Panel Talk: Achieving Test Competency – Challenges & Emerging Trends

I was recently invited to be a part of Panel Talk in ISQT’s STEP AUTO Conference . Was a part of this session yesterday and overall it was an great experience being on the panel sharing thoughts and perspective on the diverse topic of Achieving Test Competency – Challenges & Emerging Trends . Other Panelists included Harinath Pudipeddi Practice Manager, Cerner Corporation and Ramesh Ramani Director –QA at Tavant. Harinath and me were in touch long back on a Collaborative Book writing project on Software Testing and it was great meeting and knowing him in person. Same pleasing experience sharing the Panel table with Ramesh as well.
In this post, I intend to cover some of the thoughts that I put forward in the session-

Achieving Test Competency is very much contextual:
While thinking about Skills and Competencies, Let me commence by first of all sharing my perspective where we are coming from and where we are currently headed in Software Testing profession. I think the past decade i.e. from 2000 to 2009 has been quite an eventful one in the history of Software Testing profession. Among the changes that have happened over this time, the profession certainly has gained more respectability and acceptance. Fundamentally, I have seen the Software Testing move from more being an Singular dimension profession in late 90’s to being more of multi-dimension profession. What I mean by this is that in early 90’s, the prime focus largely used to be on Functional part of testing i.e. the features that are exposed to customers through the UI. And over a period of time, the terms such as Security Testing, Performance Testing, Globalization Testing, Whitebox etc. rightly gained more prominence. I never say these types of testing did not exist a decade back but the extent of their applicability, popularity and awareness was way lower than what it is right now. There were multiple factors governing this change mainly- Expectations of customers, Post production bugs (and the noise generated by these!) and motivation to deliver ”complete" software to the market.
All the change that we have observed in the last decade or so had a significant impact on how we perceive Test competencies and its evolution. At the grassroots level, Test competency can be defined as ability of a person to do Testing well and effectively. "Achieving Test Competency" is no longer a simple phenomenon. With the diversification of Software Testing field, Software Testing competency has increasingly become very contextual i.e. when we say Achieving Software Test Competency, do we mean "Achieving Security Test Competency" or "Achieving Performance Test Competency" or "Achieving Functional Test Competency" or something else that is relevant. So, one thing is for sure, we dont have easy answers here.

Evolution of Software Testing Competencies- Practice makes a Tester perfect:
Speaking on the topic of Competence, i would like to mention about the famous psychologist, Abraham Maslow's conscious competence theory , which is is also known as "Four Stages of Learning". Relating this theory to Software Testing,
First of the phase that he talks about is Unconscious Incompetence i.e. the Individual neither understands the new skill and is also not aware or recognizes that he has any deficiency. E.g. A person who is still in college may have heard of Software Testing but may not be aware at all about what kind of knowledge is he lacking given the fact that Software testing is usually only superficially touched-upon in the colleges.

The Next stage is Conscious Incompetence i.e. when a person knows about what he lacks, has a deficiency on when considering a skill but has not yet put in effort to address that. Consider the same guy who was in college now joins an organization as a Software Test Engineer. Seeing a lot of activities happening around Software Testing areas, he may start to recognize what he lacks but may not have spend much time addressing the deficiency.

The Next stage is Conscious Competence i.e. when a person understands or knows how to do something and has acquired the nuances of the profession but demonstrating the skill do not come naturally to him and requires some level of consciousness. i.e. the same tester now spends lot of time learning Software testing techniques, tools, gets hands on information on different stuff, gets himself familiar with the indepth topics and various forms of testing and get experienced. He reaches a stage wherein he has gained considerable level of competence in the various areas and is able to work with little supervision from others.

The final stage is Unconscious Competence i.e. when the person has had so much practice with a skill that it becomes "second nature" and can be performed easily (often without concentrating too deeply). The powerful word here is that you gain so much expertise on something that it becomes a "second nature" and the skill and output flows naturally. One example of something that Second nature to you can be your command over your mother tongue. It is so ingrained in our systems that we don’t need to think twice before conveying our thoughts. Now, the question to answer would be- "Does Software Testing appear as Second Nature to us ?", "Have we achieved Unconscious Competence in Software Testing ?".

I won’t be judgmental in answering these questions here but to me Key to achieve Software Testing as a Second nature are 3 words- Practice, Practice and more Practice.
How much of Practice do we need to attain Second nature type expertise in Software Testing ? I probably don’t know but would like to quote a study presented by Malcolm Gladwell is his best-selling book- Outliers . Malcolm presents something that is called as 10000 hour rule i.e. Studies suggest that the key to success in any field is simply practice, 10,000 hours of it — 20 hours a week for 10 years. Excellence at a complex task requires a minimum level of practice, and experts have settled on 10,000 hours as the magic number for true expertise. This is true even of people we think of as prodigies, such as Mozart. During his formative years, Bill Gates spent several hours altogether in lab, programming almost nonstop for seven consecutive years. He was way past 10000 hours.
Another example, he cites is The Beatles, who performed live in Hamburg, Germany over 1,200 times from 1960 to 1964, amassing more than 10,000 hours of playing time.

This theory raises several thoughts-
Is this rule applicable to Software Testing ? Though I don’t have the researched data on Software Testing but I would rather believe that it is possible in Software Testing rather than not believing it. I have no reason to believe why it would not be given the diverse examples this study cites. This much practice would also help achieve what we call as ever elusive Second Nature in Software testing phenomenon.

Balance between different Types of Skills in Software Testing is a big Challenge:
Broadly speaking, we can view software testers as having two kinds of skills: one set used to perform basic duties at work, and another set of skills used to approach work. The former can be categorized as technical skills and the latter as soft skills. To elaborate more on soft skills, these are the ones that define one's approach towards work, life, problems, etc. Soft skills are people skills. The best part about mastering them is that the application of these skills is not limited to one's profession, but their scope reaches all aspects of life. Technical skills may teach one how to meet the expectations of the job, but soft skills teach one to succeed, and to exceed expectations. It is surprising that we spend our time educating almost exclusively in technical skills.

Having said so much in favor of soft skills, my intention is never to undermine the importance of technical skills. It's nearly impossible for a tester to survive in the profession without sound technical skills. What I intend to challenge here is a popular myth: Technical skills, and only technical skills make a tester a complete professional. I firmly believe that both technical and soft skills complement each other and the balance between these two is what makes a tester a complete professional.

For me, the key challenge in achieving Test competency is achieving right kind of balance between Technical skills and Soft skills. Aligning our schedules in a way that we spend quality time mastering both these types of skills and to the right degree. It comes with lot of discipline and afterall, we are what we repeatedly do.

Emerging Trends:

Virtualizing the Software Testing:
The whole notion of Software Virtualization has affected Software Testing in a positive manner and it has potential to create more positive differentiation as I can foresee. The whole idea of completing a complex setup in a few minutes which earlier used to takes weeks is so fascinating. All this has been made possible because of advent of Software Virtualization. I do foresee lot of automation efforts happening around the area of Lab Management some things and some tools that will help to automate the entire Lab Management, manage the workflows at the click of the mouse. That would require more expertise from the testing teams to understand the concept of Virtualization in-depth to reap greater benefits.

Achieving zero Globalization Test Technical debt:
I think, in the overall Software practice because of the way Software development was perceived in the past, currently we are paying something that is termed as Technical Debt . The term "technical debt" was coined by Ward Cunningham to describe the obligation that a software organization incurs when it chooses a design or construction approach that's expedient in the short term but that increases complexity and is more costly in the long term. Take for example, earlier there was not a pressing requirement from customers to include Security into the product and as a result, the developers were complacent or intentionally didn’t include Security into the product. But over the years, when Security has become so much an ingrained requirement now the Development teams are paying the debt by include Security features in legacy code.
I have observed the same kind of phenomenon in Software Testing especially while doing the Automation of International Software applications. People design automation framework only considering one main language and do not build in Internationalization in automated scripts. When the product starts supporting various language at the later stage, we end up paying the Technical debt by modifying the Automated scripts to support various languages at much later stage. This is an inefficient practice, which I think will change in the time to come.

Apple-ification of Software Testing:
The first million iPods sold in 4 months. The first million iPads sold in mere 28 days. Apple is everywhere these days and according to many experts primary reason why Apple is seeing a stupendous success is because of its fanatical focus on product Design. Apple has literally redefined product design in more ways than one. More companies are focusing on design as core competency. I do foresee more advancements in the field of Usability testing. Like Security testing was in infancy at the start of last decade, I would say that Usability testing is in infancy at the start of this decade. As the time progresses, I foresee more structure around Usability testing than it is right now and it will soon emerge as a specialized skill. Again, Like Security Testing was earlier, currently as I see, Usability Testing is more a function of design and it will be more a part of testing life cycle soon.

Advancements in measurement of competencies:
Second thing I foresee is more external completion judging skills. There has been lot of competitions that are happening in Software Testing space that help judge core skills and competencies relating to Software Testing. Some examples are Zappers-Live Testing, Test Republic- Testing and Defect Reporting etc. Playing fields are leveled for all the testers. This to a large extent addresses the problems with traditional recognition systems for testers like Bug of the month around the organizations.

Overall, it was a great experience being a part of the Panel facing an intelligent audience.

Key professional lessons from the life and times of James Bach

Continuing steady on my reading expedition, i managed to complete- Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar: How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion Can Lead to a Lifetime of Success quite a while back. Infact I had given a stab at reading it when it was launched and accessible free for a week or so. I liked it then but would admit that i did not comprehend the concept of book completely then. In the hindsight, it was may be due to the way i have perceived academic education all though the life is quite different from the book. But I am glad I read it again, most of the things started making much sense.
In some sense, this book presents autobiographical picture of James Bach. In Software Testing circles, the name James Bach needs no introduction. I don’t intend to use this space to try to speak on his achievements but attempt at something more interesting and meaningful to me that is to attempt and draw a picture of his philosophy towards life and work just on the basis on the excerpts in this book. This is something that i enjoy doing whenever i read any autobiographical natured literature.

Here is my yet another humble attempt at that-

Paperless credentials are more valuable than Paper ones:
We live in a world that is full of Four-letter acronyms for certifications that are supposedly meant to be telling an external world that you are "Expert" at something. Most of the people seem to be caught up in the mad race to get certified. I have no problems with that as long as that meets your purpose.
The problem at core seems to be that the definition of the word "Expert" seems to have been limited to achieving a certain certification and i disagree with this notion.
All along James's life he seems to have relied more on his reputation of work rather than something written on the paper giving proof to his credentials. The paperless
credentials comes directly from the extent of work done and meaningful work at that. It is only true that your reputation reaches your prospective employer much before you do.

As Bach himself says-
Buccaneer leaders gained reputation through the tests they faced in their work, and their portfolio of tangible outcomes.
I do the same thing. By writing articles and teaching classes, I'm able to show my work. I also have a website and a blog. I wrote a book. Most of the work i do for paying clients is confidential but sometimes i have more easygoing employers who let me show off specific documents or programs i've written for them. That's my portfolio.
My portfolio and my performance on tests slowly gain a reputation for me. it's my reputation that brings customers from all over the world. I don't directly control my
reputation. By holding string opinions, I have gained both friends and enemies. On Internet, with blogs, forums and social networking websites, a reputation can be made almost instantly.

Being Courageous :
The conventionalist will find it very hard to appreciate this book. The reason as James outlines is in the form of a truth and that truth is- Society mostly rewards someone who achieves something significant while staying in the realms of the conventional thinking, while behaving conventionally. This is quite true and more so in Indian societies where the extent of achievement is considered in direct proportions to heaviness of the title one hold in the organization. And its an ideal recipe for superficial success and good for the acceptance in the so called societal norms.
Going against the tide is hard and it requires a purpose and a lot of self drive. Given the attempt to go against the tide is for a positive cause, sooner or later it does help find one's reason for existence.

Using Ignorance as a Power:
There's an Excerpt from the book-
Once, i was suffering writer’s block on a technical article about measuring the quality of Software, my brother Jon announced he would use his “Power of Ignorance” to help me write it. At the time, he worked as a dishwasher and had no experience in Software Industry. But by just asking me questions about my article, getting me to teach him the material, he helped me find a new way to explain it, and i quickly finished the piece.

As i have experienced, Ignorance can indeed be a power if used wisely. I have been in situations where my wife (not from Software industry) has helped me crack some tough situations just by asking simple questions that elude you if you think of yourself as more knowledgeable. Isn’t the true test for Software usability is giving a Software to a person who is ignorant of its benefits and checking how fast could he get used to the product and understand its functionalities ?
Testers often also face Tester's block i.e. having worked on one module for a long time they do tend to not ask obvious questions which a fresh person ignorant of module may ask. While preparing for a speech, I always tend to imagine delivering it to most ignorant and more knowledgeable person in the audience. That helps strike a rare balance.
As above examples prove, Ignorance can be bliss.

Handling criticism positively:
There's an Excerpt from the book-
Taking criticism well makes me feel tough. If being a buccaneer means anything, it ought to mean that i can look at scary truth in a face and smile. While I’m listening to someone tell me I ‘m not good enough, remind myself that this process is the way i achieve deep self respect. From that point of view, criticism is a gift. There is a childish part of me that feels wounded by any kind of criticism. But I learned a little trick from one of my mentors, Jerry Weinberg, about how to deal with it. I notice the feeling and say to myself, “Oh, that’s the childish part of me, again, doing what it likes to do. Funny little critter. It will settles down again, soon.”

If you are working with humans, be assured that one of the by-products is criticism. There is no escaping criticism for anyone. I used to often feel in my early days as a professional that some people have the habit of getting on your nerves and criticize you. But over a period of time, have realized how valuable the criticism can be, if you learn to handle it such that it works for you. As Robin Sharma says in one of his books- “Love your Irritations” i.e. Get into habit of loving anything or any person that irritates you, He or that situation is certainly your best teacher.
I have tried James’ way of handling criticism and (though he doesn’t need my acceptance to prove it) it certainly works! The earlier one learns to handle criticism, the better it is.

Expect to learn from Unexpected:
One of the things that i liked from the book and could relate to well was the “Principle of Peripheral Wisdom”. It says that- “most of what we learn is a side effect of something else we are trying to do.”
The learnings mentioned in this post are as a result of Peripheral wisdom i picked up after reading his book.

Helping Competitors succeed:
There's an Excerpt from the book-
I understood how to handle people who were smarter than me: respect them for what they are; help them get what they need. By doing that, I become a part of their story.
Instead of competing with them, I could join them, or learn from them. But even if I competed, my competition could have a new purpose: to enrich my opponent, not just myself. I could treat competition as a special kind of collaboration.

To me this is unconventional thinking at its best. To me this kind of thinking serves best if you are working in a team or working to lead a team. Conventional thinking says that being a leader you should be the one having the maximum knowledge on the area of work. But with the kind of era we live in, where once has access to more information than is ever needed, there are very high chances that you are leading someone who is more smart than you. Infact most of the progressive companies encourages Managers to hire someone who is more smarter than themselves. At core, this is something that can help a company leap and grow many-fold. The very fact that one acknowledges that the other person is more smart, knowledgeable that you are makes the work culture egoless and hence more productive.

Wandering of mind is not bad after all:
This is one of the eye-opening lessons for me from this book. I wrote about this in one of my earlier posts . From my earlier conditioning and experiences, i always perceived Procrastination as a negative trait till i read this book. Procrastination as i now appreciate is a natural human trait and something everyone possesses. James talk about the way in which you can turn it to your advantage. Wandering of mind is usually considered bad in study circles where concentration is treated as something great. Allowing your mind to what it naturally wants to do i.e. wander for few minutes and come back to task at hand will only make you feel better. Infact, I have used "The Procrastinate and Push Heuristic" and also "Plunge in and Quit Heuristic" while creating this post.

Of course, there were many more learnings and a whole new way of looking at the Self Education that one could learn by going through the book but to me the above learnings stand-out.

Are you game for trying out something unconventional ?

Published: Why is Integrity foremost of Software Tester's skills ?

In the month of August 2010, Beyond Testing eMagazine was launched. This magazine is being hailed as India's first Software Testing magazine.

I too contributed to this magazine and my article- Why is Integrity foremost of Software Tester's skills ? got published here. It took a cue from one of my previous blog posts and came up with this piece.

Do go through this and let me know your comments.

As for the magazine, i must say its an honest attempt by the editorial board to launch this. I think the biggest challenge would be to sustain this for a longer time and also make the overall formatting and layout look even better and more professional that what it is currently. One (of many) good things that i found was that it was quite good content-wise and worth a read!

Lessons Learned from Leadership Summit

Last week, on 5th-Aug, i got an invitation to attend Silicon India's Leadership Summit at Bangalore. Overall,it was an amazing event. What else could it be when you have VPs and India Heads of companies like Microsoft, Dell, McAfee, Citrix, Intuit, NetApp, Mindtree, Yahoo, Tejas Networks in front of you for whole day educating you with Leadership as they percieve it, as they have experienced it first hand.
I feel blessed to be a part of this event and would like to share my learnings through this medium.

My learnings from this wonderful event are documented at this location .

Some of my favorite quotes from the Summit:


- If you have not failed, then you are not a leader.

- One of the key things for a leader is to build the consensus.

- Good leaders create vision by inclusion- including all the people involved.

- Best way to develop people is to challenge them.

- There can be 99 reasons why something could not be done. It takes positive thinking to find that 1 elusive reason on why that very thing should be done.

- If you don’t take risk, you are stagnant. And if you are stagnant, you are not going linear but falling back literally.

- A lot of times success and failures in career is because of what opportunity one picks up. Great leaders grab the opportunity when they find it.

- Be genuine and be visible- Don’t be arrogant or boastful but be visible and market yourself and your achievement in a right manner.

- Passion is absolute commitment to something you want to achieve.

- Leaders execute well.

- It is very important for the leaders to lead self before leading others.

- Expect and help your talented people to outgrow. The million dollar question is- Can you work for your subordinate in future ?

- Leaders look for opportunity when things are worse. Leaders need to demand results but also show empathy and look to achieve a bigger cause.


With due respect to all the speakers, i have included my honest comments in the document location above. If you find my dislike for a few sessions, please treat those as my views alone.

Do find time to go through the learnings! Awaiting your thoughts!

Would you ever choose to use "Hand of God" at Work ?

The FIFA world cup frenzy is over. And we are all are now left with memories of the super moments that defined this World cup.
One such moment was during the Ghana vs Uruguay Quarter Final match on 2nd-July. The scene was set when both the teams were tied-up after the designated time. The match went into Extra-time and with just less than couple of minutes left in the Extra-time, the teams still tied at 1-1, Ghana spotted a golden opportunity. Ghana forward beating the defense and then the goalkeeper, who was lying on the ground as a mere spectator to the Kick that was meant to be landing at Uruguay's goal post but destiny had other plans. Just a few inches from the goal post stood Uruguan striker Luis Suarez, who deliberately put his hands to the ball, which otherwise would have landed in the goal post, giving Ghana the victory. The ball reflected and went away. The outcome of this act by Saurez was evident- a Red card and a penalty kick to Ghana. One of the most reliable strikers in Ghana took the penalty and as luck would have it, missed the shot. The rest, as they say, is history- Ghana losing the match on subsequent penalty shootout.
Image Source: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/07/03/article-1291679-0A4DF706000005DC-405_306x423.jpg

Luis Suarez later described his handball act as 2010 version of "Hand of God" drawing parallels with Diego Maradona's original Hand of God . Saurez obviously became a Hero for Uruguay as his act was instrumental in denying Ghana the semi-final spot, which would have made them the first South African country to achieve the honors. Saurez, more obviously was a villain for Ghana, denying them a slice of history.

I am not sure what went into Luis Suarez's mind but would like to make an attempt here. He simply had a split second to decide and act. For him, it was surely a big risk. Look at odds at stake for him-
- What if Ghana would have scored on the subsequent penalty ? Ghana would have won and he would have been villian for rest of the world including Uruguay. Uruguan's would not have appreciated his act had Ghana won.
- What if Ghana missed the subsequent penalty and win in the shootout ? I guess the outcome here would have been same as above. Saurez being a bad guy till the time he is on this planet.
- What if he tried stopping the ball but the ball goes inside his goal post touching his hand ? He would have been termed as a loser for whole life.
- Even if he were to save the ball, the odds of getting the Red card stared at him.Then too he was not sure that his country would win.

All these consequences stared at him but he chose to do what he thought was right for the moment and risking entire career and life ahead of him. But the million dollar question is-

Did Saurez do the right thing in overall scheme of things?

Lets look at why is it that Saurez's act was all fine-
FIFA World cup is a high intensity, high profile tournament. As an estimate, the Finals were watched by close to 750 million people across the globe. Not even the commoners, but the higher up government official including head of states of different countries follow game like ardent fans. The French President Nicolas Sarkozy got so taken aback by his team’s show that he termed his team’s loss in early round as an National issue and has even summoned a probe to discuss his team’s debacle.

With so much at stake, the term “Winning” takes altogether a new dimension. When each win is influential enough to lift the mood of entire nation and each loss is treated as bad as losing a war, “Win at any cost” seems to be the motto of many teams. Considering this, what Saurez did was just right because, the goal at just 2 minutes from the finish time would have virtually eliminated his team but his “Hand of God” act would atleast give his team an outside chance to reach the coveted semifinal position. Afterall, he was letting his country gain at the cost of him being called a scapegoat.

Didnt Holland try every trick in the bag during the final that earned them two figure Yellow cards ? Didnt they consider country above anything else ?
What Saurez did can be described as a selfless act. He didn’t care about his reputation, put country before self. He thought of a bigger cause- his country. His act was patriotic.

He may be treated as a patriot. His act was selfless, without caring about himself, he thought of a bigger cause- his country.
His act can be more thought of as an instinctive, split second reaction and he did what he thought was best for the moment and his country did eventually gain.

One more thing is that he did not escape the punishment nor did he try to question that. He got the red card, one match suspension. And as per rules, Ghana was offered a Penalty which they eventually missed. What was Saurez’s fault if Ghana did not make use of given opportunity ?

Now, Some insights into why his act was a bad act ?
“Hand of God” of Maradona and “Hand of God” of Saurez were quite different. Infact, Maradona’s act was more of a disguise when referee didnt spot that ball hit Maradona’s fist and landed into goal. Saurez's was an open violation of football laws. There was certain mystery surrounding Maradona’s act but in essence “Hand of God” is unethical. Just because no one saw, doesnt mean your act was all fine. Infact, at the surface it was a cheating act which the guy who did knew but no one else in the world had an inkling about. But just by labeling it as “Hand of God” turned it into more dignified act, and got the respect which it didn’t deserve. Saurez just tried to leverage the aura around “Hand of God” to find excuse and get respect for his terrible show of hand.

One more thing is that Red card is no doubt a blot on any footballer’s resume. The worst punishment that can be offered to a footballer. There is nothing actually to be celebrated for a red card. Even thought his country reached semis on this act, they eventually lost. In proves that Sports is actually a great leveler.

People from Uruguay may term Saurez’s act as patriotic but can he be called as “Role model” outside his country ? It is highly doubtful. It is infact every sportsperson dream to be a source of inspiration for the younger ones. Saurez, unfortunately has lost this opportunity by choosing to do something unsportsmanlike.

If such an act can be termed as good, should this be included as a part of football coaching instructions ? Should more teams be using hands more often in “foot”ball. Can anyone who uses hand in football use the term “Hand of God” to make his act more dignified ?
Does it not have parallels with Trevor Chappel’s underarm incident in Cricket ? Trevor exploited the loopholes in rule and Australia won but he lost the credibility. The Cricket rules were later changed to disallow underarm bowling.

"Hand of God" at work. Are you for it ?:
The term “Hand of God” can be treated as a metaphor for an act that helps a bigger cause i.e. helps achieve success in a meaningful venture but by using seemingly less fair means and eventually controversial means. We live in a fiercely competitive era. Organizations need a unwavering focus in sustain profits in today’s era. Ever increasing profit lines seems to be the mantra of organizations. After all the respect comes only after organizations has been successful. In such an environment, if an employees are often faced with situations when they have to choose between what is right as against something that not all that wrong but will fetch organizations much needed profits. But the bigger question is- Is it ok to make profits by compromising Integrity ? Did Saurez’s act compromise his Integrity ?

In his book, The Professional Subroto Bagchi talks about what Integrity means in the professional context-
- We follow the rules.
- Where rules do not exist, we use fair judgment.
- When in doubt, we do not go ahead and do what suits us; we seek counsel.
- Finally, faced with a dilemma, we as ourselves:
Can my act stand public scrutiny without causing embarrassment to me and my family ?

Often, the situations we are faced with are not very straight-forward. There is always a very thin line between an Ethical and Unethical behavior. But when the stakes are high, your integrity is put to real test. The best definition of Ethical behavior that i know of is- "Doing the right thing when no one's watching you ?"

For example, if you are a person who is involved in testing a product and know of a big loop hole that might impact the customer in a long run but the defect is such that it is not visible on the surface and would not impact the Acceptance test. I have talked about one such case in my earlier posts here . Would you go ahead and raise your voice and present all the possible facts ? or Would you remain silent and let the product go as no one is going to be finding about your defect anyway anytime sooner.i.e. Would you use your “Hand of God” and keep quiet and thereby helping the organization “succeed” in a short term atleast.

Such situations are tough, but i think standing by truth and being ethical is not the easiest thing to do. If it really were, the world would not have witnessed the Satyam saga and it would still have been one of most respected organizations. But the reality is not always sunny and rosy.

Are you for using “Hand of God” at work ?

Wanted Software Testing Evangelists- Are you game ?

I was recently reading one of blog post of Parimala Shankaraiah . Sharing some thoughts regarding one of the points she raised-

I interviewed one person on telephone recently where I asked him to test a marker he claimed to have in his hand. He was shocked, “What? Test a marker?” He intended to say “Do you mean I’ll be testing markers in your organization?”

In my opinion, this reflects a larger problem we are faced with. Something that backtracks to the level of Software testing education in colleges. None of the colleges that i have visited seems to have deep or should i say any insights in Software testing as a profession. There is a disappointing narrow-mindedness that i have seen. The college staff who supervise the projects, do not encourage the students to take the testing projects. This happened in one of the colleges that i recently visited and also have observed this in past many times.
The reason i am mentioning my experience here is that even before the future Software engineers join the Industry the seeds of Job profiling or creating distinction are sown in their minds. And as a natural progression, it gets carried forward when these people join the Industry. Even though, such people will join Software testing as a field but will think "Automation" as a superior job than testing using mind. The basic premise that "If you are not coding, you are not being productive" is actually ingrained in the minds while they are still studying.

Gartner report of 2008 suggested Software Testing as a 14 billion dollar industry, which is only going to be moving in upward direction considering the advent of recent technologies including Cloud, Virtualization, mobile devices etc. coming up in a big way. What bigger proof do the institutions need about the viability and future of this profession. Have tried spreading the message of Software testing as a viable career choice with some success in colleges that I visited but I think the problem to solve here is changing the mind-set of people which is not possible entirely in one meaningful presentation.

We probably need more Software Testing Evangelists so that we get more new talent who join the profession by "choice" rather than by "chance".

Do share across your thoughts on how to solve this in a longer run.

Update on 14th-July-2010

If you were like me, you would too have this question that i asked my friend some time back. How do one become an Evangelist ?

I find the below exceprt from The Greatness Guide: Powerful Secrets for Getting to World Class by Rohin Sharma quite close to answering this question-

Being an "evangelist" has negative connotations in the world we reside in. But an evangelist, by definition, is simply someone who spreads good news. Its someone who get stuck on a big idea or a passionate cause and then walks out into his day and spreads the message like a virus. Its someone who gets so engaged in doing something important that its all he thinks about, dreams about, talks about. Its a human being who understands- at a cellular level- what Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. meant when he said:
"If you have not discovered something you are willing to die for, then you are not fit to live."

So, now what do you think about becoming Software Testing Evangelist ?

Presented at SoftTec 2010 Testing conference

I got to present at the SoftTec 2010 Testing conference this weekend (on 3rd-July-2010). The conference details are available here .

It was after quite a while that i presented on a public forum and realized that i should be doing it more often.
This conference was different from the other Software Testing conferences (QAI, STeP-In Forum) that i attended in the past. Some of the key things were-
- Test Professional track and Test Leadership tracks were different and the presentations ran parallely.
- The conference was attended by around 700 Software Testing professionals right from Interns to CEOs, the audience consisted of one and all. Infact, this is the largest gathering of Software Test Enthusiasts that i have seen so far.

Coming to the topic i presented, it had to be something i eat, sleep and live (as i had only 2 days to prepare) and it was- Globalization Testing- Getting your Software World Ready .
I have posted the presentation here

I think I was able to complete the presentation just-in-time in the allocated time and credit to audience for creating meaningful conversations by asking some challenging questions.

Some Questions that got asked in Q/A session:
- How many languages have you been involved in testing as a part of Globalization testing ?
- I have heard that Sanskrit is the best language for Software Globalization. Are you aware of any Indian organization who are involved in researching about Sanskrit Localization ?
- What considerations we need to be putting towards Database side when we are talking about multilingual applications ?
- I am working to test application mostly in around 10 Indian languages. I am under pressure to devise Test strategy in such a way that i dont spend too much testing effort. How do i do it ?
- Can you tell something about Automation Strategy to be used for multilingual applications ?
- If i am involved in testing multiple languages, Do i test everything (as i do for Enhlish language) in all the languages ?
- If i am testing say login of the application say Japanese application, one Japanese character may occupy more space than English character- how do i plan for such a test ?
- I am involved in testing an application and sometimes i am required to copy labels so that i can check the meaning using some Online translator. Can this be done ?

I think this covers all the questions that i could recollect. I will be taking answers to some of these questions (some are already explictely covered in my previous posts) in the upcoming blog posts.

Overall, it was a hugely satisfying experience.

Update on 16th-Oct-2010:
TheSmartTechie magazine in their Aug 2010 edition ran an article on this conference. It had some comments for my presentation as well. Read below-