• What the Testing We Do Looks Like?

  Back in the days before releasing frequently was a thing, testing looked very different. The main difference was that we thought of automation as something that was replacing attended testing, whereas we now see it more as a way of introducing scale of unattended testing we could never have done attended.The stuff we attend to changed as the world around us shifted. We still do "testing" with just as many hours, but the work is split on working heavily on unit tests, test automation and other quality practices.I try to explain the change I see with a metaphor: pool is not a bigger bathtub. Both these are containers of water (just like software development is just making and delivering code changes), but what you can do in a pool is very different than what you can do in a bathtub. Imagine a bath guard - kind of hilarious. Or a bath party - very eccentric. We create new things we can do with just a bigger container of water, and bringing down the release cycle does something very similar to the ways we work. The whole conceptual model of what makes sense changes.In efforts to describe what seems to make sense right now, I work on finding words to describe what testing I do looks like to me. It is not a tool for sense making the whole world of all testing, and I don't need a tool for that - I don't work in the whole world, I don't[…]

  11.11.2019 | 12:36 קרא עוד...

• Your REAL Job

  Your REAL Job Students of Ackoff and Deming will be aware of Deming’s First Theorem: “Nobody gives a hoot about profit.” W. E. Deming This reminds us that senior executives are demonstrably less interested in the welfare of the organisations they serve than in their own well being. “Executives’ actions make sense [only] if you look at them as taken in order to maximise the executive’s well being.” ~ Russell L. Ackoff Of course, it can be career-limiting to bring this issue to general attention. As the well-known psychiatrist R D Laing said: “They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.” ~ R. D. Laing And yet, if we look at the implications for “doing a good job” – a preoccupation of many in employment, we can draw the following conclusion: We’re doing a good job when we’re maximising our executives’ (our bosses’) well being. We’re not doing a good job when we ignore that in favour of focussing on e.g. making the company successful or profitable. This probably rings true with you if you but think about it, in your own context, for a few moments. This underscores a hidden reality for many: our declared job is a FAUX job. Our REAL job is undeclared, unexamined, unspecified – and being good at THAT is[…]

  11.11.2019 | 6:14 קרא עוד...

• So you want to Automate? Part III – let’s talk learning

  This is 3rd part in a series of articles dedicated to people wanting to start their adventure with automation. This time we will discuss learning. You can read previous parts here and here. Compared to previous articles, I won’t won’t start with myths. Yes, We will discuss some on the way, but this is the only part where I am not only ranting, but I am offering some solutions. Similarly, this article is not how to start the guide. It should be treated more in the style of tips and tricks. Disclaimer: I am both leading paid and free workshops teaching people how to code and automate. And from time to time, I sell my services as a mentor. This makes me both qualified to write on this matter but unfortunately makes me also aside. I am not here to sell my services. I am doing it from a sincere desire to help. That is why you won’t find in this article any link to my services. Let’s talk some basics of learning. At this point, I hope you realise it is no piece of cake. Road to IT complicated. I will give you a few numbers: I have studied computer science. During my time at university, I have spent more than 2000 hours per year writing code or learning about it. Both in sessions labs and at home. It was roughly 8k hours over five years. And yet I wasn’t competent enough to find work as a developer! Granted,[…]

  11.11.2019 | 2:43 קרא עוד...

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