I am a ‘Tester’ and I am your ‘Friend’

Someone once told me that “you are either my friend or a tester”. He was a development lead. A few years later one of the business analyst said “You are a tester so don’t act like my friend”. Although both the Developer and BA are my friends and both the comments were said in a funny yet sarcastic way but I remember them even today.

Whenever I think that a ‘Tester’ is a friend to Developer or BA this statement comes back to my mind. Every time I have to re-think that may be the friendship is one sided. A few days back someone said “I lost enough and I decided to save money so, I must invest more but this time on a tester”. He is the Project manager.

I will remember this and keep it in my mind so that every time when my development friend or BA friend gives me a raised eyebrow I can just say to myself “I am a tester and I am your friend, you are just an innocent to not know it yet.”

Who is missing from this Project?

What do you think went wrong? Whose mistake it is that the road needs patch work just after the first raining season?

Is it the contractor (developer)?

Is it the supervisor (project manager)?

Is the lack of cost (budget)?

Is it the crunched time line?

OR

Is it just corruption during the process?

The answer is in the root of the cause. The contractor has been provided some material to construct the road. The supplier provided the material. The supervisor was split between selecting right time, right amount under budget, right people for the job, monitoring the progress of each aspect of project, calculating risk and many more things but maybe he missed to choose the right material to build the road or may be the material was of good quality but the proportion wasn't right.

This is not particularly supervisor’s job to pick the right quality product and to check if the mix is correct for this product and nether it is the job of supplier. Constructor defiantly found it right or may be just missed at some point while building. Than whose job it is and is it the person who was missing from the process which made this blunder.

The project was delivered well within time and saved cost as well but the overall quality of the project is not up to the mark. One of the reasons for it is that the key element “Quality Analyst” was missing out from the team.

A quality analyst provides a check at every stage of the process, starting from choosing the right material, proportion selected for the product, at the start of the construction process, at the middle of it and at the end of it. This might add a bit more of cost but the question is not that, the real question is can you afford to pay later for fixes or do you want to avoid the fixes in future and make it right the first time.

The market today understands the need of quality analyst but still few projects lack in it. Few just lack to give importance to it.

The question is: do you want the road to work till the rains or for a longer time after the rains?

Best tool for a successful Team
                       - Communication

Have you ever been to a park where there are squirrels? I always see them talking to each other. They keep eating and just talking something. My sister and I use to just sit next to a tree and look at them and make our own believe conversation between two squirrels. It was funny but now I can relate it.

I was in the kitchen of my office a few days back and I saw a group of people sitting and discussing about their project. Although they were talking in English I felt like all the squirrels are talking to each other and I could not understand even a bit. If I can’t even understand it then is communication that important for a team? They all seem to enjoy and laugh during their communication. This is exactly my point.

When a team works together for a goal, the first understanding is everyone should be on the same page. So the lead takes the responsibility of letting the team know every minor detail or update which they should get. Is that enough?

In my opinion communication between team is way more than project updates or some assignments or status matrix. A team communicates from the morning greetings to the evening greetings. Below are few points which make different level of communication a better team

   Everyday small update meeting: This could be in the morning or in the evening or just a small group discussion around the workstation. This is just to give some updates to each other.

    Multi chat window: In testing world we often come to a place where there is a need of more than one tester in testing a scenario or just when a lead wants to ask everyone to update the defects. Multi chat window is a great tool which brings excitement and fun as well. People can talk openly, share smiley and it can be short and crisp as well.

   Shoulder tap coffee: I just like to tap someone from the team when I am going for coffee and if they want to go for coffee as well, it is time to chat. This sounds simple and everyone does it in day to day life but how many of us go with almost the same people every day, if not alone. I like to ask different people so that I can talk to all, may be just some personal stuff or may be something about project. 

     Small weekly or bi-weekly team coffee: I believe that such a session open up people for conversations that they would resist in a close meeting room. It is a proven fact that people tend to think and talk more openly in open and casual sitting. These gatherings can be short, just for 30 mins or so. Such meetings reduce the friction between team members and help them grow better understanding towards each other.

Team Lunch: This is common in most of the work places and works absolutely fine. Everyone becomes excited about going out, choosing a restaurant. When the whole team is out of office for a long time they tend to forget all the worries and tensions in the office. Once back in office people are lazy for another hour but satisfied for the rest of the week. Most of the Team lunch is planned on Friday however I believe that Wednesday is the best day to go out, which make you feel like a Friday and so you can pass the rest two days very well.

One-on-One meeting: These meetings could be monthly or quarterly. Team members can get personal issues out on the plate. The lead of the teams gets good information and weigh what can be done to make it better. It is also a good opportunity to provide feedback to the team.

   

Appreciations: What is the best suitable time to appreciate a person? The organization might or might not have awards and we all know that the process for it will be long. That does not mean a lead cannot give a token for appreciation to his/her team.  This could be any trophy, a symbol of appreciation, which the team passes along like a soft-toy, a football, an amazing Rolls Royce car model.

Anything from casual to formal meeting, anything which give a person relief or which make them share some smile can be a way of good communication among the team. I know it is hard to maintain and keep it going but this will keep the team close and make them work towards the same goal, pick whichever suits to your team the best or just pick them all.

We all know that communication among team can bring a lot well but we tend to forget with every day’s busy life.

Find your ‘State of Euphoria’

The day I got my first job in IT; I was in the state of total euphoria. I and my friends were selected together and we started to dance just outside the place where we got selected. I never left the place where I was back than for a long time and I was still in the state of euphoria. Until I found out that I have just been rotating around the same block and there are more ways to choose from, more paths, more opportunities and more aspirations. This made me realize that there is much more to do in life.

I decided that it is time and I should now choose. How do I make a choice which I will not regret few years down the line? What should be my decision? Should I consult someone or should it be my decision?

I remember a discussion with my father when I was about to choose my main subjects in school which will drive my professional carrier. I am glad I made the right decision back then. We were asked to fill in the form and drop them in school office before our next term starts. We had more than 50 days to think about this life changing decision. What I did was to play cricket all day with my friends and eat food that I still regret and fall asleep in front of the newly launched video game.

It was the last day of submissions and I had to take a decision now. I had no other option but to go to my dad for suggestion. I expected that I would have to hear a full lecture of an hour before he would help me because I wasted 50 days. Unlike what I thought he just said “Go and open all your mark sheets and find out which subject you are good at and which subject you are bad at.” I thought that is easy and so I said “So, I will choose whichever I am good at”. He smiled and said “That is the simple way. Once you find out the subject you are best at and the subject you are worst at think about whether you scored well because it was simple or because you were interested in it. Do you want your life to be simple at the beginning and challenging later or you want to challenge yourself now and make it simple later.”

That was a lot to take as a kid but I started to work on numbers first and I found out that subjects which I am not good at are not necessarily my least favourite. I choose to challenge myself with the subject I am interested in, irrespective of whether I am good at it or not.

Nearly after a decade I was in that place again, I geared up and brace myself. I knew what to do to make the change that will take me back to the ‘state of euphoria’. I didn’t waste my time in playing cricket this time, instead I planned and executed. I have learned my lesson in the past and so, I turned back and looked at my wonderful journey I had in my professional life and I made the decision. It was hard to move from a stable life but I was courageous enough to shake it to make better future.

One year back I decided to relocate from India to Australia. A new country, new people, new career, for new and better learning. I struggled and I remember everyday of struggle but I made it and today I am celebrating when I am reaching my first milestone in my new chosen life.

This situation comes in everyone’s professional life and I am just glad that I realised it at the right time and being with right people and place. The only way I thought was any choice I make should take me back to the state of euphoria and it did.

Are you in the state of euphoria or at least walking towards it? If not wake up and make a move before it is too late.

Consular or Counselee – it’s about satisfaction

On the side track to testing there is an important factor that impacts everyone in this industry. Sometimes we understand the need, sometime we ignore. I believe it is important to have a consular for everyone. It could be just a well wisher or a professional consular. I am a self made man and so we all are but if we role back a bit and take a peek in our past we might find out few people who gave us right advice at the right time. I am grateful to many of them, specially the one who gave me the pointer to come to testing, seven long years back.

The consular could be anyone. Someone you worked with long back, someone you are working with or someone who just know you professionally. I am not sure why everyone needs one but I do because of some reasons and below are few to point:

1. Dilemma - When you want to take a decision and you are not sure what to do, you might need some advice. The person who is giving advice is not in the same pressure and might think about it with open mind, more objectively than you will.
2. Knowledge – Your wisdom could be more but what you need to know is the right direction and knowledge. Everyone has different interests and so has different knowledge zones. You might know sometime better than your consular but there still could be a side in shadow which can be enlightened by the right person.
3. Comfort Zone - You have a comfort zone and you don’t want to move out of it but that person can guide you or motivate you to push you out of the comfort zone because they believe in you more than you do yourself.
4. Reverse Satisfaction – Most importantly one day the consular can become the counselee and counselee can become consular. Again its just the above points which make you a consular or counselee. The satisfaction to support someone in the time when they need is beyond ‘words’ and each one of us has experienced the both side of it sometime in our lives.

I have a consular who is far far away from me, he is in USA but we meet often on the cyberspace. I guess the way you need a friend to kick back beer on Friday evening to lose yourself in the same way you need a professional friend with whom you can sit sometime to discuss, you know what…

If you don’t have one seek for them and just give it a try or if you are ready to be one, someone out there is seeking for you, so switch on your mind Bluetooth.

10 Points for Testing from my experience

Each day brings something new and something beautiful which you might understand at that moment or it might take months. I remember one such day which taught me the importance of one of the key artifact of testing which I was aware off and used in past but never understood the importance of it till that day.

I was working in a web based testing project lets call it “Project Wolverine”. I don’t want to reveal the name of my project and this way it is fun and let’s face it we all love Wolverine from X-men. To give a little background,  the project is about performing functional testing on a web based application which has multiple tabs with various workflows affecting the data to flow from one tab to another. I would not say that is the most complex project I have worked in but it wasn’t the easiest one either.

We started working on the project with various stake holders from different directions to come together in a workshop to make this dream project come true. There were no written requirements so we as test leads needed to make as much as notes possible. Everyday I use to put all my notes into a format which can be understood after a month as well. Time was flying and with-in a month the development and architecture team started to work things out and soon there was a draft deployed for us to test.

The team was excited to test the new product with high energy to find 100s of defects everyday. I would not blame Development team for all the defects because there could easily be miscommunication of understanding the requirement.

The first cycle of testing was over and development request for some time to make a good defect fix build to reduce down the number of errors. We as testing team got some time out. We went out for lunch, games, movies and many more outings to celebrate our 1^st journey through the mysterious island. Now we had to utilize the time and so we book a room. Sit together everyday, discussed each functionality in depth and build a document which had all the requirements that we tested as per our understanding. We sent it to the business and there were many rounds of review and changes and finally we came up with a good enough documents, called ‘The Black Book for Project Wolverine”

We were all set to take another ride but who would know that the disaster was about to come. From a team of five resources, three of them left the organization with-in two weeks. We two knew most of the functionalities but we never tested all of them. So we started to recruit few people internally and we found two awesome testers.

We decided to build a regression cycle to work along with our defect fix cycle and now the people with knowledge of some functionality are gone so it became hard for us to find the right test cases for regression testing cycle. I was in a discussion with one of the manager (let’s call him Boss X) over lunch and I still remember his response to my question, word to word:

I asked “We built the requirement document, we built the test cases, we have all the knowledge and we are the once who raise the defects even then why is it so hard to find out the correct regression suit?” I sounded frustrated. He was not the Test manager for Project Wolverine; He replied:

“Do you know in how many ways you can reach to our office from here?”

“Yes, there are three roads leading to it” I said and thought has he lost it? Was he even listing to me?

“Think again, and this time as a tester” He said and I gave it a thought and replied

“Ya, may be more” He looked into my eyes and said

“You might know the shortest part or the easiest path because that is what you will choose as a regular driver but what about if you can rent a chopper and fly, what about if you walk, can you trace pass few apartments or go from a walking alley. What about public transport, will it take the same route. The whole point is you may know all the paths but what you actually need is a way to find out all the traceable paths to reach then you will be able to choose which one will give a good coverage” I was still processing his statement and trying to relate it to my issue of building a regression cycle and suddenly it stuck to me what he was asking me to do is to build a Traceability matrix.

“Traceability matrix!!! you could have told so.” He looked at me and replied

“You know what it is. I just needed to remind you the importance of it.”

I went back to office and called my team in the room and started building a traceability matrix. It took us two days to map all the requirements to test plan and test cases. Another 1 day to map all the defects and risks to it. The only thing left was to use filter function to choose the right test cases for our regression suit.

Well the project was a good success and it went into production in few more months. I was happy with our performance and it was time for me to move on to another project. Boss X came to me and said

“Can you put down just 10 points about the learning from project, could be things you followed and could be things you should have followed. You don’t have to send it to anyone but you will thank me later.”

Here are the points I gave and I still think they make most sense for any project that I worked before and after that project. These points make a lot of difference if they are followed.

1. The requirements were not given but that doesn’t mean the knowledge was not given. We as a team can always find sometime out to built a ‘Black Book’ by ourselves. Which made a huge impact in project wolverine
2. If there would not have been any peer reviews (static testing) development and testing teams would have invested a lot of time in rework.
3. Ad-hoc testing is as important as regular functional testing as it gave us few paths which were left unattended and not tested. It gave testers a freedom to think and explore without test cases.
4. Never accept a piece of code without being signoff with unit tested by developers as it will invite a lot of time investment in defect logging and retesting.
5. Biases in the team are only means to create differences among them.
6. Maintaining standard documents for all the activities that every team member performs and doing cross training is important to avoid ‘Single point of failure’. Communication between the team members is far more important than it sounds as it can remove gaps, misunderstandings and build a trustworthy environment. So say yes to everyday meetings.
7. Maintaining project status and keeping track of progress is not to monitor testers but it’s a means to know that are we on right track and right speed. It is one of the essential parts of testing.
8. If something has failed in the past does not mean it will fail again. One of the example was using excel add-in for QC, which failed in the past because of lack of knowledge but later was a success and has proven effective.
9. Transparency is the key for team to be presented as one. If everyone has the same knowledge might give insecurity to one but in reality makes a strong team. We used one mail distribution link instead of individual email ID. Especially for other touch point teams like Environment, deployment, development and BA teams.
10. Last but not the least – Knowing the product does not make us an expert. It is important to document and built a traceability for each part that is being tested.