Coaching software testers with Anne-Marie Charrett
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This document discusses coaching testers and provides examples of coaching sessions. It describes student syndromes that coaches may encounter such as overconfidence, inability to explain or justify, shallowness, and lack of imagination. It also identifies coaching syndromes like wandering shepherd, intemperance, trouble blindness, and leaping to judgement. Examples of coaching sessions are provided where the coach drives the student to provide more details in their answers, identifies issues with shallow or wandering responses, and encourages thinking about testability and requirements. The goal of coaching is described as facilitating deep learning, maintaining enthusiasm for testing, and motivating students to learn more.
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Coaching software testers with Anne-Marie Charrett
- 1. COACHING TESTERS A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH DEVELOPED BY A Charrett & J Bach Text The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes. – Marcel Proust
- 2. COACHING TESTERS A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH DEVELOPED BY A Charrett & J Bach Text The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes. – Marcel Proust
- 4. CREATING A COACHING MODEL COACH TESTERS EVALUATE the COACHING IDENTIFY PATTERNS TEST PATTERNS & MODEL
- 5. JAMES BACH & ANNE-MARIE CHARRETT 2011
- 6. JAMES BACH & ANNE-MARIE CHARRETT 2013
- 7. COACHING CHALLENGES What to Do Next? What to Ignore? How much to Push? Recognising Problems Being Silent
- 8. PATTERNS • Student Actions • Coaching Action SYNDROMES • Coaching Syndromes • Student Syndromes NAVIGATING THE SPACE
- 9. STUDENT SYNDROMES • Overconfident • Inability to Explain or Justify • Shallowness • Little Imagination • Missing Knowledge • Missing Systematic Approach
- 10. COACHING SYNDROMES • WANDERING SHEPHERD • INTEMPERANCE • TROUBLE BLINDNESS • LEAPING TO JUDGEMENT • INSINCERITY
- 11. Richa • 3 years testing experience • Recently Moved Company • Wants to keep her skills up to date • “As a tester we are supposed to check if the software is working as expected” • Calculator Task
- 12. CALCULATOR • you see a calculator • you enter in 2 + 2 = • what do you expect to see? • Ans < 4> • so you expect a 4? and you see a 4? • yes
- 13. Anne-Marie: when might you expect a 4 and see a 4 and yet the answer is incorrect? Richa: it will only be incorrect when i dont see 4 Anne-Marie: if smelled smoke and saw a blue haze coming out from the back of the calculator, is it a problem? Richa: yes Anne-Marie: so what does this tell you about problems and expected results Richa: dont know Anne-Marie:but the answer matches the expected results! Richa: then it should not be a problem Anne-Marie: you're going to pass a calculator that has smoke pouring out the back? Lets ship! TROUBLE BLINDNESS LIMITED IMAGINATION SHALLOWNESS
- 14. STUDENT ACTIONS • Wandering Lamb • Shallow Answer • Spoon Feeding • Parroted Response • Scribbler
- 15. COACHING ACTIONS • Define your terms • Drive to Detail • Polarisation • Boomerang • Bracketing
- 16. ANU • Never Tested Before • Physics degree • Doesn’t have IT Knowledge • Diagnostic Exercise • Park Calc Task : Test Something
- 18. DRIVING TO DETAIL DRIVING TO DETAIL WANDERING WANDERING Anne-Marie: describe how you would run the test in detail Anu: I will select a lot.Then enter a specific date and time for entry and leaving and will try to calculate. Anne-Marie: Which lot? Anu: First I selected Short-term parking Anne-Marie: then what? Anu: I am sorry.I was looking through the other link.. now I selected economy parking, it gives $0 Anne-Marie: Hang on, we haven’t finished short term parking yet Anne-Marie: how is that a test? Wandering Lamb DRIVING TO DETAIL
- 19. CHRIS • 15 years testing experience • wants to coach testers in his team to be better (but what is better)? • wants to introduce ‘thinking’ into tools application • Confidence in Coaching may be an issue • Perform Diagnostic Task using Escapa
- 20. Escapa
- 21. Tester that gets Context POLARISATION TASK PRAISE THIS BRACKETING BRACKETING Anne-Marie : find the 3 most important bugs in Escapa Chris: but important to who? I can only say what is important to me. I could report that the link text is an important defect for me but for you it might be part of the web page, what you wanted it to do. Chris: Is there a definition of who the users are, what is important, what is the requirement, what is the risk? Anne-Marie : so in order to test, you need to have explicit requirements? Chris : Yes and No, I can 'test' it without, based on 'my expectations'. Having them allows me to focus on what was important to 'someone'
- 22. TESTABILITY TASK FOLLOW THE ENERGY Direction: Positive Direction: Positive Chris: I'd love to know if anything happens when you get to 18 seconds? Anne-Marie: how might you test for that? Chris: I might be able to change the code to reduce the size of the square, or slow down the speed of the boxes Anne-Marie: Nice! No-one has EVER suggested the size of the square be reduced Chris: Checktouching function could be changed to never report back Chris: function movenemies - change the speed Anne-Marie: you are wise in the ways of testability
- 23. GOALS IN COACHING • DEEP LEARNING • ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT TESTING • MOTIVATED TO LEARN MORE
- 24. BACH & CHARRETT 2013 Skype: Charretts Thank You
Editor's Notes
- Introduce yourself. EE Testing Chose Me. Test Management - Disillusioned - Helping testers transform themselves. Mention book. We are busy people. Deadline driven. Its hard enough to get the testing done, forget about HOW well we do it! We want to get better at testing, but its hard to get time for training for ourselves let alone our team. Coaching is the breathing space that we need to help us test better Lots of different types of coaching: Coaching in Sport, Coaching Personal, Agile coaching. My coaching is different. ITs a systematic approach to improving testing skill. Mostly online, but can do face to face.
- Introduce yourself. EE Testing Chose Me. Test Management - Disillusioned - Helping testers transform themselves. Mention book. We are busy people. Deadline driven. Its hard enough to get the testing done We want to get better at testing, but its hard to get time for training for ourselves let alone our team. Coaching is the breathing space that we need to help us test better. time to Explore. Learn to enquire. Lots of different types of coaching: Coaching in Sport, Coaching Personal, Agile coaching. ITs a systematic approach to improving testing skill. Mostly online, but can do face to face. Different to Life Coaching - Coach has a knowledge of testing although its possible to coach with little testing experience especially if the coach is skilled in the socratic method of coaching. This is particularily true when the student is experienced or motivated already. My coaching is different.
- The biggest thing for me about coaching is that I ’ m helping testers transform their own skill, through building trust, support and skill. Deep Learning (for myself and the student), Their enthusiasm helps my enthusiasm, but the goal is for them to go out and learn more.
- Base on experience. One coaching session at a time. Coaching Testers, Observe what students do, observe coach. Observe people learning to coach. Evaluate how they feel they have learned, evaluate what we do through reading and assessing transcripts. Meet to review the model. Socratic Method : Ask questions for the tester to discover the answers by themselves and facilitates the learner to discover answers and new ways of testing based on their values, preferences and unique perspective. ”
- Energy: Jerry Weinberg: Not a mystical or magical force, its a persons level of motivation +ve motivation - willingness to change, -ve motivation - protect an idea, institution or yourself Task : Tap into their testing model. Media : Distorts Inability to Explain or Justify Shallowness Little Imagination Missing Knowledge Missing Systematic Approach
- Read Energy/ Manage Energy Trust: Good energy over time spawns trust -trying to build trust with each interaction is really important Direct the Task This is the intellectual core and basic method of the coaching session. The coach assigns a task (which may be a question) and the student responds. As the student responds the coach observes and spots things that are good or bad; problems or achievements.We need to amplify and analyze the achievements, so that the student understands clearly why they did good. We need to analyze and challenge the problems.Because of the energy issue, We may have to overlook a lot of problems and focus on the good, first. This is a pattern called “ feed the fire before boiling the water. ” Observe What comes out of the task.The coach must develop and apply some sort of model of skilled testing in order to make the necessary observations.
- Socratic Dialogue, start at their level, build upon that, transient.
- But there are challenges when coaching. How do you manage all these elements of the coaching space? How can you manage the energy effectively. How to build trust? How to put the student at the centre of the coaching and yet still direct? Coaching like any skill requires practice.
- As we have coached testers we ’ ve identified patterns of how students behave and how coaches behave. Common behaviours began to emerge and we have called these patterns.
- These are typical coaching symptoms of a coach starting off. Following the student along, No focus, not task in mind. failing to add any pressure, not managing the task Using extremes, not enough, then too much Not recognising the problem or recognising the wrong problem Making judgement calls without enough information INSincerity: in terms of praising students when they dont do anything well, destroys trust and invalidates real praise.
- I want to show you an example of coaching syndromes and students syndromes at play.
- I want to explore if Richa understands is that all testers do? check that software works as expected? This often is the Mentally of an inexperienced scripted tester. What if the software works as expected (according to a script or someone ’ s expectations, but the product fails)?
- Example of negative energy and shallow answers. She ’ s protecting the concept that testing is about something working as expected. Refuses to acknowledge that its not possible to know everything that is expected, that we rely on our mental models. Coaching Syndrome : Trouble Blindness Failed to see Richa was answering less and less. She is loosing her energy. Maybe I needed to let of a bit of pressure and find out how she is feeling but instead I pile on pressure Student Syndrome: Shallowness. I really dont think Richa understood that you can test beyond an expected result. Shallow Syndrome: Limited Imagination: To be fair most testers fail to see this. Its hard to explore beyond one dimension when you are so focused on correctness.
- FOCUS is on diagnostic. Does she understand what she is doing when she ’ s testing ? On hindisight this task may have been to much for Anu, maybe better to focus on positive energy. E.g find as many bugs as you can - Awesome job!
- She starts testing, racing through the system. She ’ s a wandering lamb all over the place. This isn ’ t surprising has she lacks testing knowledge. I can ’ t keep up with her ideas. I need to slow her down and watch out she thinks. So I ask her to describe one test.
- Wandering can also be because I have not been specific enough in my response. Instead of saying “ then what ” I might have said “ What step would you take next ” ? Regardless, she clearly doesn ’ t understand what it means to run a test. The next step we do is go into what makes a test up: Configuration, Operation, Observation, Evaluation.
- Goes back to our model of a coach is both coach and tester.
- Direction: Notice the positive, praise it. Diagnostic: I ’ m noticing some possible topics, but I want to keep focused and keep the energy going. One is: What if you dont have requirements? What if the requirements are incorrect?
- Chris brings up the topic of 18 seconds, this is a natural segway into testability. Interesting when the energy is positive these types of situations often arise!
- The biggest thing for me about coaching is that I ’ m helping testers transform their own skill, through building trust, support and skill. Deep Learning (for myself and the student), Their enthusiasm helps my enthusiasm, but the goal is for them to go out and learn more.
- FOCUS ON ENERGY, TASK, AND LIBERATING THE STUDENT -