I had dinner with Michael Bolton and James Bach during STARwest, which was a great feast of ideas and insights in addition to the fine food. One of the interesting new ideas that I hadn’t yet heard of was Black Swan Theory , mentioned by Michael Bolton. As an Australian, I could see nothing unusual about the concept of a Black Swan, but in Europe before the discovery of Australia, a black swan was seen as an impossibility since none had ever been seen. The Black Swan theory relates to an unexpected, radical event that alters your perception of reality. As testers. we are often told the European view that black swans don’t exist (this code is fully tested, two weeks of testing will be more than enough, one retest all you need, works on my machine), but we know that our world is full of black swans we call bugs. There is also the other myth that “all tests must be scripted” disproved by the black swan of exploratory testing.

On my last trip to the USA a month ago, I went to the Getty Center in Los Angeles and to Gap Corporate Headquarters in San Francisco, and saw great art at both. At the Getty, I had heard there was an Bernini exhibition, which I didn’t think would be that interesting not knowing much about Bernini. When I got to the Center, I realized there was some amazing sculpture in it. I joined a guided tour, all high tech with the tour leader having a microphone headset and the particpants all with headphone headsets. The tour was truly from the guide’s context: we started by entering a side door into the last room to see some masterworks, then jumped around from room to room but all linked with an fantastic narrative, The sculpture was truly amazing, not just for the detail in cloth, lace, hair and skin that looked like real people covered in marble dust, but also for the amazing “speaking likeness” as if they were just about to talk. A truly amazing cultural treasure, and returning soon to Italy. There are some pictures here and then this article has pictures with audio narrative from Getty staff (click the link).

I flew up to San Francisco for Agile Open California, hosted by Gap at San Bruno. While there was some interesting modern art including a life size giraffe (in a 3 story high atrium) that you could view from various angles as you climbed a staircase next to it, one attendee was an artist called Elizabeth McClellan who is a traditional artist, but who was using her skills in an fascinating way as a visual facilitator. Elizabeth created half a dozen visualizations of sessions and discussions capturing key ideas and images in what were truly modern works of art, but with a strong practical focus. On an IT project, I could see key planning meetings or other sessions being captured in this way, and the posters remaining as reminders of project culture that could be displayed both as art and project statements.

Oh, and there was some other very tasty LA art, a magnificent gigantic blended iced mocha I consumed for brunch while sitting al fresco opposite the Spanish styled clock tower in Westwood

My latest column...

Drive-by training. Never heard of it? It is exactly what it sounds like. You drive to a training facility (or an instructor drives to you), for a day or three the instructor delivers the pre-packaged training class, then everyone drives back home. It's not the best training model ever invented. There is generally no student assessment, and the only instructor/course provider accountability is reputation. Even so, many good ideas can be shared and lots of students come away feeling that it was well worth "the drive."

As it turns out, I've been delivering a lot of drive-by training to software testers this fall. That in itself isn't particularly noteworthy -- end-of-the-budget year is a popular time for drive-by training -- but something that is noteworthy is that I have noticed a rise in some disturbing behaviors among the individuals and organizations that select and attend drive-by training.

At first, I thought it was just me. But after an informal poll (and some lively discussions) with my employees and trainer friends in the testing realm, I became increasingly convinced that the behaviors I'm noticing are not exclusive to me and that I'm not the only one who thinks they are on the rise.

Read the rest of the column.

--

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."

Paul Gerrard and James Bach have recently blogged on testing schools, from two different viewpoints. I think both have relevant points though their views differ. Many testers learn their craft through osmosis, absorbing the testing culture of their organisations (or projects) and any external influences (mailing lists, conferences, user groups, training etc). In the absence of these external influences, the organisational culture can remain static and follow a certain orthodoxy (often aligning with a school of testing), sometimes with religious devotion. When I caught up with one of my initial testing mentors after 5 years, I asked her what she thought of exploratory testing and all the changes to the industry, but she had no idea of what I was talking about as she had stayed doing what she knew. So organisations can follow schools of testing, and so can the people within them if they have no interaction with external influences (or they choose to ignore them).

An Assertion-based (also known as programmer tests in Test Driven Development) Test Oracle (an information source of what makes a test correct) was developed 27 years ago, well before TDD was thought of but probably around the time test oracles were thought of. That was also long before refactoring was thought of, simplifying the logic to its simplest form.

It was designed by US history professor Allan Lichtman and mathematician Volodia Keilis-Borok. It is 13 assertions (that is refactored all right) that can each be true or false, and has picked every US federal election result since 1984. If more than half of the assertions are true, the governing party will win, otherwise they will lose. The majority of the assertions first went false in early 2006, at which point Lichtman said “Long before the nomination contest unfolded, the Democrats could take a name out of a phone book and still win.” I guess they must have used a Chicago phone book, or maybe even a Brazilian one! (where there are now multiple Barack Obamas) This year the test oracle has evaluated False, but if we look at it vice-versa, True or even Yes we can! [grin]

If the test oracle is correct, newspapers will print this mock headline on Wednesday the 5th of November 2008. (There’s another agile word, mock!)

Lawrence Winkler has two libraries. One is a traditional one, a library of information with new books and some more than 100 years old. The other library is now just a library of data, which was 3 books he had paid $100 for. What happened? Technological upgrades have degraded his books into unintelligible digital goobledegook. Now he is trying to highlight the dangers of storing information only in a digital form. In May, he had the 69th comment on a post about ebooks and copyright. In October, he had the 10th comment on a post about Amazon pushing their e-book device.

I notice that James Whittaker finally started blogging in July. He recently blogged on STARwest, including describing Keith Stobie as “10 testers in one”. I would have to agree having spent the last day at STARwest at “California Adventure” (the park across the way from Disneyland) with Keith, talking testing and other topics as we queued for rides. It was my first testing talking day for a while .

As James started blogging, my blogging fell in a hole, but hopefully it is now back…. I got to have several dodgy quality experiences at Disneyland and California Adventure and at other places (some self inflicted!), that will either be blog entries or talk fodder in the coming year….. I may even tell some other STARwest stories as well, the lightning talk that became a full session that became a keynote, or the STARwest lightning talk that was going to have James Whittaker testing software disguised as Darth Vader!!!!! Stay tuned!