Cambridge Lean Coffee

This month's Lean Coffee was hosted by DisplayLink. Here's some brief, aggregated comments and questions on topics covered by the group I was in.

Are testers doing less and less testing?

The questioner is finding that testers today are doing more "other" activities, than he was in his early days of testing.
Where's the right balance between testing and other stuff?
What's your definition of testing?
I think that exploring ideas is testing.
I fall into a "support" role for the team; I'm the "glue" in the team, often.
I focus on the big picture.
I am thinking about what needs to be ready for the next phase, and preparing it.
I am thinking about information gathering and communication to stakeholders.
Is there a contradiction: testers are a scarce resource, but they're the ones doing "non-core" activities.
Perhaps it's not a contradiction? Perhaps testers are making themselves a scarce resource by doing that other stuff?
Doing other stuff might be OK, but you want others to take a share of it.
Doing some other stuff is OK, but perhaps not all of the housekeeping.
I want to focus on testing, not housekeeping.
Seniority is one of the reasons you end up doing less testing.
Less testing, or perhaps you have less engagement with the product?
I am doing more coaching of developers these days, and balancing that with exploratory testing.
In the absence of an expert, people expect the tester to take a task on.
Are developers more hesitant to take on other tasks, generally?
Or is the developer role just so much better defined that it's not asked of them?
Are you sure developers aren't doing non-development work? What about DevOps?
The tester contract at my work includes that testers will support others.
Is there a problem here? Perhaps the role is just changing to fit business needs?

How do you differentiate between a test plan and a test strategy?

What are they? What are the differences between them?
Why does it matter?
Plan: more detailed, acceptance criteria, specific cases, areas.
Strategy: high-level, test approach, useful for sharing with non-testers.
... but most people don't care about this detail.
Do any of the participants here have required documents called Test Plan and Test Strategy on products? (Some did.)
Most projects have a place for strategy and tactics.
... and the project context affects the division of effort that should be put into them.
... and ideally the relationship between them is one of iteration.
Ideally artefacts are not producted once up-front and then never inspected again.
You might want some kind of artefact to get customer sign-off.
Your customer might want to see some kind of artefact at the end.
.... but isn't that a report of what was done, not what was planned (and probably not done)?

Can testing be beautiful?

When it returns stakeholder value efficiently.
When you've spent time testing something really well and you get no issues in production.
When you identify issues that no-one else would find.
When others think "I would never have found that!"
When the value added is apparent.
When you can demonstrate the thought process.
When you make other people aware of a bigger picture.
When you uncover an implicit customer requirement and make it explicit.
When you keep a lid on scope, and help to deliver value because of it.
OK, when is testing ugly?
When you miss issues and there's a bad knock-on effect.
When you have reams of test cases. In Excel.
When testing is disorganised, lacking in direction, lacking in focus, unprofessional.
Is beauty in the actions or the result?
Is beauty in the eye of the artist, or the audience?
Or both?

What is a tester's role in a continuous delivery pipeline?

When the whole pipeline is automated, where do testers fit?
There's an evolution in the tester skillset; the context is changing.
Shift left?
Shift in all directions!
Testing around and outside the pipeline.
Asking where the risks are.
Analysing production metrics.
Are we regressing? Isn't CD a kind of waterfall?
Less a line from left to right, and more a cascade flowing through gates?
... perhaps, but the size of the increments is significant.

Image: https://flic.kr/p/6tZUfG

Comments

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ChatGPTesters

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