Sirius Ruminations

Last week, I went to the Better Software Conference in Vegas.  I hate Vegas;  but that’s not what this is about, the title notwithstanding.

Last week, I was driving around, and my 7 year old daughter was in the back seat with me.  We were chatting as we drove along (her mind tends to wander and bounce around) when she suddenly made some comment about something she had observed.  I was immediately struck with the depth of insight her comment carried with it, and thought to myself, “Oh, I must write a blog about that – that is so relevant to what we do!”

A few weeks ago, at StarEast, I was talking with Antony Marcano and Rob Sabourin about agile processes, and asked a question that has become a perrennial favorite; Can you be agile if you are not creating and executing loads of automated unit tests?

Few things in life are certain, and in software testing, even fewer.  Like our modern political system, the community of software testers is fractured and splintered.  And while we may draw bold lines around big camps such as Context Driven or Factory, Manual or Automated, Exploratory or Scripted, within any of those major camps there is fierce competition.  This can leave us poor individual testers wondering if there is in fact nothing solid for us to hold onto.  But there is… 

Star light, Star bright
First star I see tonight
I wish I may, I wish I might
Get some decent sleep tonight.

Good morning, class. Today, we are going to learn a new word – Heuristication. Heuristication is a state of sophistication in dealing with and applying Heuristics as an element in an overall test methodology.What does Heuristication look like? How can you identify it? Well, in order to answer those questions, first we have to understand what heuristics themselves are.

Another chapter in the continuing saga of my personal quest for good heuristics.

Over the past few weeks, I have been working with James Bach on my BCRIT certification. Through that process, I have identified my use of heuristics as a good area for potential growth, and so I try to spend some time each day actively thinking about this. For those not familiar, a heuristic is a key word or phrase that encapsulates some larger idea, and triggers you to apply some strategy or behavior in your testing. You try to pick heuristics that will be easy for you to remember, something personal or interesting. Something amusing is always a good choice, James’ “Dead Bee” heuristic being a good example.So over the same time period, my daughter Sarah and I have been doing some reading and study of satire, and it’s use in comics and cartoons. We have looked at the work of Gary Larson (The Far Side) and Chas Addams (The Addams Family), and their use of animals and human caricatures to point out incongruent behavior in society. So the other day, Sarah brings the Sunday funnies to show me this cartoon. (The cartoon was Pearls Before Swine, I don’t know the authors name, and the panel ran several weeks ago. That is about the best I can do for giving proper credit) The cartoon depicted two kids discussing Ol’ Yeller, one who had seen it several times telling the other who had never heard of it what it was all about, and that it was showing at the local theatre. After hearing the story of how the young boy eventually has to put his own dog down, he says “Wow, I bet everyone in the theatre was bawlin about that”, to which his friend replies “Yeah, what other reaction could you possibly have?”

Recently, three unrelated events have given birth to a new idea in my head, and I wanted to share it with you. So, to properly set up the background, the three unrelated events:  At the recent CAST, James Bach presented a keynote, “Against Certification”. During that presentation, one of the things he did was to review some of the “Body of Knowledge” documentation upon which such certifications were based. As he reviewed this documentation, one of the things I was struck by was an underlying pattern of motive driving much of the documentation. That motive was the ability to predict, manage, and control the SDLC. Much of this “Body of Knowledge” for test certification was obviously written by managers, not testers.

I have just finally landed after spending a month running around to various conferences and workshops. I will discuss each of them in a bit of detail below, but first I want to talk about the entire experience. Conferences, tradeshows, and workshops have many purposes. For vendors, it is an opportunity to try and get your wares in front of an interested audience. For practitioners, it is an opportunity to see the latest in tools and technology, and attend tutorials and sessions, sometimes from prominent industry leaders. And for everyone, it is an opportunity to meet new colleagues, reconnect with old friends, and engage in that most basic and valuable activity of any true conference…conversation.