Melissa shares her experiences on unique ways to be efficient in testing, within teams and life in general. She weaves together stories that correlate a new way to think about our profession in a lighthearted and informative way.

1. THE LAZY TESTER
MUSINGS ON BEING EFFICIENT IN TESTING, TEAMS AND LIFE

2. BEING LAZY – THE PERCEPTION
You’re not capable of completing tasks
You’re not creative
You have no passion
You take too long or are too slow starting new things
Being lazy equals the inability to “work hard”

3. BEING LAZY FOSTERS INNOVATION – EXAMPLES
How many of you hand-wash your dishes 100% of the time?
The automatic dishwasher – invented in the mid-1800s and modernized in 1924
How about laundry day? Taken any trips down to the river to beat your clothes against
rocks?
The automatic washing machine - invented in the mid-1800s and modernized in the
early 1900s
How about when you pull up to your driveway? Do you get out and manually open the
garage door?
The automatic garage door opener - invented in 1931 and mass-produced in 1954

4. BEING LAZY – THE ALTERNATIVE
Hibernation! When bears hibernate, they’re not considered lazy,
they’re conserving their energy for when it’s time!
When you step back and think about the task rather than just do it,
your brain is activated holistically
Why work hard, when you can work smartly?
Let’s agree that working “hard” should not be equated to success
But working “smartly” should be!

5. BEING LAZY – MY STORY
I like to perfectly time my mornings so I can maximize my sleep and focus my mind on
being hyper-efficient
Being Lazy = Efficient
Being Efficient leads to Optimization
Thinking (even for a few seconds) before you act grounds you so you can spend more
time on the most important tasks at hand
And it clears your head to avoid “analysis paralysis” so you can fully commit to your
next action
Shoutout to Lee Barnes for also calling that out in his talk earlier!

6. ”
“Being lazy without capitalizing on the time saved is still
lazy, but filling that time with more valuable and effective
tasks is optimization!

7. TESTING – PRESENT STATE
QA owns most, if not all, testing
If schedules don’t cooperate (which you know they don’t…), we have limited
options:
We stay late or work longer hours to keep the release or sprint on track
We recruit others by giving them a set of tests or instructions to follow
We have very little or no insight in to any other testing going on, like:
Unit, Integration, AC, Acceptance, UAT
And because of that, we duplicate testing –introducing inefficiencies

8. TESTING – THE LAZY TESTER’S WAY
Testing is a shared responsibility within the team
QE guides the way as well as shares in some of the responsibility
When schedules don’t cooperate we create options that are equitable:
We incorporate our capacity and bandwidth in a pragmatic way
We use risk-based testing approaches and guide the team to decide next steps
We gain insight in to explicit and implicit testing activities – because we ask!
And we stay in our lane until we can be lazy with our teammates
Because…

9. ”
“The shortest, and most efficient path between two
points is a straight line
Stay in your “straight line” lane to avoid enabling behavior that is not conducive
to effective team dynamics
But always quickly and proactively drive those conversations real-time

10. A STORY
My quest to meet the numbers in automation…
I did, rather than think, first
And I managed the team by a metric that didn’t add much value

11. TESTING – AUTOMATION – PRESENT STATE
Monolithic
We run big, multi-hour suites
Off-hours/overnight
The results are usually vetted out by QA/QE only
In a lone slack channel or similar
A Numbers Game
A certain percentage of test cases automated somehow equates to high
quality

12. TESTING – AUTOMATION – THE LAZY TESTER’S WAY
Provide the most valuable information ASAP
Use a “Tests as a Service” approach
Organize tests in the same way your SWEs are
Concentrated in certain areas of the code
Centralized (meaning anyone on the team can run them)
Stretch Goal:
Regression testing. Who does it now?
Tests as a Service allows SWEs to validate for regressions
Use a Tiered approach, or what I like to call…

13. ”
“
Multiple runs for multiple dones
Smaller, centralized and more efficient suites of tests that provide
more concentrated and quicker feedback to the whole team

14. A STORY
Being Lazy…a lesson in teams
My brilliant idea of Automation and its Replacement of Humans
Which led to this quote…

15. ”
“Test automation makes humans more efficient, not less
essential
And we are all human…
Or at least some of us are…

17. TEAM REFINEMENTS – PRESENT STATE
Present State Refinement looks like:
The entire project team + lurkers
In a room (virtual or physical)
Cramming as many stories as possible in an hour
One and Done

18. TEAM REFINEMENTS – THE LAZY TESTER’S WAY
Refinements. By the way, can we all agree to use this term rather than
“Grooming”?
Small working groups
Shorter times
Everyone represented
Tiered approach
Meaning, we don’t stop at one meeting, we meet and collaborate frequently

19. TEAM DEMOS – PRESENT STATE
They happen at the end of a sprint or cycle of work
They’re done in a large group (probably the entire team + lurkers)
If a discrepancy is found, it’s either moved to the next sprint or halts
the release

20. TEAM DEMOS – THE LAZY TESTER’S WAY
From Dev/SWE to QE and PO (and anyone else on the team)
During or right after a standup
Before Check-in/merge – this shifts the agreement of AC of
stories wayyyyyyy left (where it belongs)
Focus on the AC to anchor because…
It’s the most important delivery item

21. ”
“Quality Engineering: Influencing the building of the
software BEFORE the software is built
What’s next?

22. NOW WHAT?
Be you!
Be kind!
Be thoughtful!
Think before you act!
And, most importantly,…
Be Lazy!