In November I did a presentation at Leeds Tester Gathering with the slides available here; (https://www.slideshare.net/adystokes/2017-11-leeds-tester-gathering-i-see-no-bugs) The talk was about how a test manager back in 2005 pitted testers and developers against each other but using the measure of bugs. They were good for testers and bad for developers. This lead to arguments about features, not in the requirements etc. etc. Basically a rant about attitude, human communication and language that lead to me stop finding bugs and instead just describe behaviour. For anyone who has seen my version of Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem ‘If’ written as if he were a tester you may already know I sometimes do strange things with others great work.

For the gathering I was hoping to have a version of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme tune to close but I simply didn’t finish it in time. So here in it’s glory is my version of the theme telling the tale of my belief that as an entity ‘bugs’ have no intrinsic value, are divisive and a hindrance to collaboration. Controversial I know but that’s what I feel. There’s a link at the end if you want to have a go singing it!

The Fresh Prince of Testing

This is the story all about how
My life got flipped turned upside down
And I’d like to take a minute just sit right there
I’ll tell you why I don’t find bugs because there’s no value there

In West Yorkshire born and raised
Finding bugs was how I spent most of my days
Chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool
Executing scripts as a general rule
When a test manager who was up to no good
Started making trouble in my neighbourhood
I was measured on bugs and the Devs were too
I could tell pretty quickly that we were all screwed

I whistled for a dev and when they came near
I told them about bugs but it was like they didn’t hear
I wish I could say arguments were rare
But they were like mansions in the town of Bel Air

I pulled my hair out in chunks and the Devs did too
All we did was argue and the quality blew
Then I said eureka about bugs I don’t care
I’ll just describe the behaviour that I see there

So the arguments stopped and the quality grew
The manager left coz he didn’t know what to do
Thanks for taking a minute and sitting right there
Now you know why I don’t find bugs
And why my boss doesn’t care.

Instrumental if you want to sing along!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sh2zSencBc

Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song (short version from the TV opening)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qHA366oRMs

Ady_Stokes

May 14, 2017

Leeds Testing Atelier May 2017

Ady_Stokes

May 14, 2017

The 4^th edition of the free test conference held in Leeds took place at the Wharf

Chambers in Leeds on the 9^th of May. The website is here. The two track conference had speakers, workshops and panels and was well attended by both developers and testers. Some of the conference was filmed so hopefully some of the sessions will be available at some point.

Below is the schedule and notes on the sessions I attended and a little feedback gathered from discussions.

Track 1 – Hipsters

09.30 – What not to do, a guided tour of unit testing – Colin Ameigh

Colin took us on a journey through unit tests using PHP as the base of the testing pyramid. In his experience a lot of unit tests were rotten and not maintained or even unit tests at all. He pointed to the single responsibility principle being absent as the main culprit. As a minimum they should run everywhere and also in isolation. Another insight was that where TDD was used, the third step of ‘refactor’ was often missed meaning over time the tests themselves lost their value.

10.00 – Testing the waters – Rosie Dent-Brown

While I didn’t attend there was a ‘buzz’ around Rosie’s use of Agile at home and assigning ‘roles’ to those around her! Sound fascinating!

11.00 – Colleagues to Community – Ady Stokes

My talk on our journey building a test community included some of the test challenges we had done sharing our experience to hopefully inspire others and encourage them to come and help us grow. The title has a link to the deck on SlideShare and here's the link to the talk on YouTube.

13.00 – TDD using Excel – Dave Turner

14.30 – Panel – Generalising Specialists

This was an interesting discussion based on both T and Pi ("π") shaped testers. While the discussion covered many things, below I’ve tried to summarise the key points made.

Generalising skills can make you more valuable to a company
Generalisation shouldn’t be at the expense of your ‘deep’ skill
The role of ‘pure’ specialist is still valuable (E.g. Penetration; Performance; UX/UI; Accessibility)
‘Pure’ specialist as a consultant or service was expressed as the most powerful use

Slightly away from the core topic but I believe still valuable to share I think, was the value a tester adds to a team or project. When involved through the whole process, from ideas to delivery; the statement, ‘testers are the glue that binds the stages together’ was expressed. I thought this was an interesting metaphor along with, ‘testers can also be the conscience of the team’ making me thing about my role in a different way.

15.30 – Defend the Indefensible & PowerPoint Karaoke

This was an interesting idea to say the least. An ‘indefensible’ statement was put up on the screen and the ~~victim~~, volunteer had 30 seconds to defend it. As an example, one of the statements was; ‘Testing is dead and pointless as everything valuable can be checked by automation and users!’

Track 2 – Nerds

09.30 – Docker as a tool for testers – Serena Wadsworth

10.00 – Power of pairing – Lee Grubb

Lee offered us his experience of the power of pairing. He went through the traditional techniques of set up and Driver/Navigator roles. After explaining the benefits through some of his experiences he explained some of the other types of pairing including Strong Pairing. This is where the navigator explains their ideas and the driver interprets. To understand what your thinking so well you can bring it to life through someone else I thought was a powerful tool. Although there are lots of styles and combinations, he mentioned dev/dev; dev/ tester; dev/DBA amongst others, his final piece of advice was not to limit yourself and experiment with what works for you.

11.00 – Testing is DevOps – Alex

13.00 – Testing without Testing – Algirdas Rabikauskas, Kristina Valiune and Peter Ferguson

This workshop sought to show us some of the exercises they had done in their peer community. The time was split into two challenges, the first being to identify an object through clues; Or, ‘understand requirements’. This took the form of being given a single word, the premise that a ‘rock star’ had a requirement / rider for ‘something’. You had three minutes to come up with questions and one minute with their agent who could only answer yes or no. Our word was ‘stick’ and after a couple of rounds where we established it was made of wood, 30 cm long, narrow and cylindrical we finally reached drum stick.

The second challenge was spot the difference with a twist. There were three duplicated images of a city bridge, paragraph and dice grid. For two of those the second image had be inverted or turned upside down. We chose a method of peer review (code review) by assessing an image individually, then passing it on. After the disappointing news that we had missed one difference, we mobbed the remaining image until we found the final item.

In summary Algirdas said that these games were helpful in reducing assumptions, critically thinking about problems and developing team techniques and bonding. Having found the activities both challenging and fun and enjoyed the interactions with my new found team I’d have to agree with those comments.

14.30 – Panel – Continuous Delivery

15.30 – Games including Dysfunctional Scrum, DevOps ball game, TestSphere