Stumbled across the Cartoon Tester blog the other day. This guy does some pretty amusing cartoons that are exceedingly topical for software testing.
He wrote this little book/pdf for understanding the plight of the tester career and it's pretty bang on.
you can take a look at it from here:
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Monday, December 31, 2012
Customer Service is listening and empowerment
So this past weekend I was out at a local business buying some stuff. The local business is a national chain that sells hardware, housewares and etc. They have a parking lot that is managed by a 3rd party. I don't really know the ownership of the building and etc and i don't really care, what i do know is that the parking lot is managed by someone else entirely from the business i was going to visit.
So i'm arrived, i park and go to the parking metre to pay for my parking. the first metre accepts my money happily and does nothing. now, as an unlikely coincidence the parking metres were made by my company and i know what my putting money in, without the commensurate dropping sound and no screen updates means. The machine has entered into a jammed state and roughly about $30 of change is going to plug up the chute until no more change can be added. The only solution is for someone with a key to come out and clear the chute. I grumble a bit about my lost $2.25, step two steps to the right, plug the other metre and everything is fine.
Now at this point i could call the parking operator, let them know about my lost money and suggest that they have someone from maintenance come out to fix the unit. But i don't care enough about my money to call and the likelyhood of someone coming out to fix the unit at 6pm on a holiday season saturday are pretty slim.
Instead i head into the store and find someone who works there. I let them know that the metre outside is jammed, that i understand that it belongs to another company and i don't expect anything from her. She gruffly tells me that they've called customer service and it will be taken care of in due course. I say that's great and i'm glad it's being taken care of but maybe she might consider putting a sign up on the metre saying that the machine is out of order. Another gruff response about it not being theirs and customer service has called them. I mention that it is currently putting her customers in a place where they are losing their money and maybe a sign would be a good idea. Her response was that it wasn't their machine and she couldn't do anything about it.
So...there's a couple of things here. One, i was trying to be helpful, polite and understanding and her attitude back was really grating to me. I get that. it's holiday season, maybe she was tired and cranky. Although, 2 weeks before the same person's attitude had also been gruff and annoying to me. So just in general, dealing with people in a bad mood in customer service is not a good experience for the customer.
But the second is a problem of empowerment. I understand that the lot isn't controlled by the store but the building is plastered with the retail stores signs, the parking lot is plastered with the retail store signage and the metres are 10 feet from the door to the only store you can access directly from that lot. Most customers are making a connection between the store and the parking lot. The parking lot just stole a customer's money. Whether or not the customer is going to get their money back is one thing, and i realize that most customers are going to want that but even beyond that, knowing that the problem that has impacted their day isn't going to get fixed soon, that's a larger problem. That retail store employee hadn't even been empowered to put a sign on the device saying out of order.
have you ever used a pop machine at a big store? most of those are operated by a 3rd party. when it's out of order, do you as a customer accept that it's ok for you to just lose your money? no, because the affiliation becomes part of identity for you. The customer service experience here would have been significantly better if the employee had simply been empowered to put a sign on the metre. Failing that, escalating the situation should have been able to find someone in the retail management who could put a sign on the machine. Hell, the experience would have been better if she's simply said, ' i will see what i can do about it sir.'
What did i do in the end, well i went about my shopping. We told a couple of people not to use that machine on the way in, and a couple more about the machine on the way back out. Then we got to our car, dumped one of the bags of purchases out in the trunk and went back and put the plastic bag over the head of the metre. I, as an individual am empowered to help my fellow man even if the employees of the retail store aren't.
So i'm arrived, i park and go to the parking metre to pay for my parking. the first metre accepts my money happily and does nothing. now, as an unlikely coincidence the parking metres were made by my company and i know what my putting money in, without the commensurate dropping sound and no screen updates means. The machine has entered into a jammed state and roughly about $30 of change is going to plug up the chute until no more change can be added. The only solution is for someone with a key to come out and clear the chute. I grumble a bit about my lost $2.25, step two steps to the right, plug the other metre and everything is fine.
Now at this point i could call the parking operator, let them know about my lost money and suggest that they have someone from maintenance come out to fix the unit. But i don't care enough about my money to call and the likelyhood of someone coming out to fix the unit at 6pm on a holiday season saturday are pretty slim.
Instead i head into the store and find someone who works there. I let them know that the metre outside is jammed, that i understand that it belongs to another company and i don't expect anything from her. She gruffly tells me that they've called customer service and it will be taken care of in due course. I say that's great and i'm glad it's being taken care of but maybe she might consider putting a sign up on the metre saying that the machine is out of order. Another gruff response about it not being theirs and customer service has called them. I mention that it is currently putting her customers in a place where they are losing their money and maybe a sign would be a good idea. Her response was that it wasn't their machine and she couldn't do anything about it.
So...there's a couple of things here. One, i was trying to be helpful, polite and understanding and her attitude back was really grating to me. I get that. it's holiday season, maybe she was tired and cranky. Although, 2 weeks before the same person's attitude had also been gruff and annoying to me. So just in general, dealing with people in a bad mood in customer service is not a good experience for the customer.
But the second is a problem of empowerment. I understand that the lot isn't controlled by the store but the building is plastered with the retail stores signs, the parking lot is plastered with the retail store signage and the metres are 10 feet from the door to the only store you can access directly from that lot. Most customers are making a connection between the store and the parking lot. The parking lot just stole a customer's money. Whether or not the customer is going to get their money back is one thing, and i realize that most customers are going to want that but even beyond that, knowing that the problem that has impacted their day isn't going to get fixed soon, that's a larger problem. That retail store employee hadn't even been empowered to put a sign on the device saying out of order.
have you ever used a pop machine at a big store? most of those are operated by a 3rd party. when it's out of order, do you as a customer accept that it's ok for you to just lose your money? no, because the affiliation becomes part of identity for you. The customer service experience here would have been significantly better if the employee had simply been empowered to put a sign on the metre. Failing that, escalating the situation should have been able to find someone in the retail management who could put a sign on the machine. Hell, the experience would have been better if she's simply said, ' i will see what i can do about it sir.'
What did i do in the end, well i went about my shopping. We told a couple of people not to use that machine on the way in, and a couple more about the machine on the way back out. Then we got to our car, dumped one of the bags of purchases out in the trunk and went back and put the plastic bag over the head of the metre. I, as an individual am empowered to help my fellow man even if the employees of the retail store aren't.
Monday, December 24, 2012
most advice is bad advice...
so a buddy posted a link to a blog i don't normally read because he liked the entry. the entry is about how most advice given is bad advice. it's a pretty short read, succinct and to the point. in general advice is crap and you should discard it or sometimes advice is good and you should follow it. kinda obvious when i distil it down to that level. but the blog post did accomplish the most important thing about blog posts, in my opinion, it made me think. (i hope mine does the same for my readers on occasion)
So here's my two cents on the matter (i do miss the cents key on computer keyboards). You should never wholesale ignore any advice given. nor should you wholesale follow any. I believe you should treat advice much the same way as one should treat a tarot card reading or your horoscope.
OK, that's a little hard to accept given what most of us do with such blather. Rather, you should take from it the same benefit that such 'readings' give to people who listen. As with any good psychic reading, what should happen is the readee (is that a term?) should listen to the generalizations and begin to talk through ways that they relate to their own life. As they go through this process of relating they hopefully make a breakthrough or revelation about their problem. Either they understand it better, see it from a completely different angle or just get a handle on it that they couldn't previously attain. In theory, this then helps them deal with the issue. Now because most humans are incapable of growth on demand and because 'readings' aren't the best way to attain higher levels of existence and people listening to readings aren't the most likely to move forward in such a manner...well you get my point.
However, the process is fascinating none-the-less. The reason that readings are so successful is that they trick you into thinking that the revelations that you've made yourself were initiated by the 'spirits' or whatever. Watching people go through this process is amazing. It takes something that you could talk yourself blue in the face in trying to get them to see to little or no effect and instead leads them into finding it on their own. It's as if they have invented science their discovery feels so brilliant.
This, my friends, is how you should treat advice. Don't automatically discount it, don't throw it away out of hand, listen to it. Think about it. Find a way for it to relate to your own situation so you can understand that situation better. That other person doesn't really understand you or what you're dealing with but what they do have is an alternate view if what you're into and an varied life experience from yourself. It doesn't matter that their advice is most likely wrong, what it is is a kick-off point to your finding a new way of realizing your own situation.
All that said, it's really hard not to simply ignore people's advice, no matter how well intentioned.
So here's my two cents on the matter (i do miss the cents key on computer keyboards). You should never wholesale ignore any advice given. nor should you wholesale follow any. I believe you should treat advice much the same way as one should treat a tarot card reading or your horoscope.
OK, that's a little hard to accept given what most of us do with such blather. Rather, you should take from it the same benefit that such 'readings' give to people who listen. As with any good psychic reading, what should happen is the readee (is that a term?) should listen to the generalizations and begin to talk through ways that they relate to their own life. As they go through this process of relating they hopefully make a breakthrough or revelation about their problem. Either they understand it better, see it from a completely different angle or just get a handle on it that they couldn't previously attain. In theory, this then helps them deal with the issue. Now because most humans are incapable of growth on demand and because 'readings' aren't the best way to attain higher levels of existence and people listening to readings aren't the most likely to move forward in such a manner...well you get my point.
However, the process is fascinating none-the-less. The reason that readings are so successful is that they trick you into thinking that the revelations that you've made yourself were initiated by the 'spirits' or whatever. Watching people go through this process is amazing. It takes something that you could talk yourself blue in the face in trying to get them to see to little or no effect and instead leads them into finding it on their own. It's as if they have invented science their discovery feels so brilliant.
This, my friends, is how you should treat advice. Don't automatically discount it, don't throw it away out of hand, listen to it. Think about it. Find a way for it to relate to your own situation so you can understand that situation better. That other person doesn't really understand you or what you're dealing with but what they do have is an alternate view if what you're into and an varied life experience from yourself. It doesn't matter that their advice is most likely wrong, what it is is a kick-off point to your finding a new way of realizing your own situation.
All that said, it's really hard not to simply ignore people's advice, no matter how well intentioned.
Monday, December 10, 2012
power of innovation
A friend posted an interesting article about how to stay relevant within your own career. It was an interesting article that got me to thinking about it from a different angle. I've added me thoughts to that article.
Take a read if you like - http://barbarianprogrammer.blogspot.ca/
Take a read if you like - http://barbarianprogrammer.blogspot.ca/
Friday, November 30, 2012
scrum fun 3
So as mentioned in prior entries on my Friday scrum I like
to play little games or put challenges to the team to determine the order that
we’re going to go proceed through the scrum.
I’m particularly proud of the way that this one came off.
So on Wed’s scrum I told the guys that I was going to give
them a hint towards the Friday challenge.
It was a simple hint, ‘Get to know each other.’ Man did that ever fuel their creative juices.
They grilled the heck out of me for further information but I was stalwart in
my information scroogery. At Thursday’s
scrum they asked me pretty please for another hint. So I gave them an even more dastardly hint, ‘Remember
what you’ve learned.’
On Thursday I received a questionnaire from a team member about
hobbies and favourite colour and stuff like that. I answered the questions and sent them out to
the entire team. And I found out on
Friday that across Wed and Thurs the team spent a bunch of emails passing
information about each other around.
Even if I ended up sick on Friday and the challenge had never happened,
this would still have been great team building.
The team worked together to attempt to beat the challenge and help each
other succeed at the same time as building stronger connections with each
other.
So we come to the scrum this morning. One of the team members asks me before we go
in if they are allowed to bring in notes. My response to that was essentially the same
as the one I had to the team member holding a sheet of paper when I got in
there and took it away from him.
The challenge had two parts. The first part was that each
person around the circle was given 2 seconds to say out to the team the first
names of their siblings and/or children.
I stressed that even though they had to be fast that they should be
clear in their statements or their team members would have trouble with the
next phase. If they took longer than 2
seconds they would not be considered for the prize at the end of the
challenge. I included this simply
because a common theme in our challenges is building up their capabilities to think
and respond quickly. In addition we only
have 15 mins for our scrum and the challenges make it quite, um, challenging to
get out on time.
For the prize, which I only told them was something small,
it was just an entry coupon in the charity draw that we’re working this
season. Each coupon was only .25 cents
so it really was a small prize.
We got through the naming sections pretty well, although
some could have been faster and I laid out the proper challenge for them.
Each person, on their turn has to first pick another member
of the team who had not gone and choose a name from their prior list that had
not yet been used in the challenge. That
person would go next. Then they had to
name one name for each other team member that had already gone. These secondary names could be repeats of
prior usage (ie it could be the name was used to pick the last guy). No one could use their own names. You
may not ask anyone for any further information once the challenge commences –
which while I love that my team really likes to try and help each other succeed
with their challenges, isn’t
Usually at my scrums I go last. This doesn’t always hold on challenge day and
in fact today I went first. Specifically
because two of my team members are brothers and I wanted to take that selection
out of the equation. I chose one brother
and used his brother’s name as my name choice.
It proceeded. Not everyone
succeeded but they had fun trying (I think) and the best part was by the time
we got to 4 or 5, people were reciting the other names pretty quickly and
getting them right. The hardest go was
the last guy, who had to pick one of my sibling’s names. And unfortunately one had already been used
so he had to pick the only one left. He
didn’t make it.
There were complaints that siblings and children’s names
wasn’t one of the things that they studied but there’s a lesson in that about
assumptions being made as well.
To Paraphrase, ‘the challenges will continue, as evil or
greater, until morale improves.’
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Resolution Testing
A while ago when I started a new job I first encountered the rampant use of the term 'regressing bugs,' or 'bug regression,' or any number of other variants. This phrase, as you can probably guess, relates to the notion of verifying the resolution of a bug by development. At my current place people have been saying 'verifying bugs,' or something similar to that.
The use of both of these phrases is a bit of a pet peeve for me, because they are inexact and the words don't actually mean what you want them to. Regression Testing, of course, is the action of proving that the application works the same as it always did when you make changes in other areas that should not have impacted the area that you're regressing. Bugs, shouldn't work they way they do, so you can't regress that they still work that way. And if you're going to verify a bug, to me that means you're going to take the repro steps and make sure that the bug still exists, or that they actually produce the error state.
OK, fine, i'm a self-professed nitpicker. Honestly, I thought you'd have figured that out about myself by now.
But I don't believe that a problem is worth harping about unless you're willing to help progress the solution. My team and I, a few years ago, decided that there could be a term for this. We discussed some options and came up with the term, 'Resolution Testing.' It seemed to be perfect. Simple, easy to understand what it means from the words and doesn't seem to mean anything else yet. So we started using it.
Then we took it a step forward. In investigating the testing terms out there that people were using we had a rather vigorous and amusing conversation about the different forms of primate testing that there are. ie Monkey Testing and Gorilla Testing. So when we did come up with the nice formal term for it, it was also unanimously voted that there should be a primate term as well. All of a sudden my team wasn't even doing Resolution Testing anymore, it was Babooning. Hey, anything that can make the boring parts of work more enjoyable is good, right?
So there you have it. When you have to verify the solution to a bug or issue, you're doing resolution testing, or if you like, you're babooning.
Back when i decided this was the term to use, i created a wikipedia article for it but it only lasted 2 days before they took it out for lack of sources. Well, this article is a step towards creating the next attempted wikipedia page. Feel free to spread the usage of the term, maybe write an article of your own and there we'll have it...a new term used by one and all. (why do i want to put a maniacal laugh after this statement?)
Since that time, Resolution Testing, has been used a bit for testing the resolution of our monitor and etc, but i am choosing to ignore this fact.
The use of both of these phrases is a bit of a pet peeve for me, because they are inexact and the words don't actually mean what you want them to. Regression Testing, of course, is the action of proving that the application works the same as it always did when you make changes in other areas that should not have impacted the area that you're regressing. Bugs, shouldn't work they way they do, so you can't regress that they still work that way. And if you're going to verify a bug, to me that means you're going to take the repro steps and make sure that the bug still exists, or that they actually produce the error state.
OK, fine, i'm a self-professed nitpicker. Honestly, I thought you'd have figured that out about myself by now.
But I don't believe that a problem is worth harping about unless you're willing to help progress the solution. My team and I, a few years ago, decided that there could be a term for this. We discussed some options and came up with the term, 'Resolution Testing.' It seemed to be perfect. Simple, easy to understand what it means from the words and doesn't seem to mean anything else yet. So we started using it.
Then we took it a step forward. In investigating the testing terms out there that people were using we had a rather vigorous and amusing conversation about the different forms of primate testing that there are. ie Monkey Testing and Gorilla Testing. So when we did come up with the nice formal term for it, it was also unanimously voted that there should be a primate term as well. All of a sudden my team wasn't even doing Resolution Testing anymore, it was Babooning. Hey, anything that can make the boring parts of work more enjoyable is good, right?
So there you have it. When you have to verify the solution to a bug or issue, you're doing resolution testing, or if you like, you're babooning.
Back when i decided this was the term to use, i created a wikipedia article for it but it only lasted 2 days before they took it out for lack of sources. Well, this article is a step towards creating the next attempted wikipedia page. Feel free to spread the usage of the term, maybe write an article of your own and there we'll have it...a new term used by one and all. (why do i want to put a maniacal laugh after this statement?)
Since that time, Resolution Testing, has been used a bit for testing the resolution of our monitor and etc, but i am choosing to ignore this fact.
Monday, October 29, 2012
scrum fun 2
As i've mentioned in prior posts, i like to shake things up a little bit in our daily scrum on fridays.
This past Friday i gave my newest employee the helm with the following request:
"In descending order the number of colours a person is wearing in their clothing. Shades do not count, if it's blue, it's just blue. You may ask each person two questions. For the purposes of this task shoes count as clothing but accessories do not. Underwear is in scope."
So the person i gave the task to looked around at what people were wearing and picked someone and proceeded to not ask them anything. Slightly uncharacteristically for this type of task i helped out a bit and said, 'you know, a question you might ask is, "how many colours are you wearing?"' The person took my lead and answered, indicating 7 colours. So we go their update and then the leader went on to pick another person, not ask how many colours they were wearing and directed them to start. At this point i injected the rule that each person had to announce their colour count upon being chosen and then give their scrum update. This next person was wearing 4 colours.
That ended up being the fewest colours i think. but they were all over the board between 4 and a second 7. It was fun for the team, they bonded and worked together in getting the answers out.
In the end though i got to do something that i haven't really done in the past during one of these scrum exercises. I was able to say, 'this scrum has a lesson right in it for you. The results that you've seen here (nowhere near descending) are precisely what you get when you don't gather your requirements and information before you start developing." This got immediate and vocal feedback because as QA's, it related to their experience with code they've been shipped time-and-time again across their careers. As always the best lesson is the lesson lived and learned.
As an end note, i wish that i could say that i went into this knowing that we were going to learn this lesson. Really i wasn't. I was simply forwarding my quest to get my team to think out of the box, think quickly, respond to changing circumstances intelligently but with resolve and decisiveness, to team build a little and best of all, have a little fun. In fact, i can't even claim that this scrum request was my own. i wasn't feeling so creative so 10 minutes before the scrum i emailed my wife and said, 'this is your one opportunity to guide my scrum today. you have 9 minutes to provide an idea for determining scrum order,' and she came back with this one.
I will take credit for spotting the message however.
This past Friday i gave my newest employee the helm with the following request:
"In descending order the number of colours a person is wearing in their clothing. Shades do not count, if it's blue, it's just blue. You may ask each person two questions. For the purposes of this task shoes count as clothing but accessories do not. Underwear is in scope."
So the person i gave the task to looked around at what people were wearing and picked someone and proceeded to not ask them anything. Slightly uncharacteristically for this type of task i helped out a bit and said, 'you know, a question you might ask is, "how many colours are you wearing?"' The person took my lead and answered, indicating 7 colours. So we go their update and then the leader went on to pick another person, not ask how many colours they were wearing and directed them to start. At this point i injected the rule that each person had to announce their colour count upon being chosen and then give their scrum update. This next person was wearing 4 colours.
That ended up being the fewest colours i think. but they were all over the board between 4 and a second 7. It was fun for the team, they bonded and worked together in getting the answers out.
In the end though i got to do something that i haven't really done in the past during one of these scrum exercises. I was able to say, 'this scrum has a lesson right in it for you. The results that you've seen here (nowhere near descending) are precisely what you get when you don't gather your requirements and information before you start developing." This got immediate and vocal feedback because as QA's, it related to their experience with code they've been shipped time-and-time again across their careers. As always the best lesson is the lesson lived and learned.
As an end note, i wish that i could say that i went into this knowing that we were going to learn this lesson. Really i wasn't. I was simply forwarding my quest to get my team to think out of the box, think quickly, respond to changing circumstances intelligently but with resolve and decisiveness, to team build a little and best of all, have a little fun. In fact, i can't even claim that this scrum request was my own. i wasn't feeling so creative so 10 minutes before the scrum i emailed my wife and said, 'this is your one opportunity to guide my scrum today. you have 9 minutes to provide an idea for determining scrum order,' and she came back with this one.
I will take credit for spotting the message however.
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