The Test Story - My First Online Publication

I am really excited because one of my goals for 2011 has come true. In this blog "Welcome 2011" I talked about wanting to get published.
My white paper has been published in STP "Test &QA Report" You can read a summary at their site and also download the whole white paper.

Link to article - click here. One goal down, four more to go.

Ask or Answer and Get Paid

I am really excited about the latest badge earnings that IT Knowledge Exchange is offering. ITKE gives you points for every questions you ask, for every answer you provide and for approving answers. The details on earning points can be found here.

Here is my previous blog on ITKE.

This is a summary view of the points

• Ask a Question: 5 Knowledge Points
• Answering a Question: 15 Knowledge Points
• Discussing a Question: 10 Knowledge Points
• Accepting an Answer: 10 Knowledge Points - approve an answer a fellow member has give to your question

The more you exchange knowledge the more you earn. Their new rewarding system pays going forward and also retrospective. So if you have been active look for emails from them. If you have not been active this is the time to really look at how you can participate. More information can be found at

Earning Badges Pays Off - Literally!

Earning badges pays off - Today!

From here on out, prizes will be as follows:

• Bronze Member Badge: Sticker and ITKnowledgeExchange t-shirt
• Silver Member Badge: $25 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Gold Member Badge: $50 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Platinum Member Badge: $100 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Nerd Cog: $10 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Genius Cog: $25 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Brainiac Cog: $50 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Certified Nerd Cog: $10 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Certified Genius Cog: $25 Amazon.com Gift Card
• Certified Brainiac Cog: $50 Amazon.com Gift Card

If you have not checked out IT Knowledge Exchange the time to start getting active in asking or answering questions.

Mistake Proofing - Poka Yoke

"Your ability to mistake-proof of a process is only limited by your own lack of imagination." Shigeo Shingo

Last week I was at week 2 lean six sigma training and learnt a concept that really made me think of my job differently. In testing we at times look for bugs and we also do activities that are risk based. For risk based activities we look at the risks that can occur and how we can test or plan for it during testing.
The other side to a defect is how to mistake proof it in such a way that if the defect does occur how do we prevent or detect it. Its a back up of a back up - Poka Yoke.

Poka Yoke is Japanese for mistake proofing. It is the creation of devices that either prevent special causes that result in defects or inexpensively inspect each item produced to determine whether it is acceptable or defective.

When this topic was introduced in class I was thinking oh this is hard. I didn't understand it. Then the instructor gave examples. Automobile air bags - yes this is poka yoke. If the customer does have an accident then the car is helping reduce the impact. Another good example is auto door lock, seat belt warning, etc.

What is really happening in these cases are that a tester is being sent with every product. He or she warns the customer when a defect is occurring or going to occur. There are some cases where the customer can override it. Example of this is where you get a spell check error and you can still choose to over write it and use the different spelling than what is being recommended. When closing a word file a message is displayed do you want to save the file before closing and its up to the customer or end user to choose one option or the other.

After the class was completed we were given an assignment to come up with as many poka yoke's we can see around us. We all went home thinking this is hard we don't see as many of these mistake proofing as we think. Next morning we all came up with 200 poke yoke's between 11 class participants.

Its really everywhere....My favorites from the class

1. Garages have car clearance limits and have a height check before the cars go into the garage
2. Dryer/washer switch off when the doors are open
3. Garage doors do not close if there is an object that obstructs its closing path
4. Drop downs for most online applications have a state drop down
5. You have to enter email addresses twice when signing up online
6. ABS (anti lock braking system)
7. Bathroom sink have a little hole at the top of the sink to prevent overflows
8. Iron's auto switch off
9. Auto sensor lights/flushes
10. Keys enter the key hole only certain way

I love this concept and will be thinking of how to use this in our day to day activities be it how I write test plans, test cases or do my testing. After all I have to think of our customers everyday and add value for them.

Pilot Projects Process

We recently rolled out Team Foundation Server Work Item Tracking at work to a pilot project. During the discussions we were asked what did we want from pilot project and this made me think about how pilot projects are created and what are the expectations.
To start with there has to always be a business statement or hypothesis. So here for TFS it was

1. There will be more direct visibility for code change due to various work items related to the project.
2. We will be eliminating various different tracking systems (Clear quest, SR System, worksheets, Quality Center Defect module, etc) and will save time from having to do duplicate entries.

One of our biggest goal was to consolidate different tracking systems. We had more than 5 tools and each project also had their own little system like worksheet or share point issues log. We wanted to make sure our tool would fit all these needs.

We then put a plan together for this project to make sure we had a time line and also set expectations for the pilot team.

1. Project X will start using this for TFS work item to track bugs, change requests and tasks.
2. The pilot will last 4 weeks after which a decision will be made on the roll out process for other projects within the organization.
3. Support will be provided during these 4 weeks for questions regarding process, tool, and technology.
4. Feedback will be gathered via emails, surveys and interviews.

We then had to tell the team on how the feedback will be gathered.

Feedback will be gathered during these 4 weeks around the following areas

1. Training
2. User guide and documentation
3. Use of tool
4. Technical adaptability
5. Advantages and disadvantages
6. Gaps in process within the tool

 Our final section for the plan was capturing and reporting findings.

1. We will validate our hypothesis and present our reports to management
2. The data gathered during the pilot will be presented at the end of 4 weeks with our findings
3. If changes are proposed to workflow or tool, they will be presented to the steering committee to get approval for appropriate changes.

 So now we are busy gathering the feedback and data for reporting on our pilot project status.

Updates and TFS WIT - Pilot Project

My projects at work have been keeping me away from blogging. This project that I was helping with during the month of Jan is finally wrapped up and I have caught up with my other project work that were on the back burner.
The thing that I am most excited about right now is the implementation and roll out of TFS Visual Studio Work Item Tracking (WIT). Yes we are going to pilot our new tracking system. Our goal with TFS is that it will eventually be a one stop show for all our software development activities (code, builds, work items, requirements, test cases).
Right now we are only moving our work item tracking (defects and change requests) to this system. We already have our code in TFS. Eventually we will be using it for requirements and test management. We are not there yet but moving WIT is like being one step closer.

This project is special to me because this has a lot of "firsts" for me. My first project

1. I am leading the documentation process. I have a great team who is helping me put all the pieces together.
2. We are doing a pilot for a process roll out. I will get a chance to learn pilot project processes including but not limited to gathering feedback, training and supporting users, gathering metrics, etc.
3. I will be training teams outside of our core business unit. Its a great opportunity for me to learn about our other business units and their current/future processes.

I cant wait for the first pilot project to kick off. I will be back with more on pilot project implementation and process.

Risks and Mitigations in Cloud Testing

Here is a link to my post on Cloud Testing: Risks and Mitigation
http://solutions.wolterskluwer.com/blog/2011/01/cloud-testing-risks-and-mitigation/

Rumblings From Testing Project

This past week and weekend I had to help out with a project that I used to lead two years ago. Since I handed it over there has been several changes to the project. The project saw quite a few test leads come and go, several project managers changed hands and project changed directions several times.

This product is part of our legacy system and a project that I loved working on. Right now due to lot of compliance changes its mandatory that they hit the release date. There is no wiggle room. They asked me if I could help and I did sure why not.

They assigned a couple of change requests to me and sent me the documents I would need to successfully test these changes. I came in thinking its going to be easy peasy. Guess I was wrong.

The product was the same. Yes it is like riding a bike. As soon as I logged into the application everything came back to me. The caveat though was that the processes for the project had changed. From being a successfully self run motor vehicle it had become a car that needed pushing all the time. I am not going to get into the details of the actual work.

This is a mini vent of things I learned from testing this product:

• When working under pressure (especially when the focus is to hit the date) no matter what we want to think chances of making mistakes are higher. No one can be blamed. There is less time go review your own work irrespective of your role. Requirements may be missed, code changes often impact areas that developers didn't get time to review, testing scenarios are missed and chances are these mistakes wont be caught till it goes to the customer. No one wants to do these on purpose but circumstances force these situations. No these are not excuses I am making, I am talking about human beings who have to work overtime, spend weekend and weeknights to get things done.
• How do handle this?
• Teams need to take a break, so occasionally even if we are behind, ask the team to take some time to do other stuff. Yes we are loosing time but when people come back from the break they will be better charged.
• Patience is an asset. Everyone is busy and being patient and polite will take you a long way.
• Get someone outside of the team to help with testing. Support line, product managers, project managers, etc
• Someone who can help without ramp up time.
• They will be able to look at it with a new set of eyes and help with finding issues and ask questions that others might overlook.
• Split the product into feature areas and get all or few testers to test one area fully one at a time. Wait for one a complete round of testing in that one area, log all issues and then fix them at the same time so a second round of testing can be done to wrap it up.
• This will help gather all issues within a few hours.
• Also coders can fix all issues at the same time instead of touching the code at various times.
• Scope, date and quality - three pieces of the release equation. Product can only have any two at a time. So if the date is fixed and more issues are found, then either the date has to be moved or scope has to be reduced (cannot fix all found issues). So really product team has to decide which one item will provide the wiggle room for the product. Can we move the date? Can the product release with known issues?
• Whole team fails if the product does not release or releases with poor quality no matter who else within the team were on schedule or completed their tasks on time. Project failure equals to team failure.

Easy to talk about all this now that the work is wrapping up well and kudos to everyone on this project for having done everything they can or could. True test of team work comes when there is a crisis.