• About
  • Giving Back

aclairefication

~ using my evil powers for good

Category Archives: Skype Test Chat

Est testing parfait?

19 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by claire in #testchat, Agile2013, AgileConnection, Experiments, Exploratory Testing, Hackathon, ISST, Lean Coffee, Podcast, Retrospective, Skype Test Chat, Social media, Software Testing Club Atlanta, Speaking, Tea-time With Testers, Techwell, Test Retreat, Testing Circus, TWiST, Volunteering, Weekend Testing

≈ Leave a Comment

I heard that Gerry Weinberg has an exercise called “Mary had a little lamb,” in which you analyze each word in the sentence to elicit implicit meaning that might be important. This sounded interesting enough to try, so when the opportunity came to propose a topic at Test Retreat 2013 I went for it. My topic “Is testing for me?” didn’t end up formally scheduled but made a nice interstitial topic to discuss with those milling about in the main room.

I chopped the sentence into separate words and wrote them top-to-bottom on a large sticky note. Then, instead of giving some sort of prepared remarks, I elicited brainstorming from the gathered participants. Having received interesting feedback on my professional and personal strengths at Agile2013 that had left me questioning how best to use my evil powers for good, I wanted to hear how others were thinking about the testing field and how it fit them.

The resulting scrawled notes ended up a mindmap, the path of least resistance for me. I won’t say the discussion solved all my problems, but it did give me some direction for future exploration – exploration that might also be helpful to a newbie wondering whether to pursue a career in testing.

Is testing for me?Which brings me to some interesting recent events:

  • the first ISST webinar by Ben Kelly
  • Our second meetup for Software Testing Club Atlanta
  • Randomly running across a new tester on Twitter
  • This testing blog post I read recently

I started composing a list of things I’d recommend to people just starting out as testers to help them to evaluate whether to continue. I wanted to encourage them to jump right in but also think big, not waiting them to wait 5 years to reach out to the wider world of testing (like I did).

Here’s my current list. I blogged about various experiments I tried, so you can read for yourself to see what it’s like to select what’s a good starting point for you.

  • First things first: Whatever you try, frequent retros
  • Social media, especially Twitter
  • Try exploratory testing
  • Weekend Testing
  • Chatting with other testers online
  • Books, Podcasts, Blogs, maybe even writing for some ezines or websites?
  • Meetups, local events, Lean Coffee, conferences – attend (in person or virtually), live-tweet a conference, volunteer, speak (lightning talk, whole session, workshop, tutorial)
  • Open Source, Hackathons, innovation days, etc
  • uTest/Applause? I’ve heard of this but not tried it. Seems like a lower barrier to entry/way to get started?
  • And, last but not least, who do you want to be?

No matter how many times I think I’ve found all the meaning in my testing career, suddenly I realize there are more layers… but like a parfait, not an onion.

Donkey: Oh, you both have LAYERS. Oh. You know, not everybody like onions. What about cake? Everybody loves cake!
Shrek: I don’t care what everyone else likes! Ogres are not like cakes.
Donkey: You know what ELSE everybody likes? Parfaits! Have you ever met a person, you say, “Let’s get some parfait,” they say, “Hell no, I don’t like no parfait”? Parfaits are delicious!
Shrek: NO! You dense, irritating, miniature beast of burden! Ogres are like onions! End of story! Bye-bye! See ya later.
Donkey: Parfait’s gotta be the most delicious thing on the whole damn planet! – Shrek

Thanks for the inspiration to write, EmJayKay80 and Niyi!

Testing For Humans? Try Empathy

11 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by claire in Context, Experiences, Experiments, Personas, Skype Test Chat, Soft Skills, Test Retreat, User Experience, User Stories

≈ 1 Comment

sympathy-empathy
Two months ago, Matt Heusser organized Test Retreat and I attended, along with 27 other testers open to new ideas and wanting to change the world. Sound a little ambitious? Let’s find out!

My first blog post in this series is about Michael Larsen‘s Testing For Humans, which he was unable to live blog due to presenting. 🙂 However, Michael did post Alessandra Moreira‘s notes in his live blog of the event.

Fortunately, I was able to live-tweet the talk that he described as:

Testing for Humans: It’s Sticky, Messy and Very Satisfying

Abstract: Software development is a beautiful thing. We often create amazing ideas and features that would be wonderful… if only those pesky humans that end up using, abusing, and mis-understanding our brilliant code weren’t part of the equation. Unfortunately, we’re all in the business of developing software for people (yes, even when it’s machine to machine communication, it serves human beings somewhere. What are some ways that we can approach testing software outside of the theoretical ideals, and actually come to grips with the fact that real human beings will be using these products? How can we really represent them, test for and on behalf of them, and actually bring in a feature that will not just make them happy, but represent the way they really and actually work, think and act?

Expected Deliverables: An excellent debate, some solid strategies we can all take home, and some “really good” practices that will be helpful in a variety of contexts.

My take-aways were:

    • People are imperfect so ideal users aren’t enough for testing.
    • By definition, a composite of many people (e.g. user persona) is a model.
    • Too many user descriptions based on small differences is overwhelming, not practical for testing.

On Wednesday night of this week, I joined Christin Wiedemann‘s regularly scheduled Skype test chat with some other lovely wonderful tester folks and we focused on empathy in testing. We wrestled our way to some working definitions of empathy and sympathy, which was much better than shallow agreement though it took a bit of time to establish. We agreed that testers need to observe, focus on, and understand users in order to serve them better. We find that empathy for our users and passion for our testing work go hand-in-hand since we care about helping people by producing good software.

Then we struggled with whether empathy is an innate trait of a person testing or whether empathy is a learnable skill that testers can develop through deliberate practice. (Go watch the video behind that link and come back to me.) We concluded that knowing what others are thinking and feeling, getting inside their skins, in the context of using the software is essential to good testing, though this might require a bit of perseverance. This can go a long way toward avoiding thinking we have enough information just because it’s all we know right now.

As I mentioned in the chat, I’ve found that user experience (UX) design is an amazing ally for testers. One tool that helped me to develop more empathy for my users is user personas. (Later, I found that forming user personas of my product teammates helped me to develop empathy for them as well.)

I immediately took to (end) user personas as a natural progression from user stories. After all, user stories are focused on value to and outcomes for a particular group of users. Describing those users more specifically in a user persona dovetailed nicely. Rather than some sterile requirements that never name the user, identifying a role – or, even better, a rich symbol such as a named primary persona – focuses the product team’s efforts on serving someone by helping us to understand the purpose of the work we do.

We also discussed interviewing users, visits to users, and experiential exercises as techniques to help us call upon empathy when we are testing. In my work history, I’ve been fortunate to hear about my UX team’s great work in a collaborative design workshop, to contribute to designing ad hoc personas for my product, to participate in a UX-led contextual inquiry, and to log actual usability sessions led by my product team’s UX designer. (Yes, my fast fingers came in handy. Yuk yuk.) My innovation days team developed a usability logging product that evolved from an existing solution I tested/used in those usability sessions, so I was a natural fit to test it. I’m curious about empathy maps but haven’t tried them myself yet.

It’s fair to say I’m a UX-infected tester. More than fair. I identify with the curiosity I see in the UX profession and I admire the courage to kill their darlings (carefully crafted designs) when evidence shows it is time to move on. After all, we’re not building this product to marvel at our own cleverness but instead to serve humans.

Image credit

♣ Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

♣ Archives

  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • November 2018
  • August 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • March 2017
  • August 2016
  • May 2016
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • February 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011

♣ Categories

  • #testchat
  • Acceptance Criteria
  • Agile
  • Agile Testing Days USA
  • Agile2013
  • Agile2018
  • AgileConnection
  • Approaches
  • Automation
  • Better Software
  • CAST 2011
  • CAST 2012
  • CAST 2013
  • CAST2016
  • Certification
  • Change Agent
  • Coaching
  • Context
  • DeliverAgile2018
  • Design
  • Developer Experience
  • DevNexus2019
  • DevOps
  • Events
  • Experiences
  • Experiments
  • Exploratory Testing
  • Hackathon
  • ISST
  • ISTQB
  • Lean Coffee
  • Metrics
  • Mob Programming
  • Personas
  • Podcast
  • Protip
  • Publications
  • Retrospective
  • Scrum
  • Skype Test Chat
  • Social media
  • Soft Skills
  • Software Testing Club Atlanta
  • Speaking
  • SpringOne2019
  • STAREast 2011
  • STAREast 2012
  • STARWest 2011
  • STARWest 2013
  • Tea-time With Testers
  • Techwell
  • Test Retreat
  • TestCoachCamp 2012
  • Tester Merit Badges
  • Testing Circus
  • Testing Games
  • Testing Humor
  • Training
  • TWiST
  • Uncategorized
  • Unconference
  • User Experience
  • User Stories
  • Visualization
  • Volunteering
  • Weekend Testing

♣ Meta

  • Log in

Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Chateau by Ignacio Ricci.