AST Lean Coffee

My second Lean Coffee in a week, this one online with the Association for Software Testing. Here's a few aggregated notes from the conversation.

Why do people want to speak at conferences, and can we support them to get what they need in other ways?

Lots of noise recently on Twitter about people being rejected, and discussion of tactics for getting in.
So why do people want to speak at conferences?
Increase their brand.
Be more employable.
Be better known.
Go to the conference for free.
Company will only pay if they are speaking.
Share what I've learned.
Share my story.
Challenge yourself.
Because they see others doing it
Personal access to "big names."
Conferences always have the same speakers.
Do people need better access to conferences?
Can be a vicious cycle: accepted because we know you; we know you because you speak.
Perhaps the return to in-person conferences has increased the demand for speaking slots.
People don't know how to sell their talk to conferences
Lots of people stick the same proposal into multiple conferences, not tailored
I get inspiration from conferences: testing is a lot bigger than I remember day-to-day.
If you want to get known, other platforms might not be so good.
Conference talks are often amplified widely on social media.
What else can we do to boost signal?
Magazines, Podcasts, Blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Peer Conference, YouTube, ...

What one thing would you prefer never to have to do again (as a tester)

Repeatedly explaining something to someone who is lazy or doesn't want to open their mind.
Justifying why it's useful having a tester on a team or doing testing.
... One of the best things is explaining to people who want to learn (teaching vs justifying).
... Many different people in project teams think they can tell testers how to work.
... I'm happy to question my own practices for improvemen.
... Providing good feedback and constructive criticism is positive
Explaining why you can't automate all the testing.
... Software development has an undercurrent that is trying to destroy good work by testers.
Being in a conference where some smartass explains why everyone can be as successful as them.
Sitting with a developer while they fix a bug I reported (because they feel they need that reassurance).
... or working with developers that think testing is someone else's job.

Working conditions for testers

Inspired by a Twitter thread.
The reputation of the gaming industry is dire.
Why are big-name companies apparently abusing game testers?
What is the culture like?
How can we change it?
What other industries are bad?
Outsourcing companies have been known to abuse juniors particularly.
I have worked with people who tell all sorts of tales about game testing.
... a culture of short-term contracts.
... a funding model that means they need to be able to drop people after product release.
Tech has a weird relationship to unions.
Reasonable pay in tech makes people think we don't need unions.
Geography is important, e.g. China and India have a reputation for poor worker conditions.
... e.g. 40 hour week contract but employers expect 996 work.
Is it worse for testers than other software professionals?
But some people have no choice.

Tactics for learning while testing

You have work to do and it has a deadline
But you also want to learn new tools, new approaches, new things about your domain
Be prepared to gamble some specific time on trying things.
... but abandon it if it's not working out in the time.
... and come back to it on another occasion.
Give yourself permission to learn
Developers give themselves time and spike tickets.
People with seniority need to get better at giving time to their staff.
Senior testers tend to be better at making time for learning.
Discipline is needed.
I only do it when the situation forces it because of time pressure.
Look for an opportunity to do something new.
You need to practice a thing to get deep with it.
Perhaps analyse tasks before jumping into them, for learning opportunities.
Ask "can I try this experiment in a different way?"
We have a Community Day at work.
If you don't have that, then use stealth approaches!
Unionise!

Image: https://flic.kr/p/63wFf7

Comments

Meet Me Halfway?

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-- "Stop answering my questions with questions." Sure, I can do that. In return, please stop asking me questions so open to interpretation that any answ...

The Best Programmer Dan Knows

I was pairing with my friend Vernon at work last week, on a tool I've been developing. He was smiling broadly as I talked him through what I'd done because we've been here before. The tool facilitates a task that's time-consuming, inefficient, error-prone, tiresome, and important to get right. Vern knows that those kinds of factors trigger me to change or build something, and that's why he was struggling not to laugh out loud. He held himself together and asked a bunch of sensible questions about the need, the desired outcome, and the approach I'd taken. Then he mentioned a talk by Daniel Terhorst-North, called The Best Programmer I Know, and said that much of it paralleled what he sees me doing. It was my turn to laugh then, because I am not a good programmer, and I thought he knew that already. What I do accept, though, is that I am focussed on the value that programs can give, and getting some of that value as early as possible. He sent me a link to the ta...

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 ...

Beginning Sketchnoting

In September 2017 I attended Ian Johnson 's visual note-taking workshop at DDD East Anglia . For the rest of the day I made sketchnotes, including during Karo Stoltzenburg 's talk on exploratory testing for developers (sketch below), and since then I've been doing it on a regular basis. Karo recently asked whether I'd do a Team Eating (the Linguamatics brown bag lunch thing) on sketchnoting. I did, and this post captures some of what I said. Beginning sketchnoting, then. There's two sides to that: I still regard myself as a beginner at it, and today I'll give you some encouragement and some tips based on my experience, to begin sketchnoting for yourselves. I spend an enormous amount of time in situations where I find it helpful to take notes: testing, talking to colleagues about a problem, reading, 1-1 meetings, project meetings, workshops, conferences, and, and, and, and I could go on. I've long been interested in the approaches I've evol...

How do I Test AI?

Recently a few people have asked me how I test AI. I'm happy to share my experiences, but I frame the question more broadly, perhaps something like this: what kinds of things do I consider when testing systems with artificial intelligence components . I freestyled liberally the first time I answered but when the question came up again I thought I'd write a few bullets to help me remember key things. This post is the latest iteration of that list. Caveats: I'm not an expert; what you see below is a reminder of things to pick up on during conversations so it's quite minimal; it's also messy; it's absolutely not a guide or a set of best practices; each point should be applied in context; the categories are very rough; it's certainly not complete. Also note that I work with teams who really know what they're doing on the domain, tech, and medical safety fronts and some of the things listed here are things they'd typically do some or all of. Testing ...

Don't Know? Find Out!

In What We Know We Don't Know , Hillel Wayne crisply summarises a handful of research findings about software development, describes how the research is carried out and reviewed and how he explores it, and contrasts those evidence-based results with the pronouncements of charismatic thought leaders. He also notes how and why this kind of research is hard in the software world. I won't pull much from the talk because I want to encourage you to watch it. Go on, it's reasonably short, it's comprehensible for me at 1.25x, and you can skip the section on Domain-Driven Design (the talk was at DDD Europe) if that's not your bag. Let me just give the same example that he opens with: research shows that most code reviews focus more on the first file presented to reviewers rather than the most important file in the eye of the developer. What we should learn: flag the starting and other critical files to receive more productive reviews. You never even thought about that possi...

Express, Listen, and Field

Last weekend I participated in the LLandegfan Exploratory Workshop on Testing (LLEWT) 2024, a peer conference in a small parish hall on Anglesey, north Wales. The topic was communication and I shared my sketchnotes and a mind map from the day a few days ago. This post summarises my experience report. Express, Listen, and Field Just about the most hands-on, practical, and valuable training I have ever done was on assertiveness with a local Cambridge coach, Laura Dain . In it she introduced Express, Listen, and Field (ELF), distilled from her experience across many years in the women’s movement, business, and academia. ELF: say your key message clearly and calmly, actively listen to the response, and then focus only on what is relevant to your needs. I blogged a little about it back in 2017 and I've been using it ever since. Assertiveness In a previous role, I was the manager of a test team and organised training for the whole ...

My Adidas

If you've met me anywhere outside of a wedding or funeral, a snowy day, or a muddy field in the last 20 years you'll have seen me in Adidas Superstar trainers. But why? This post is for April Cools' Club . --00-- I'm the butt of many jokes in our house, but not having a good memory features prominently amongst them. See also being bald ("do you need a hat, Dad?"), wearing jeans that have elastane in them (they're very comfy but "oh look, he's got the jeggings on again!"), and finding joy in contorted puns ("no-one's laughing except you, you know that, right?") Which is why it's interesting that I have a very strong, if admittedly not complete, memory of the first time I heard Run DMC. Raising Hell , their third album, was released in the UK in May 1986 and I bought it pretty much immediately after hearing it on the evening show on Radio 1, probably presented by Janice Long, ...

Not a Happy Place

A few months ago I stopped having therapy because I felt I had stabilised myself enough to navigate life without it. For the time being, anyway. I'm sure the counselling helped me but I couldn't tell you how and I've chosen not to look deeply into it. For someone who is usually pretty analytical this is perhaps an interesting decision but I knew that I didn't want to be second-guessing my counsellor, Sue, or mentally cross-referencing stuff that I'd researched while we were talking. And talk was what we mostly did, with Sue suggesting hardly any specific tools for me to try. One that she did recommend was finding a happy place to visualise, somewhere that I could be out of the moment for a moment to calm disruptive thoughts. (Something like this .) Surprisingly, I found that I couldn't conjure anywhere up inside my head. That's when I realised that I've always had difficulty seeing with my mind's eye but never called it out. If I try to imagine ev...

Software Sisyphus

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-- "How can I possibly test 'all the stuff' every iteration?" Whoa! There's a lot to unpack there, so let me break it down a little: who is suggesting that "al...

Hiccupps

Search This Blog