades the feedback signal to the controller and then then control copes very badly - even collapses.
- To contribute to testing one has to understand it first and that understanding will help to avoid chaos Consider other situations like tester being overloaded and can’t test everything alone 7 kinds of tester by James Bach More coverage Focused and deep testing when it comes to “independent” testing by specialist
- To act early, you must sharpen your powers of observation. To act small, you must sharpen your understanding of the subtleties of human behavior.
- A lot of programmers that I found least interested in testing were of the opinion that it’s a lame and boring job. That they prefer more challenging work than clicking here and there. In my opinion, misinterpreting mere checking for testing is the root cause of this perception.
- In feedback meetings or technical heads-up, programmers were bit surprised in the beginning when I asked technical questions, questioned testability, challenged the implementation or proposed alternate solutions. They least expected it coming from a tester.