Fabian Scarano - Preparing Your Team for the Future
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EuroSTAR Software Testing Conference 2008 presentation on Preparing Your Team for the Future by Fabian Scarano. See more at conferences.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com/past-presentations/
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Fabian Scarano - Preparing Your Team for the Future
- 1. Contribution to EuroSTAR 2008 Fabián Scarano Thursday 13 November 2008 Preparing your Team for the Future
- 2. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 2 Welcome to the Future
- 3. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 3 Agenda Preparing the scene Communication and abstraction Creativity, stress mitigation The future tester’s profile SOA example Teams and inter-teams performance Conclusion
- 4. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 4 Produce more, Perform better, Care for your Team Higher customer demands: Quality, Performance, Availability Higher customer demands: Quality, Performance, Availability Shorter product cycles: Agile, extreme, rapid Shorter product cycles: Agile, extreme, rapid Competition is tougher: Test specialist, knowledge area, high IQ Competition is tougher: Test specialist, knowledge area, high IQ Leverage Scarce Resources Maintain High Quality Achieve and Sustain Competitive Speed ITIT Do we make the most of the tester’s potential when we focus on excellent technical skills, a special knowledge area and requiring a high IQ?
- 5. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 5 Produce more, Perform better, Care for your Team To make the most of our test team it is necessary to focus on the technical skills, a high IQ and the soft skills Which soft skills areas? • Abstraction, creativity, optimism and communication within the team • Open mind to: working together with different cultures, accepting “wild” solutions, exercising more empathy • Integration of teams with diverse goals and optimisation of the final product with the different teams If emotional competences are relevant today, in the future they will become essential for any competitive test team in the market.
- 6. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 6 Communication: Abstraction Is the process or result of generalisation by reducingIs the process or result of generalisation by reducing the information content of a concept or a observablethe information content of a concept or a observable phenomenon, typically, in order to retain onlyphenomenon, typically, in order to retain only information which is relevant for a particularinformation which is relevant for a particular purposepurpose (Wikipedia)(Wikipedia) Is the thought process wherein ideas are distancedIs the thought process wherein ideas are distanced from objectsfrom objects (Philosophical terminology Wikipedia)(Philosophical terminology Wikipedia) Red Happiness 3 R4 How did the language of mathematics develop? And what is it that enabled us to use this language not only to manipulate quantities and shapes, but ultimately to model our world and Universe, to successfully predict eclipses and the return of the comets
- 7. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 7 Example: Requirement Specification Definition Case Cantor is our user and he is defining the set of Requirements, which the test team has to review, organise test cases, discuss with project manager and plan. He knows that it might not be that obvious and then he offers a crash course of infinite sets N= Naturals Z= Integers Q= Rationals R= Reals 1) 2) Some definitions: - A set is a collection of elements Some sets of numbers are - The cardinality of a set is the number of members it contains Notation: for set S the cardinality is |S| - Two sets have the same cardinality if they can be put to a one-to-one correspondence; or, If A ~ B, then |A| = |B| |N|, |Z|, |Q|, |R| & |N| = א0 - A set is countable iff its cardinality is either finite or equalt to Now N Z Q R ∩ When we know that in the interval [0,1] we can have all the N or [0,1] ∩ 1 / N Then, is it true that ∩ ∩ |N| < |Z| < |Q| < |R| ? א0
- 8. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 8 The set of Integers has the same cardinality as the Natural numbers. For every Integer number I can assign a Natural number that can count it 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 0, 1, -1, 2, -2, 3, -3, 4, …. 3) The set of Rationals has the same cardinality as the Natural numbers. For every Rational number I can assign a Natural number that can count it 1 2 3 4 5 1 1/1 2/1 3/1 4/1 2 ½ 2/2 3/2 4/2 3 ⅓ ⅔ 3/3 4/3 Then |N| = |Z| = |Q| are denumerables because the cardinality is equal to א0 Intuition in this case is false. The inequalities |N| < |Z| < |Q| < |R| are false; however not all infinites are equal in cardinality! Example: Requirement Specification Definition Case
- 9. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 9 If we assume that we can put the Reals into a one to one correspondence with the Natural number we get to an absurd. Take the Reals between 0 and 1, express all the fractions as 0.ddddd…. Now under our assumption try to pair off the natural numbers with the Reals between 0 and 1. 4) א0 א1< 5) The continuum hypothesis (CH) asserts that there is no cardinal number a such that א0 א0The set of Real numbers is uncountable or |R| > < a < c Example: Requirement Specification Definition Case Definitions: - A set is uncountable if its cardinality is greater than א0 - The number of real numbers is the same as the number of points on an infinite line, where c is the cardinality, hence c =|R| If we assume that this is true then = c
- 10. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 10 Humor Optimism Creativity
- 11. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 11 Humor, Jokes and Optimism Creativity * Wikipedia Jokes Optimism Humor Creativity Is the tendency of particular images, stories or situations to provoke laughter and provide amusement*. Freud stated that we build sensors in our mind, like barriers to stop the forbidden or unwished thoughts. The strength of a joke relies on the description that fits simultaneously in two different frames. Where the first meaning has to be transparent and innocent, while the second one is disguised and censurable. Some investigations show that optimism is directly related to the way one experiences and understands the reasons for negative situations; the feeling of a certain degree of influence and control over circumstances in life Observe that this is one way to foster creativity, there are several different aspects
- 12. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 12 Humor, Jokes and Optimism Creativity * Wikipedia Jokes Optimism Humor Creativity Creativity has been attributed over time to divine intervention, cognitive processes, the social environment, personality traits, and chance ("accident", "serendipity"). It has been associated with genius, mental illness and humour. Some say it is a trait we are born with; others say it can be taught with the application of simple techniques. More than 60 different definitions Is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts*. Exploratory testing Scripted testing Flexibility planning Reporting Feedback Etc.
- 13. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 13 Belief of Control * Albert Bandura, Stanford University Self-efficacy Is the belief that one is capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain goals* People's beliefs in their coping capabilities affect how much stress and depression they experience in threatening or difficult situations, as well as their level of motivation. Perceived self-efficacy to exercise control over stressors plays a central role in anxiety arousal. People who believe they can exercise control over threats do not conjure up disturbing thought patterns. Self-efficacy does not refer to the actual control and influence, we have in a specific circumstance in our lives, but the skill of believing that we exercise control over it in the way we think and handle the situation. Different research show that the degree of self-efficacy has significance in our skill to handle stress. Observe that a person can have a low degree of self- efficacy in a specific area and a high degree in another
- 14. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 14 Belief of Control The need to have exaggerated control over everything will on the other hand increase the risk of stress and burnout, and it is one of the characteristics of the “type A-behaviour” or “The hurry-up syndrome”. Another important aspect to manage stress is to leave aside some tasks, especially those, which we have insufficient influence to solve. Optimism is in this case closely associated with the belief of feeling control of situations related with stress, it is also valid in this case that an overdose “may kill”. Physicaland Psychologicalcare Degree of control Helpless Hopeless Boredom Depression Type A-behaviour Burn-out Over control
- 15. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 15 The Future Testers’ Brain Planning Tester’s specific skills Multicultural tester’s gland Tester’s abstraction centre Tester’s communication skills area Tester’s belief of control cell Multidisciplinary tester’s cell *Development, management and user patience, understanding, delivery delays, explanations, etc span * * * Tester’s optimism particle Tester’s social network power pack Shipping software risk hub Tester’s creativity and problem solving centre
- 16. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 16 Do you believe that this will still be a joke in the future? Would you rather have in your test team female or male testers?
- 17. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 17 Multicultural, Multidisciplinary The Future Test team Work environment • Universal product • Localisation • Global Understanding Work environment • Diverse interest areas • Wide-ranged pole of contribution • Social level impact Tendency • Shifts involve different time zones • Fast handover of tasks Tendency • Optimising the team • Broad Coverage • Efficacy, Identity & trust
- 18. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 18 Example: Test Team in a bad coordinated SOA environment What happens when SOA test team fails a good integration test? Ask Brenda
- 19. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 19 Some of the new SOA testing challenges • Testing services that do not have a user interface. There are two types of interfaces: – A user interface – A programmatic interface • Data-driven business logic within services. Changes in data and state often result in synchronisation with other services • External services to the organisation, using messages to communicate • As SOA is evolving, security testing will have a higher priority and profile. Besides that, test must include the user interface as well as the programmatic interface • Predicting the future usage of services to assist with performance, load, stress and scalability • Tools are unavoidable to a successful implementation and CM • State, messages and enterprise bus are specially tested
- 20. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 20 The team and the specialist tester - Risk of silo effect - Complex Inter-team awareness - Trust among teams - How to achieve team Identity?
- 21. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 21 TeamTeam identityidentity The Challenge TeamTeam efficacyefficacy TeamTeam efficacyefficacy TeamTeam identityidentity TeamTeam identityidentity Trust amongTrust among membersmembers Trust amongTrust among membersmembers If the three essential conditions for team effectiveness are trust, efficacy and identity, the challenge is to integrate these in an inter-team frame.
- 22. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 22 Teams Diverse range of talents: Planning, collecting and exchanging information, coordinating a plan. Not only engaging in the intellectual parts; but a balance of different profiles Emotional capacity to face difficult data fosters an affirmative environment and encourages proactive problem solving, seeks opinions on task processes. Team self-awareness, communication, task processing, self-evaluation and constructive feedback no longer remain within the team focus, but expand to the inter- team terrain “High-IQ team members do not make out a High-IQ team or clever inter-team collaboration”
- 23. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 23 The Future Tester ... is us breaching the path
- 24. © PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 24 Main Bibliography • Bobby Zachariae, ”Stress-kompetence”, Denmark • Marvin Minsky, ”The Society of Mind”, MIT • Albert Bandura, ”Self Efficacy”, Standford University • Hannah Hoag, ”New Scientist”, London • Peter Suber, ”A Crash Course in the Mathematics of infinite Sets”, Philosophy Department Earlham College • Torry Harris, Business Solutions Inc, US, 2007 Fabian Scarano PA Consulting Group Fabian.scarano@paconsulting.com
Editor's Notes
- &lt;number&gt; Information’s paper article where the future has been defined as cars flying in air lanes, robots doing all the housework, eating powder or pills as main food, transporting us in the time etc. Instead we are facing environmental problems at a scale and growing at a pace difficult to change in the immediate, the lack of oil is heading to collapse markets, the poor crops and growing demand of food can hardly cope to be enough and feed the world. So what is the future? I decided to focus in the next 5 to 10 years where most of us will still be working, in 30 years if I am lucky I will be retired and probably worried about something else…So the future I am proposing is not on flying saucer, but in one of the focus point I believe testers need to reinforce and concentrate from now to cope with the coming years. Why because these training if you decide to focus on it takes long time…
- &lt;number&gt;
- &lt;number&gt; This idea as been working in my head for some years now, trying to understand the relation between explaning to users what testers expect from them and the results. This has been a similar pattern for Requirement specification, user test, test cases, data definition. And this was seldom related to the knowledge they had on the business process, working skills or good will to contribute to the project. So what were I missing, when asking users for a task, organising a workshop, showing the process to defines test cases, reqs and nothing or very little comes out of it. Use the example from Statoil, where workshops were organised to explain how to write the req’s, how to define test data and how to use the matrix, and only after a personal session they could do the job, on the contrary those that did similar tasks before they understood at once.
- &lt;number&gt; Explain who Cantor was The one to one correspondence, what it means
- &lt;number&gt; Said that Cantor wa ingeniuos in finding this Q workaround to make them countables. They must be read from 1/1 diagonally down from left to right the sequence is 1/1, 2/1, ½, 1/3, 2/2, 3/1, 4/1, 3/2, 2/3, ¼. This means that we canput them into a one to one correspondence with the naturals, and some of the numbers will be there more than once. Denumerables means that they have cardinality exactly aleph null
- &lt;number&gt; The demonstration requires some 15 theorems before we get there 5)History tells (gossip) that this is one of the mail reasons why Cantor died in psychiatric hospital
- &lt;number&gt; Reversed Psychology. What is the amazing of this picture? I do not have a cent, i am going to get some money, well I am desperate, but let’s take it easy. Oh I know how I will ask for money
- &lt;number&gt; It is a belief that one has the capabilities to execute the courses of actions required to manage prospective situations. Unlike efficacy, which is the power to produce an effect (in essence, competence), self-efficacy is the belief (whether or not accurate) that one has the power to produce that effect. For example, a person with high self efficacy may engage in a more health related activity when an illness occurs, whereas a person with low self efficacy would harbor feelings of hopelessness.[2] . Perceived self-efficacy is defined as people&apos;s beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance that exercise influence over events that affect their lives
- &lt;number&gt; Creativity Vs. Innovation. Batro in 86 saying that the children will be using computers in the beach and everywhere, of course people laughed at him, what will happen today?
- &lt;number&gt; Low self efficacy: But those who believe they cannot manage threats experience high anxiety arousal. They dwell on their coping deficiencies. They view many aspects of their environment as fraught with danger. They magnify the severity of possible threats and worry about things that rarely happen. Through such inefficacious thinking they distress themselves and impair their level of functioning. Perceived coping self-efficacy regulates avoidance behavior as well as anxiety arousal. The stronger the sense of self-efficacy the bolder people are in taking on taxing and threatening activities.
- &lt;number&gt; Low self efficacy: But those who believe they cannot manage threats experience high anxiety arousal. They dwell on their coping deficiencies. They view many aspects of their environment as fraught with danger. They magnify the severity of possible threats and worry about things that rarely happen. Through such inefficacious thinking they distress themselves and impair their level of functioning. Perceived coping self-efficacy regulates avoidance behavior as well as anxiety arousal. The stronger the sense of self-efficacy the bolder people are in taking on taxing and threatening activities.
- &lt;number&gt; Article form la Nacions and Bobby Zacharia book, chapter 2 or 10? Stress.
- &lt;number&gt; Globalisation: Universal product the one that can be used all over the world, which depends of localisation, which I mean not only the process of translating the the software but, being adapted to the country legislation, users understanding, etc. Soup example in china and in Euorpe. Understanding linked to localisation issue, the product must be user friendly everywhere and not ”user fjendlig” Time to market: round the clock shifts will be introduced in many places, probably working through the different time zones and not wking you up at 3 in the night, tha wiill not make the SW have a better quality or be shipped faster, here the cultural barrieres, communication, codes, working methods etc have a key role, because if there is no effective hand over, the work in shifts has no meaning Specific skill: Multidisciplinary work, currently we think about the technical guy and the manager, but we need to open our minds, creativity and association comes from many disciplines and some tasks will require other backgrounds. Society levels i spart of the multidisciplinary aspect your product needs to be promoted among golf players and priests Putting the team together: Identity, Efficacy and trust
- &lt;number&gt; In SOA, Services are based on heterogeneous technologies. No longer can we expect to test an application that was developed by a unified group, as a single project, sitting on a single application server and delivering through a standardized browser interface. The ability to string together multiple types of components to form a business process requires unconstrained thinking from an architect&apos;s perspective, and test planning and scheduling complexities from a tester&apos;s perspective. In SOA, application logic is in the middle-tier, operating within numerous technologies, residing outside the department, or even outside the company. We know that to test SOA, you need to go far beyond merely testing a user interface or browser screen. Web Services (WSDL/SOAP) will be an important component for many SOAs, but if you&apos;re only testing Web Services, you are not likely to test the entire technology stack that makes up the application. What are the transactions happening at the messaging layer? Is the right entry being reflected in the database? In fact, many perfectly valid SOA applications will house business logic entirely outside of the Web Services. To address the above challenges, organizations need to review and enhance their current test methodology. Many Test Tool vendors have now recognized the new SOA test challenges and have developed a new breed of tools to help organizations to plan, manage and automate SOA functional, performance and security testing.
- &lt;number&gt; Is us breaching the path for the coming generations and leaving them the legacy of our experience and dedication . A Team player, Professional Tester, Empathic, Trustful, Communicative, Manager, Researcher, Aware of society, Optimistic, Creative