Making Fünf Myself

The first post on Hiccupps was published five years ago this week. It's called Sign Language and, reading it back now, although I might not write it the same way today, I'm not especially unhappy with it. The closing sentence still feels like a useful heuristic, even if I didn't present it that way at the time:

Your audience is not just the target audience, it's anyone who sees what it is you've done and forms an opinion of you because of it.

I've looked back over the blog on most of its anniversaries, and each time found different value:

I Done the Ton: After two years I compared my progress to my initial goals and reflected on how I'd become a tester and test manager
It's the Thought That Counts: After three years I began to realise that the act of blogging was an end in itself, not just a means to an end
My Two Cents: After four years, the value of time series data about myself and the evolution (or lack of evolution) of my thoughts and positions became clearer

And so what have I observed after five years? Well, by taking the time series data to Excel (see the image at the top), I find that this has been a bumper year in terms of the number of posts I've produced.

I think it's significant that a year ago I attended and spoke at EuroSTAR in Maastricht and came back bursting with ideas. In November 2015 I wrote eight posts, the largest number in any month since November 2011. This year I've achieved that number three times and reached seven posts in a further three months.

But I don't confuse quantity with quality ... very often.

In fact, if I look back over this year's posts I see material that I am ridiculously proud of:

Joking With Jerry: Jerry Weinberg - yes, that Jerry Weinberg - asked me to organise a discussion on something that I'd written that he enjoyed. I think Jerry is the person I have been most influenced by as a tester and a manager and it's no exaggeration to say that, while nerve-wracking, it was a labour of love from start to end.
Bug-Free Software? Go For It!: An essay I wrote in preparation for CEWT #2 which, I think, shows a biggering in my capacity to think bigger, and which I like because it reminds me that the Cambridge Exploratory Workshop on Testing is a thing. I set it up. It works. Other people are getting value from it. And we're doing another one in a couple of weeks.
Toujours Testing: This one simply because it is a kind of personal manifesto.
What is What is Professional Testing?: An essay I wrote in preparation for MEWT #5 which, I think, reflects the move I've been making over the years to perform what I might call exploratory retrospection. By this I mean that I will try to test my testing while it is ongoing rather than waiting until afterwards - although, of course, I reserve the right to do that too. What I like about this is that I can and do use the same kinds of tools in both cases.
Tools: Take Your Pick: It's got ideas and tools up the wazoo. From the seed of a thought I had while cleaning the bathroom through the thicket of ideas that came pouring out once I started to scratch away at it. From the practical to the theoretical and back. I found it challenging to arrange the ideas in my head but immensely satisfying to write.

I'll stop at five, for no other reason than this post is for the fifth birthday. I wouldn't be so crass as to say they're presents for you. But when they pop out, completed, they do sometimes feel like presents for me.

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Testing (AI) is Testing

Last November I gave a talk, Random Exploration of a Chatbot API , at the BCS Testing, Diversity, AI Conference . It was a nice surprise afterwards to be offered a book from their catalogue and I chose Artificial Intelligence and Software Testing by Rex Black, James Davenport, Joanna Olszewska, Jeremias Rößler, Adam Leon Smith, and Jonathon Wright. This week, on a couple of train journeys around East Anglia, I read it and made sketchnotes. As someone not deeply into this field, but who has been experimenting with AI as a testing tool at work, I found the landscape view provided by the book interesting, particularly the lists: of challenges in testing AI, of approaches to testing AI, and of quality aspects to consider when evaluating AI. Despite the hype around the area right now there's much that any competent tester will be familiar with, and skills that translate directly. Where there's likely to be novelty is in the technology, and the technical domain, and the effect of

Can Code, Can't Code, Is Useful

The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter , LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me? --00-- "If testers can’t code, they’re of no use to us" My first reaction is to wonder what you expect from your testers. I am immediately interested in your working context and the way

Testers are Gate-Crashers

The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter , LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me? --00-- "Testers are the gatekeepers of quality" Instinctively I don't like the sound of that, but I wonder what you mean by it. Perhaps one or more of these? Testers set the quality sta

Am I Wrong?

I happened across Exploratory Testing: Why Is It Not Ideal for Agile Projects? by Vitaly Prus this week and I was triggered. But why? I took a few minutes to think that through. Partly, I guess, I feel directly challenged. I work on an agile project (by the definition in the article) and I would say that I use exclusively exploratory testing. Naturally, I like to think I'm doing a good job. Am I wrong? After calming down, and re-reading the article a couple of times, I don't think so. 😸 From the start, even the title makes me tense. The ideal solution is a perfect solution, the best solution. My context-driven instincts are reluctant to accept the premise, and I wonder what the author thinks is an ideal solution for an agile project, or any project. I notice also that I slid so easily from "an approach is not ideal" into "I am not doing a good job" and, in retrospect, that makes me smile. It doesn't do any harm to be reminded that your cognitive bias

Test Now

The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter , LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me? --00-- "When is the best time to test?" Twenty posts in , I hope you're not expecting an answer without nuance? You are? Well, I'll do my best. For me, the best time to test is when there

README

This week at work my team attended a Myers Briggs Type Indicator workshop. Beforehand we each completed a questionnaire which assigned us a personality type based on our position on five behavioural preference axes. For what it's worth, this time I was labelled INFJ-A and roughly at the mid-point on every axis. I am sceptical about the value of such labels . In my less charitable moments, I imagine that the MBTI exercise gives us each a box and, later when work shows up, we try to force the work into the box regardless of any compatiblity in size and shape. On the other hand, I am not sceptical about the value of having conversations with those I work with about how we each like to work or, if you prefer it, what shape our boxes are, how much they flex, and how eager we are to chop problems up so that they fit into our boxes. Wondering how to stretch the workshop's conversational value into something ongoing I decided to write a README for me and

ChatGPT Whoppers

Over Christmas I thought I'd have a look at ChatGPT . Not to "break" it, or find more examples of its factual incorrectness , but to explore it sympathetically, for fun. And it was fun. In particular, the natural language generation and understanding capabilities of the system are really impressive. However, even without trying it's not hard to expose weaknesses in the tool. So much so that I doubt I would have bothered to blog about what I found, except that I enjoyed the accidental semantic connection between a handful of my observations. I asked for ASCII art to celebrate my 600th blog post on software testing and got this whopper! . .: :: :; ;: .;; .;;: ::;: :;;: ;;;:

A Qualified Answer

The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter , LinkedIn , Slack , and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me? --00-- "Whenever possible, you should hire testers with testing certifications" Interesting. Which would you value more? (a) a candidate who was sent on loads of courses approved by some organisation you don't know and ru

Farewell AST

After four years, three of them as Vice President, I'm standing down from the board of the Association for Software Testing . Let me say up front that I am an unapologetic romantic about my craft. (And, yeah , I called it a craft. Sue me.) I believe in what AST stands for, its mission , and in context-driven testing , so it's been an absolute privilege to be involved in running the organisation. It's also been fun, and full of difficult situations and choices, and hard work on top of family life and a day job. There also was the small matter of the global Covid pandemic to deal with. The immediate impact was on CAST, our annual conference , and in some ways the beating heart of the AST. We had to variously cancel, reschedule, and move CAST online and we are still experiencing the after-effects as we organise the 2023 in-person event . So why am I leaving? Well, first, I'm not leaving the organisation, only the board. I am a life member and

Having a Test.blast()

Last week I attended a meetup on API testing with Mark Winteringham . In it, he talked through some HTTP and REST basics, introduced us to Postman by making requests against his Restful Booker bed and breakfast application, and encouraged us to enter the Test.bash() 2022 API Challenge which was about to close. The challenge is to make a 20-minute video for use at the Ministry of Testing's October Test.bash() showing the use of automation to check that it's possible to create a room using the Restful Booker API. I talk and write about exploring with automation a lot (next time is 14th October 2022, for an Association for Software Testing webinar ) and I thought it might be interesting to show that I am not a great developer and spend plenty of time Googling, copy-pasting, and introducing and removing typos. So I did and my video is now available in the Ministry of Testing Dojo . The script I hacked during the video is up in GitHub . My

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