Tooth of the Weasel

I think a true passion for learning is one of the things that makes testers great. The best testers I know are always looking for concepts or viewpoints they haven’t heard before and looking for opportunities to learn anytime they can.But it’s usually not enough to just to want to learn – you need some skills on how to learn – on how to learn what you don’t know you don’t know. You have to be able to do a lot more than type things into a search engine. If you want to learn about something, search engine results are just the first clue of many that will take you on the learning journey.

I’ve taken two classes in my life that I will forever be grateful for taking. The first was typing in 9th grade. I was awful in the class, but it’s amazing how the basics have helped my productivity throughout the years (just ask anyone who’s ever been annoyed with me for continuing to type while I carry on a conversation with them). The other class was a Methods of Research class in grad school. To be specific, the class was Mus 510: Methods of Musical Research. The class was entirely about how to find information…and it was intense. My favorite part of the class (and the most hated for many others in the class) was the weekly “trivial pursuit” exercise. Each week we were given a page of questions, and asked to find the answers (and note where we found them in a specified bibliographic style). This was 1992, so the internet wasn’t really cranking along enough to help. Instead, the university library was our playground.

So you can get an idea of what we went through, here are a sampling of some of the questions. There is no additional context – this is exactly – and only, what was written on our assignment sheet.

• Whose death was “bewailed” in Thomas Campion’s Songs of mourning in 1613? Where in this country will you find a complete copy?
• Who made two snare drums dated 1839 and 1841 now owned by the New York Historical Society?
• In what book will you find biographical notes on 53 song composers of India?
• Who first decided that A should be 440 vibrations per second?
• (and, my favorite…) What does “Gabriel” have between his teeth?

Every week we’d have ten or so of these, and every week I’d arrive at the library at 8:00am on Saturday when they opened, and wrap up just in time to leave at 5:00 when they closed. It was a long day, and it was mentally hard work, but I loved it. Little did I know that I was studying to be a software tester.

What I learned was how to dig deep. Start with whatever you think is the keyword and look there – then look for citations or references. If there aren’t any, look for unique phrases and search on those. During my eight hour Saturdays in the library, I learned that the first place you look for an answer is almost always only a clue for where you need to look next.

Let me put it another way – if you think you found the answer on your first try – or think you know what something is truly about because you read the wikipedia article or someone’s blog post, you will almost always be wrong. If you want to be a great tester, don’t settle for surface area answers – dig deep and pursue!

I’ve been in my new office for nearly a month, so I thought I’d share a tour.

For the most part, it’s a typical Microsoft office – about 100 square feet with a window, desk, door and …stuff. Here’s what you see when you walk in the door.

I have three computers. A HP Z400 drives the two monitors in the foreground, and a Dell 670 drives the remaining LCD. Both are dual proc Xeons (which appear to windows as 4 processors), the the HP is younger by about 5 years (it’s brand new) and builds about twice as fast. I use the Dell for mail, charging my phone, writing, and most everything else that isn’t build, analysis, or test related (although it can cover those tasks if the Z400 is in the middle of something. I also have my trusty Lenovo x200s as another backup. Most of the time it also functions as my primary “home” work machine.

I have a lot of books – here’s one of my bookshelves.

I could do a whole other post explaining where some of these came from. On the top shelf (next to several copies of hwtsam), are my “commemorative” copies of Windows 95, Windows 95 Plus Pack, and some other software I worked on. The other day I ran across some “gold” copies I have of Win95, and the Win95 SDK/DDK that were handed out to team members when we shipped (it’s just a regular CD printed on a gold colored disk in a jewel case).

Here’s a reverse view of my desk – pretty much the view I have now while I type on the Dell.

Note that the phone on the right doesn’t have any keys – it connects via USB cable and works with communicator. It’s the phone that rings when you call my office (assuming I’m logged into communicator on that machine).

Here’s a view of my other bookshelf.

Again, lot’s of stuff that I’ll explain if you ask.

Finally, here’s some crap piled near my window – at Microsoft, you tend to accumulate stuff that is important enough to keep, yet there’s no place to keep it at home.

In this picture are two “Ship-It” plaques (one is filled), my 10 year award plaque, a Windows 95 team commemorative clock, and a plaque containing the one patent I have filed (the block next to it is a patent “cube” for the same thing – you get that for successfully filing for the patent.

The one thing I probably miss the most from my old office is the lack of writable surface. Just about every vertical space (and one of our tables) in the old TestEx team room was a writable surface, and I got used to writing diagrams, notes, etc. everywhere. For now, I just have a little whiteboard, but I’ll try to see if I can get it replaced with something much larger at some point..

So – there you go. If you want something explained or have questions, let’s chat in the comment section (or on twitter if you prefer – @alanpage)

Today was my 14th (business) day on the communicator team. I’m into sort of a groove and having a good time. My job today is so drastically different than what I was doing just a few months ago that I thought I’d share a few things so everyone would know what I’m up to.

I’ve managed to initiate a few cool projects and get myself injected into a few more. One thing I really love about this team is the amount of trust my manager and teammates have in me and my ideas. Last week, for example, I was pointing out some perceived flaws in one of our processes – along with my ideas of how the processes should work.Thinking out loud, I said, “it would be cool to do a case study and gather some data on this.” I already have the details and participants lined up and should have the study done in the next week or so. It’s really exciting to see things more so fast.

Another principal sdet on the team and I are starting a program that will enable testers on the team to step away from the bulk of their day jobs for up to 4 weeks. This will enable testers to work on projects they may not get a chance to otherwise – and, of course, some work gets done that wouldn’t get done otherwise.

I’m also giving a series of brown bag talks on various testing topics. You all know that I’m a fan of the five orders of ignorance and this is a great opportunity for me to help people learn what they don’t know. I’m also heavily involved in the interviews for new team members – it’s fun to interview people for testing positions (in EE, I interviewed people to be teachers and advocates for test).

And finally, as a big proponent of test code quality, I’m unleashing a boatload of static analysis tools on the test tree. This is a nice project because it gives me a chance to do a cursory review of all of the test code in the tree – the end result will be higher quality tests and tools – tests and tools that can be trusted to provide accurate results. The topic of static analysis is worth another post someday – but I’ll wait until I’m done with this little project first.

I think that covers it – so far so good!

One thing I’ve learned in my testing career is that where there are bugs, there are more bugs. Some of my colleague Nachi’s research shows that components with a high number of pre-release bugs has a corresponding share of the post-release bugs. The heuristic works well on a smaller scale too – if I find annoyances or other slop 10 minutes into a testing session, odds are that there are many, many more bugs in the feature.

This post by Ajay demonstrates a good example of “slop”. There are certain things anyone designing a kiosk application should do to ensure that the application remains in kiosk mode (sidenote: as a tester, I love kiosk machines because they’re a great target to demonstrate testing ideas). When I see flaws like this, I know there are more – perhaps dozens or even hundreds of other flaws in the application, and I wonder how many of those flaws are exploitable for more serious damage.

And now, as I read the comments, I see that JB said basically the same thing in the first comment.

And then I was reminded of this article I read last week about business advice from Van Halen. Van Halen were famous for the rider in their contract stating that they should have a bowl of M&Ms with all of the brown candies removed. It seems like an arrogant rock star tactic, but there was something significant in the request.David Lee Roth knew that if the M&M request wasn’t handled correctly that there were likely other problems in the venue adhering to the contract. Brown M&Ms in the bowl indicated that a deeper look at the logistics of the event were in order.

In other words, Roth was no diva. He was an operations expert. He couldn’t spend hours every night checking the amperage of each socket. He needed a way to assess quickly whether the stagehands at each venue were paying attention — whether they had read every word of the contract and taken it seriously. In Roth’s world, a brown M&M was the canary in the coal mine.

I’m sure there are hundreds of examples of the “brown M&M heuristic” – now I just have to see if I can remember to call it that.

 

*I have no idea why I decided to use the word “slop” today to describe annoying behavior, so don’t ask.

I’ve come to realize that my answers to life and the universe may vary from others. Sometimes I fall in love with my answers, but I’m nearly always quite open to ideas that differ from mine. In fact, I love the conflict in thought because it makes me re-think the original problem.

One such example is in my mind. Slightly mentioned in HWTSAM and described in detail in my chapter of  Beautiful Testing is my approach to automation. When I write automation, I don’t think of test cases first. I may use a spec, notes from a spec, or just lot’s of notes in general to help me design test automation. I explore the component I’m testing– either manually, or in the debugger and create the tests as I develop the automation (skipping lot’s of design stuff because that’s not the point of this post). When I’m done, I prefer an approach where I extract the test cases from the test automation (either via c# attributes or export names or some other form of tagging meta data) and import theses test cases into the test case management system.

An alternate approach is to write the test cases first, import them into the TCM, then write the automation (optionally creating stubs automatically from the test cases). At first, I thought I didn’t like the idea at all, but I suppose it does force you to think about the details of testing up front (if that’s a good thing). One con that I haven’t resolved is what to do when the automation changes. With my approach, you just re-import the metadata. If you change the automation using the alternate approach, you probably need to update the TCM manually – but I suppose you could find a way to make that easy.

How about you – do you prefer one approach over the other or have an alternate approach? 

I’ve been talking about meetings recently at work (I’m still giddy that have far fewer meetings to attend these days). I’ve had discussions about meetings for at least a decade, and they’re all about the same.People grumble about ineffective meetings, while others grumble about too many meetings. Some grumble about who should be in the meeting, while others grumble about the meeting they should have been invited to.

Here’s the deal (according to me at least). Meetings are necessary and a good use of time (as long as you don’t screw them up). Try as you might, you can’t get a team aligned as well or as efficiently over email. Some problems (and solutions) won’t be put on the table in email or over IM. As introverted as many software people are, sometimes you need to talk to other humans to make the most efficient progress.

Think, for a moment, what a good meeting looks (and feels like). Good meetings are engaging – you want to listen and participate (rather than type on your laptop or phone). In good meetings, you learn something new (or help someone else learn something) or you reach agreement and have a plan of action by the time you walk out the door). After a good meeting you should have a feeling that progress has been made.

Then, there are the other kinds. We’ve all been there – half the room is typing on laptops, looking up once in a while to ask the presenter to repeat the last five minutes of their presentation. People talk, but no decisions are made, and most people are more confused about what’s going on than when they walked in the door. When you leave, you don’t know what to do, or at best, you are assigned to go back to your office and come up with a plan of action on your own.

We can all recognize a good meeting vs. a bad meeting, but how do you change one into the other? You have few options. One is to cancel all of the “bad” meetings. Then, you’ll only have good meetings left and life will be great. The problem is that you may actually need most of those meetings – you just need them to be more effective. Another option is to ensure that each meeting has a flow (I didn’t say “agenda” on purpose – I believe that meetings with out agendas can be effective if you have a consistent way to let the agenda emerge (scrum daily stand-ups are a great example of this (unless you consider an “everyone talks about their stuff” an agenda)). Also make sure that every meeting has a facilitator (who may or may not be the owner of the meeting). The facilitator’s job is to keep the meeting on track, stop “rat hole” conversations, and to assign action items as they come up.

Another suggestion is to reduce the meeting length. My hunch is that most 60 minute meetings can be done in 30 minutes, and 90 minute meetings can be completed in 45 (or less)). Meetings are gaseous entities that expand to fit the available space, and I believe that if you reduce the meeting time, that within a few sessions you will be getting just as much done (in half the time). If it works for you, please send your checks to me – I accept paypal.

More collateral for you on the subject

• Pat Lencioni’s collateral for Death by Meeting. – http://www.tablegroup.com/books/dbm/
• The 22 minute meeting – (an idea from a Microsoftie that Scott Berkun just blogged about )

Yesterday, a colleague asked me where I find the time to blog, twitter, etc. This is something I get asked often, but the only answer I have is that I just make time. I put blogging, presentations, sasqag work, and other community stuff right alongside my core work on my todo list. I’m heavily driven by my todo list (I use the tasklist in outlook), and anything I think is important makes it onto the list. I don’t work exceptionally long hours – I just make time for what I think is important. I don’t work exceptionally long hours either – my home life and my work life sort of blend together (I take care of personal stuff during the work day, and work most mornings and evenings from home. I’d estimate that I typically work about 50 hours a week at the most (although that number is a bit higher now as I ramp up on my new job).

I suppose it also helps that I think about work a lot. In fact, I write most of my blog posts (including this one) in my head before I sit down to type them out. I use my commute (20 minutes) to think through blogs, papers, projects, and whatever else I’m doing that requires a bit of thought before execution.I don’t have a lot of dead time during my day, but I think that helps keep me sharp.

I have one other bit of related advice to share (something I should have included in my gravy train presentation). There is always enough time. I’ve talked to people around the world (mostly testers), and I’m surprised how many tell me that there is some cool thing they want to do…but they just don’t have enough time. “I’d like to learn a new language,,,but I don’t have time”, or “I’d like to look ahead and build a strategy for our team…but we’re just too busy with execution right now”. When people tell me this, I ask- “What would happen if you were sick for a day? So sick you couldn’t even get out of bed?” “Would you be able to “catch up?” Sometimes they try to convince me the world would end, but the conversation always ends with a statement like “it would be inconvenient, but we’d survive”. “Fine”, I say, “if this is important, block some time off of your calendar and make it happen”. You will never get off of the treadmill if you don’t make that time, and if you don’t get off the treadmill, you’re never going to make great things happen.

And everyone should get a chance to make great things happen.

ed. Adam Goucher pointed me to this article on making time. A fantastic read – thanks Adam.

My family moved into a new house about 16 months ago. There’s an office on the ground floor where I set up my pc, my music stiff and a bunch of boxes (mostly filled with books and CDs). I never quite figured out what furniture to buy for the room, but in the end, it didn’t really matter. It turns out that my wife loves my computer (it’s a fanless, ultraquiet system with two 19” widescreen monitors on ergotron arms. She also fell in love with the room – it’s on the first floor, near the front door and kitchen – a perfect place to be if kids are in the yard, eating snacks, or playing around the house. I relinquished the room to her several months ago, but all of my crud was still in there because we never figured out where it should go.

Our house has a “bonus room” that we thought would be a kids play room or a TV room, but it didn’t work out well for either of those options. The room is on the second floor over the garage – far, far away from the kitchen and family room. When you have a four and five year old, you don’t necessarily want them playing (or watching tv!) so far away you can’t hear them. Sometime a few months ago, we decided that I could take over the room. It’s a pretty big room, but it will be fun to have a place for all of my book, cds and music stuff.

We had a bit of a moving day today, and I hauled about 20 boxes upstairs, and moved some shelves from the garage. Right now, it looks like a big storage room (because that’s what it is right now). I’ve been using the Ikea room planner to get an idea of how to set it up and threw this together:

The file cabinet in the corner is a stand-in for a 20-space raxxess rack where I keep most of my electronics. I have a few sets of studio monitors that I’ll put right on the bookshelf – not the best solution, but I think it will work fine. I’m not exactly sure where to put the desk, but that spot in front of the shelves is as good as any. The room is pretty big – not counting the entry hallway, it’s 13×17 (17’ left to right as you view this picture). I have 4 saxophones and 3 guitars that can go behind the chair somewhere, and a bunch of smaller instruments that I can put on shelves, or in the cabinets on the right. Acoustically, the room is a little bright now, but I’m hoping it deadens up a bit once I unpack everything. BTW – if any readers with better decorating skills than me have suggestions, please fire them away in the comments section.

For comparison, here’s my wife’s office (my old office).We’re going to put a foldout couch between the doors and have it double as a second guest room (with my office, I suppose, being a third). Until today, most of the floor space (including inside the closet) was piled with my boxes.I’m pretty sure most of the carpet in that room has never been walked on.

I mentioned a week ago that I was giving a talk on career tips called “Ride the Gravy Train”. I gave the talk today (which had a remarkably large turnout), and think it’s a talk I’ll deliver again (with some tweaks).

Without going into details, here are the tips:

• do the right thing
• try different
• speak up
• learn your A-C-B’s
• know that you don’t
• know who you don’t
• follow the leader – lead the follower
• don‘t flip the bozo bit
• …and don’t burn bridges either
• find a mentor
• ride the gravy train
• find the steepest learning curve
• the three p’s
• be happy
• a career is a journey, not a sprint
• there’s nothing wrong with self-promotion

As  you can tell, there’s nothing Microsoft specific here (and probably nothing controversial either). As usual, of course, I use few words on my slides (this is the sum of all of the text), and the words I use are too obscure for most people to provide context.

Given that it’s my product now, I’m considering doing a live meeting version of this talk (and if that goes well, others). I thought about doing something like this before, but as soon as I suggested it, I got very, very busy. I’m still busy, but at least I can say I’m testing (and I promise to anyone who wants to listen to the talk that I will take every bit of feedback you give me on your experience with the product and get it to the proper people). Not sure when yet, but probably in  a few weeks. I’ll post something here and frequently on twitter when I get things squared away.

Originally, I was supposed to join the Communicator team today, but a cancelled day of vacation pushed my start date up to yesterday…but there was a meeting I wanted to attend on Monday, so I’ve basically been out of building 21 (EE land) and in or near my new office since Monday afternoon. So, let me tell you’ what I’ve been up to since then!

It’s been a bit of a slow start – given that I started early and the pace that the hr backend is updated, I don’t have permission to enlist in the source code yet. On top of that, I’m told it will take a week or two to get my server account moved so I can use the in-development release. I’m also still waiting on my new computer (I still have my laptop and a computer that will become my secondary machine, so I’m certainly not completely blocked).

And, despite waiting for permissions, I don’t feel blocked in my ramp up either. I have a 3-pronged approach to ramping up on a test team that is working well for me so far. First off, although I normally don’t like going to meetings, I’ve already attended half a dozen or so. Some, I’m invited to, and others I just tag along. It’s a good way to figure out what’s going on in the project, learn faces, and get a sense of the team dynamic. Secondly, I’ve spent several hours reading through bug reports. It’s great – without talking to hardly anyone, I already have a sense of the types of testing approaches used on the team, a sense of how the database fields are used and interpreted, and even some insight into individuals on the team. I’ve recommended reading bug reports as a way for testers to ramp up quickly on a team for years, and I’m delighted to see that it works. And – I’ve read team wikis, test plans, and whatever other collateral I can find in order to help round out what’s going on.

I’ve been reading so much, in fact, that by Tuesday afternoon, my eyes were aching and my vision was fuzzy. So fuzzy, in fact, that I visited the optometrist on the way home for my first ever eye exam. Shortly later, I ordered my first ever pair of eyeglasses. I’ll post photos of my new look as soon as they show up.

Today, I made sure I took a few breaks to rest my eyes – I used the time mostly to unpack a few items and tidy up a bit. My new office is now entirely unpacked except for a big box full of random cables that I’m afraid to get rid of because the moment I do, I’ll need one of them.

I think that’s about it. Oh – except that I’m giving a talk tomorrow on random career tips. I think it will be interesting, but we’ll see. Looking forward to sharing them here at a future date…or perhaps over live meeting??? 🙂