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~ using my evil powers for good

Category Archives: Tea-time With Testers

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

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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!

Tea Time

05 Saturday Oct 2013

Posted by claire in Experiences, Exploratory Testing, Tea-time With Testers

≈ 3 Comments

TeaCollectionA little history

So as you may have gathered, I’m an American. But not just any American. I’m from The South. In fact, I’m a very special kind of Southerner: the mythical Atlanta native. (Though some would argue that prevents me from being really Southern.) While most of you are likely to pass through our airport, I was born and raised here. That has resulted in a certain expectation when you mention the word tea (i.e. it should be used in the phrase “sweet tea”). Now Southern sweet tea isn’t “one lump or two” but more the kind of thing that induces diabetes. You don’t make it by the delicate little tea pot, you make it by the gallon and it’s always caffeinated. If you’re feeling really fancy, then you make sun tea. Carefully. Or you mix in a bit of lemonade and voilà, Arnold Palmer. The important thing to remember here is to serve it sweet – and cold.

Wait, what?

So you can imagine my curiosity when I discovered that most of the world drinks tea hot and brews it from “loose leaf” not tea bags. What’s that about? I had to find out! When I mentioned it to a friend, she showed up at my house bearing a beautiful enameled tea pot as a gift. It was time to learn a few things. I made a foray to a local tea shop and discovered that not only were there non-black tea options out there, but not everyone drinks it sweet. (Okay, so I might be livening things up here a bit, but it was still rather revelatory that this was a complex process.)

An app for that

I found out that the retail chain Teavana has an app. I decided I could use some help with brewing tea when my friends were not available to tell me what to do, so I downloaded it onto my smartphone. While the app clearly has a revenue purpose, driving you to purchase their detailed catalog of products, directing you to their online shop or to a local store, and showing recommendations for blending teas, it also has a tea timer. So I tapped on the brewing icon and stopped to investigate.

The first thing I noticed was the list of tea types that defaults to having Oolong selected. I don’t even know what oolong tea is, so I tried tapping the icon for additional information to no effect. I thought about referencing their catalog of Teas with its detailed descriptions of tea varieties in order to understand it better, but I didn’t see that option in the buttons at the bottom of the app. Accepting this usability problem in favor of actually making some tea right now, I went for the old standby and selected Black Tea. The generic black tea brewing instructions included measuring a volume of tea, but since I typically brew more than a cup at a time I had to do the math. No way to set up a preference for a full pot of tea here. The usability could use some love.

Some science

Then some perplexing data: 195 degrees. While I’m American and appreciate this default to the Fahrenheit temperature scale, I don’t have a kitchen thermometer, only human thermometers to use in case of illness. I was pretty sure that wouldn’t be suited to the purpose. (And it turns out there are thermometer testers! Don’t forget to calibrate!) Now I found myself heading to the internet for more data about water temperature. I’ll admit that I don’t know the temperature of boiling water in degrees Fahrenheit off the top of my head. And the first search result wikipedia article about boiling point, while interesting enough to open in another browser tab, weren’t helping me out here when what I wanted was a simple conversion. Okay, got it. 212 F is boiling and so too high for my black tea. Obviously I’d been doing it wrong my whole life. In the past, I’d just microwaved the water or boiled it on the stove, but now I should care about accuracy. Well that’s why I’m using the app in the first place, to gain some nuance in my tea preparation. The first step is admitting you have a problem.

Let’s do this!

So I get the water hot but not quite boiling and take it off the stove burner with my tea ball filled and ready to steep. Pressing the helpfully labeled Ready to Steep button takes me to an adorable screen that looks like the tea steeper they sell for a single cup brewing. I’m happy to go with it because pressing the Start Steeping button plays lovely music as it counts down and that music varies with the variety of tea. The animation of the water level adjusting with the tilt of the phone with bubbles rising up and tea drifting down is so cute – until my smartphone’s screen goes to sleep. The music cuts right off. I go to wake the phone up only to see the prompt to begin steeping again… What? I glance at the clock, wondering how long I’d played with rocking the phone back and forth. What time did I start brewing? Argh! For a tea novice, this flaw is fatal. My tea comes out just as satisfactory as usual, but I’ve had enough hassle with the app that it’s not a useful tool.

Clearly time to turn off the phone, sit back with my “cuppa,” and find some creative inspiration.

[Note: Although this post is not related to Tea-time with Testers, you should definitely go read that testing ezine too!]

Published in Tea-time with Testers

22 Wednesday Jun 2011

Posted by claire in Experiments, Publications, Tea-time With Testers

≈ 1 Comment

Stop the presses

In the June 2011 current issue, Tea-time with Testers has published an article I wrote as an expansion on my Esprit de Corps post.

Direct link to PDF

Please contact me with any feedback. Thanks!

Image credit

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