testingReflections.com - metaphors

June Issue of AST Update Now Available

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:55:01 -0500

June 2008 Issue of the Association for Software Testing Magazine and Newsletter Now Available

Latest Column -- Avoid "Center of the Universe Syndrome"

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:03:55 -0500

My latest column cautioning testers not to think they are the center of the development team's universe http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid92_gci1325828,00.html.

--
Scott Barber
President & Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
Executive Director, Association for Software Testing
Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications

"If you can see it in your mind...
you will find it in your life."

Identity crisis or delusions of grandeur?

Thu, 15 May 2008 14:33:57 -0500

In this month's installment of "Peak Performance" I discuss the frequently erroneous and often grandiose titles software testers have on their business cards or in their e-mail SIGs. Identity crisis or delusions of grandeur?

--
Scott Barber
President & Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
Vice President & Executive Director, Association for Software Testing
www.perftestplus.com
www.associationforsoftwaretesting.org
"If you can see it in your mind...
you will find it in your life."

If only software development was like listening to internet radio...

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:46:28 -0500

It's true - people who don't get TDD hear the word 'Test' and all but ignore the 'Driven Development' part of it... sometimes to the point that they assume "oh, that's that testers job then"... or the opposite happens when you hear "doesn't that mean developers spend time testing when they should be writing code?"... It can take long and hard to break through this initial cultural barrier... For a long time I've searched for a way other than dropping the word 'T' in 'TDD' to break through the inevitable barrier and I'd almost given up hope... to the point where I was about to resort to the BDD philosophy. The benefits of test-infection made me persist.

To try to get people to understand the 'Driven Development' aspect of writing customer tests first a.k.a. "Acceptance Test Driven Development" (ATDD) and the relevance of the test and testing and testers and let's not forget early and frequent customer feedback... I've been using a different approach. It doesn't solve all of the problems caused by the letter 'T' but it does solve one of them - the part where people ignore the fact that the tests are driving development (yes I said 'tests' not 'testers' - I emphasise this because someone recently asked me 'so, how exactly do the testers drive the developers?').

So... let's talk about something else for a second... I want you to stop thinking about testing... for one moment. I want you to forget about the word 'test' and all the connotations that go along with it... I want you to think about something else... something random... let's say... 'Internet Radio'...

What is it like to be a...

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 06:30:11 -0500

A while back, a colleague - Tim Smith - pointed me at Thomas Nagel's collection of philosophical essays in the book "Mortal Questions".

I was captivated by Nagel's seminal essay "What is it like to be a bat?"

Nagel’s essay discusses perception and poses a strong argument that there is no such thing as objectivity. I.e. we may distil a bat’s system of vision into the concept of Sonar but we can’t possibly know how the bat experiences it because we have only our perception of visible-light, our separate perception of audible sounds and the metaphor of a submarine's sonar to compare it to.

Is testing as different as economic systems?

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:54:52 -0600

I have lived in two out of 5 basic types of economic systems: planned (Soviet Union) and market (Latvia now) economy. I could draw certain similarity with notion of testing schools. … well at least to a degree of my interpretation of the notion. Based on my (perhaps limited) experience – I prefer to think about the reasons for implications described – in terms of decision making…

Homeland Security’s “unwelcome visitors": tales of many bug types

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 06:48:01 -0600

The American Homeland Security megadepartment has been in the news recently, covering a whole taxonomy of bug types, relating to people seen as unwelcome visitors and unwelcome visitors seen as raindrops! Firstly, we have the sad story of honest Debbie Williams Arthur who tried to renew her Virginia driver’s license over the net, only to have it rejected with a message saying her car stickers had to be picked up in person. Her husband went to pick them up, only to be told it had to be Debbie, and she had to call a toll free number in the meantime. When she rang the number she was told that Homeland Security had identified her as a fugitive called Debbie K Williams from another part of the U.S, and to bring her ID in to the office. When she got there, they said the problem would be fixed in 15 minutes, then she was told after an hour there were complications. These included the fact that the system didn’t think she existed and the Homeland Security override would not allow her records to be set up. After 3 ½ hours she left, after being advised to walk home because any police check would result in her arrest as a fugitive! She ended up with a hand written note (!) for the police in case she was stopped. Despite being told the issue would be fixed and she’d be given phone updates, none came. Finally after another visit to the office, she got her car stickers (at which point she probably was a fugitive driving with expired car stickers!). This is a production bug, relating to data. The system as a whole works, but missing data and locks on the existing data from the external homeland security system presumably needed software fixes to rectify the bug.

The strange case of invisible ink at the polling place, again

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 05:53:10 -0600

Investigating a curious quality tale can be as challenging as trying to investigate an obscure unclear bug reported by beta testers, often influenced by your own knowledge and experience models. Trying to get to how, what, where, when, and who is complicated by missing and sometimes contradictory information.
My initial reaction to the invisible ink pens story was framed by the senior manager, blaming the incident on the "utter stupidity" of his staff.

The strange case of invisible ink at the polling place

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 05:14:59 -0600

Models are typically the basis of all testing. We either model behavior based on specifications, etc and create scripts that are run once the software is developed, or we explore models interactively with exploratory testing. Models can create strange misunderstandings.

I worked in and ran polling places in Australia for many years. One of the challenges is getting polling staff familiar with their tasks and responsibilities before polling starts, so every voter can be processed correctly. This was evidently not the case at a polling place in Chicago, during the recent American primaries.

From the Mailbox: Software Development: Art or Science?

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:47:12 -0500

Here’s a question that I didn’t realize I had much to say about until I read my own response.

The Question:
Software Development: Is it an art or a science? An age old question I know, but what do you think and why?

My Response:

I refer to new software development as a scientific art. I've seen some maintenance work, platform porting, etc. that has been almost entirely mechanical -- I'm not sure what that counts as, but I certainly didn't witness anything "artistic".

Model Workloads for Performance Testing: FIBLOTS

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 17:44:04 -0500

This is the third installment of a currently unknown number of posts about heuristics and mnemonics I find valuable when teaching and conducting performance testing.

Other posts about performance testing heuristics and mnemonics are:


For years, I have championed the use of production logs to create workload models for performance testing. During the same period, I've been researching and experimenting with methods to quickly create "good enough" workload models without empirical data that increase the value of the performance tests. I recently realized that these two ideas are actually complimentary, not exclusionary, and that with or without empirical usage data from production logs, I do the same thing, I:

FIBLOTS.

Context, an equivalence class album review and some heuristics

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 23:10:06 -0500

In Australia, the new tax year starts in July, so there are many sales on at the moment. I found some CDs at one place at a throwaway price, $2 each. One of them is an interesting instrumental album by an artist I hadn’t heard of, Tino Izzo. There is one track I have an issue with, called a samba, but it is too slow and fails all "samba" requirements, but does pass "flamenco" muster. Artistic licence, I guess.

I did a web search for reviews of the album, and found a glowing “must buy” review here at the artist’s web site. So based on the heuristic of artists reviews at their sites will be positive, I find it holds, it is positively glowing. It’s written by a specialist in guitar music, who mentions several artists that I have never heard of. I'm not sure how deep his knowledge is though; one rocking track he highlights for "flamenco flair" has no Spanish styled classical guitar at all (just some bongos). The track is an old Beatles ballad, in a new uptempo context and great new arrangement. So that's one issue I have with an otherwise good review. I did find some flamenco flair on another rocking track (4). A good heuristic for Spanish styling is a Spanish track name! Maybe the reviewer's memory failed him. There's even a track for that, "Elusive Memories", also dedicated to testing too fast and not quite remembering how you caused that big bug...

I found another album review which is the most unusual one I have ever read. It was definitely not what I expected. The reviewer starts off discussing people’s reactions to types of music, then her dislike of this type of music, then finishes off by saying she is unfair and unreasonable, before mentioning the artist and album names already listed at the start. Oh, there is a picture of the album art. So there is not one word of actual review. The crazy thing is, she thinks it is new age, when a lot of it is rock, so if she’d only listened to it….. So as a review for me, showstopper, complete failure. As an opinion piece, it is quite well written (but completely wrong to most people interested in the style of music).

This is effectively an equivalence class review: I dislike all the music of which this album is a sample, here’s why I dislike it, and I’m sorry. So as an acceptance tester, why was she chosen for the review? Why didn’t she even listen to it? As a customer, if I am interested in the album, her review has no value at all. Even worse, if I read her review, and buy it because I love that type of music, I might feel robbed when I heard the screaming gutar solos. Ah, I see, reuse. This can now become a generic review of all similar albums. Very clever. Reuse of the completely useless.. [grin]

On the music side, I was also able to apply an album buyers heuristic. The first and last tracks are the best! Those edge conditions aren't just useful in testing....

Performance testing Don Quixotes

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 05:22:12 -0500

For centuries emotions and associations are shared by poets. Using metaphor they avoid describing the context. So do I in this blog. Symbolic of practicality over idealism is Sancho Panza. So why topic is about Don Quixote? About a person living in an imaginary (rendered) world, pretending to be a Knight: a noble men having the most expensive equipment; about a book spoofing "straightforward retelling of a series of acts that redound to the knightly virtues of the hero".

When thinking about performance testing I keep looking on (more mature) functional testing articles ...

Blame requirements (satirical poem)

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 04:00:42 -0500

By this writing I want to point out it is human to reject own responsibility; it is human to blame other individuals (indirectly) involved instead. Software project quality issues are to no way an exception:

Software Testing Lessons from my Children

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 08:53:17 -0500

My most recent column has just been posted on TechTarget in which I discuss some of the lessons I‘ve learned from my children about software testing.

********

I had planned an entirely different topic for this month, but I‘m sitting down to write this on Father‘s Day while my sons (Nicholas, age 8, and Taylor, age 4) are napping, and realizing that I‘ve never written about what I have learned about testing from my boys.