On Changes...

Cool post on taking on challenges... thought I would share... Metacool

Should User Facing Documents be Tested?...

Yes, I believe they should be...

This is an advertisement from our local newspaper this week. I think this validates my opinion, somewhat...

What Good Communication Should Not Look Like…

Maybe this shows my age a bit, but it is still an ongoing, modern dilemma…

I decided to “not” write about my thoughts on solutions, or about my personal opinions on this, but just to leave it to you to think about…. Where are “your” holes in communication?  How can “you” better explain things?  Better communicate?

If the video doesn't show for your browser, try this link:  Who's On First

Not Everyone Appreciates a “Good” Bug…

My 8-year-old daughter was taking a bath while I was getting her supper going.  All of a sudden there was a scream for help… I dropped what I was doing and ran to the bathroom…

“There’s a bug in here… Oh my God, I have to get out of here…”  she yelled.

“Where is it?  I will kill it,” I said.

“It crawled somewhere, I can’t see it anymore!  I gotta get out of here!  I am freezing… “ she exclaimed.

“There!  There it is,” she said pointing….

“Oh… “  I said, “that’s just a cricket.”

I scooped the poor creature in my hands… this was the first time I deliberately touched a bug… but I couldn’t kill him… I remembered hearing, when I was younger, that a cricket in your house meant “good luck”… I actually did not want to evict the poor fellow… but I did.

She had questions because of the reaction to the bug… Where did it come from?  How did it get in?  Unasked ones, like can I expect to see this creepy thing again?  Should I be afraid to get in the bath?  Can I ever trust the bathtub again?

Oh my goodness, that is a lot to take in… especially as I was wearing the “Customer Support” hat for this episode of life…

I did my best to educate her on crickets and assure her that the bug was now outside… but for a bit, I kept getting reports on how she was still nervous, shaking, why she screamed, etc…

I get that… from a customer/consumer view point…  validation of an issue… removal of the issue… more validations of trust… customer is good to go… as long as they feel like you Heard Them… Fixed Them… Understand Them… Want to keep them happy…

That’s what it is all about folks… serving the customers… the stakeholders… the team… the organization… the individuals… to the best of your ability…

 Crickets...  Maybe I appreciate this "bug", maybe I like finding it, but not everyone does... 

Cleaning out the refrigerator…

Funny things come to mind when you clean out the fridge…  For whatever reason, and I know there are many, you find things are not as you suspected they were…

You may find at least some of the following:

• ·         Things with expired dates
• ·         Things with different colors than when they first arrived
• ·         Things that you can longer define
• ·         Things that need cleaning up
• ·         Things that are past cleaning up
• ·         Things that have been neglected

I decided that I would tackle that appliance tonight and give it a good cleaning out.  While I try to do this regularly sometimes my schedule, or that of my loved ones, makes this take a back seat…

While I was cleaning it out I got to thinking about test case maintenance… and how similar the task is, how similar the discoveries can be.

Test case writing and maintenance are not my most beloved passions, not unlike my poor refrigerator.  I prefer a jaunt to the garden to weed, playing outside, doing almost anything else… to cleaning out the fridge.  In testing, I prefer exploratory testing,  learning new things, creating new scenarios… to taking on the task of test case maintenance… it is a royal pain in the derriere… it is a necessary evil…

One of my most fundamental rules when it comes to test cases is:  if I don’t want to run it, I don’t want to write it.  This is not too much unlike my refrigerator:  if I don’t want to eat it, I don’t want to buy/cook it.  Match one.

Things age… or change… or decompose… These things “do” this at different times.  One food may be good for 3 weeks, another for 3 days.  The same is true for a “test case”.  A test case may need to be documented for a new feature with certain expectations from the stakeholders.  You may find really good reasons why this feature should change, or, the users may find some reason for this… thus they may be good for 3 days or 3 weeks…   Match two.

Things aren’t what they appear to be… Your fridge may seem “full” because it has much in it… plastic containers full of left-overs… BBQ sauce from 2005… seasonings that have since outlasted their flavor…  The same is true for test cases.  If they passed successfully since 2005 are they valid to run, re-run, re-re-run again anymore?  Have they out-lived any chance at all at finding a bug?  Are they “left-over” from a previous set of feature requirements?  Match three.

The sheer number of it all… Who doesn’t want to open the refrigerator and find that it looks full?  Who doesn’t want to see the test case numbers look “robust”?  It is only when you look deeper and clean it out that you can spot the “holes” in that really quickly.  Let’s say you use ingredient A to cook a lot of your family’s favorite dishes, but you have been busy lately… Now, after cleaning it out, you know ingredient A is really missing or outdated.  The same is true for test cases on Feature A.  Match four.

Today things change very quickly… not unlike the items we keep in our refrigerators… they may fit any of the items listed in the bullet points above…. And they need cleaning/maintenance… if they are at all to hold their value…

This may be not a chore I hold near and dear to my heart, but it matters as much as cleaning out my own personal fridge does… I would rather find the items myself than have others find them for me…

Note:  The same can be said for every now and again re-checking your own bug reports... are they still "fresh"... are they still "valid"...