Female funTESTic Fanatic

EuroSTAR 2011 diaries - part three

2011-11-27T16:57:00.001+01:00

I woke up with a major headache, maybe it's the tension for the track I'm doing today. I only had 1 cocktail during dinner and 1 pint of beer last night, so it can't be the booze acting up. Well, nothing a good old Aspirin can't fix.
I had to be at the conference centre at 0730 again to practice the last GMM session already. Today I'm again pointing out the Testlab, since it's an excellent place to be at to test and meet people and I'm highlighting the European Testers Survey in my weather report. I'm also sneaky referencing the closing event. I'm all into the details and it's going to be such fun! Before I went to the conference centre I picked up a huge eggnog latte at StarBucks, I love these different flavours in foreign SB's (I had a Pumpkin spice in Portland), it's a shame they don't have them in the Netherlands.

We practised again till the people came in the auditorium. It seems that more people don't want to miss the GMM's, the buzz is apparently going around that there's fun stuff in there and people don't want to miss it, which is good.

Photo by Rik Marselis: Me as weather girl on the big stage during GMM session.
The keynote was that of Ben Walters, I didn't notice it, but apparently he was as sick as could be and he just came out of bed to do the keynote before returning to it again (chapeau dude! I take my hat off for you if I'd wore one). It started out promising, but as Twittering and mailing increase, mark a period of my declining interest, I must conclude I was losing my interest half way the talk. My headache came up again so I wished for the track to end so I could pop an aspirin again. I got more stressed for my talk this afternoon...and that took a toll on my attention.

I went to Architecture Testing after the break by Peter Zimmerer. I listened to his talk with interest as I'm busy setting up something on how to do this with an architect at my current client. I didn't get what I expected to get from it though and I didn't agree with the content in a whole, I have a different perspective on architecture testing and it is good that different perspectives are there, but it sucks that this will probably set a new discussion and confusion that goes with it around the subject to get a common (for what that's worth) understanding. I see a lot of evangelising to be done there.

I went to Michael Bolton's dashboards track after that. I had high hopes and expectations, as I learned something new and very applicable every time I visited a track by Michael. I couldn't be more disappointed this time. It might have been very applicable for newbies, but for me, it was (very) old news and the stuff told I apply naturally in my work, as I know most of my colleagues do (and not only colleagues from my company but also most of the testers in NL and UK I know) because they are educated in reporting and giving feedback to the client when you're doing testing. I even go as far as to say I learned a lot of this stuff during my ISTQB course, but maybe that's because I had a good teacher for this course. It's not about the numbers, although a lot of non-ISTQB testers think we ISTQB people are only into 'coverage by percentage' etc. (it's not that bad: it's what you DO with it that counts ;-) ) , I actually learned that you first go to your client/ stakeholders and ask them what their need is regarding the information and reporting during testing and produce my information accordingly. I never use the same reporting for one organization in another, I even got specialized reporting for some specific stakeholder groups if it gets more clear for them or they feel more happy about a certain lay-out. Whiteboards are okay, but I'm having a conflict there when I think about the strict clean-desk policy most organizations have nowadays; they'd get a heart-attack when seeing this stuff all out in the open, it's all in the context and this solution isn't for my context.
I was considering changing to 10 challenges by John Montgomery, but I figured I could relax a bit have a bit and browse through some mail. It wasn't a complete waste of time, so I still was LEAN ;-)

Between that track and the lunch I went to StarBucks to escape and relax a bit. I have to remember to breathe...

My turn. I was nervous, VERY nervous. I've been 'speaking' before but at my Ethics debate the attendees do most of the talking and at my Unusual Testing track there's so much non-testing info, I'm quite sure the oddness protects me somewhat. This time I really felt exposed, I was talking about work I actually done as a tester and I felt I could only be exposed as a fraud or an idiot. Although my client was very pleased with my work (which I find most important) and I'm really proud of my work and want to share my lessons learned because they helped me and maybe could help others (or inspire), I'm still very unsure. It's also my first time on the 'BIG stage', I can tell it's different being on a stage in an auditorium, where seats are going up all around you and a smaller room, where you are the highest point in the room. I'm also not used having an AV team regulating my slides and having a slide-button and separate pointer. I was scared that I would screw up. I was scared switching the devices and look clumsy or making stupid English jokes, that are hilarious in Dutch but are are an insult in English or something. I was SCARED, I was NERVOUS...it went fine.

I had people asking questions, I had a happy client (which was in the room) and somebody that wanted to ask more inside info from an Austrian railway company and even - a first for me- somebody wanted a picture with me (I felt like a rock star :-)) ). I had a headache again, but this time from the tension leaving my body. I let out a sigh from relief and went for coffee.

The last keynote was from Isabel Evans. She still is one of the most inspiring people I have met and she always has always has something to tell that you can pick snippets from to use in your own work. I've never thought of sight disabled people and using IT, although I have a colleague that ought to have triggered me, but now I have really got something to think about. Again the added value of this particular conference is the things that surprise me as I would not have thought about before but really make something to bring home. It's one of the aspects that go in to my custom-made toolbox and check lists for testing questions.

The closing session is finally there. The audience doesn't know yet, but behind their seating is an envelope with a live (a special device that Morton made) or dead bug in it. I know because before my track during lunch, I've been putting them there (together with Derk-Jan, Morton and two Qualtech girls) and after that I sat on every chair (!!!) to make sure they didn't fall out (I still have my upper leg muscles complaining a bit because of this). On one of the dead bugs (encased in plastic) there's the winning number in-scripted for the Golden Ticket to EuroSTAR 2012. My job is to ensure everybody that wants to win this ticket is in the sections where the bugs are. Then it finally starts, the boys are ready and the lights go out... It's a spectacle and it goes exactly as planned. The TestLab is having their time to do the news on the lab. Then the 'bugtime' is there; it's hilarious with screams coming from here and there in the audience. Then it's already over and only the Gala-dinner remains.

The dinner is at 'The Monastery' and its really spectacular, the lighting gives it a very special and awesome atmosphere. There's champagne and there's good company. The choir, including Dorothy Graham and Fiona Charles is singing beautifully and finishes with a few of my favourite techniques written by Dot and specially arranged for the choir. It's magnificent.

The awards are given at the end of the dinner. Julian Harty wins the European Testing Excellence Award and I think it's well deserved. The chair for next year is also announced: Zeger van Hese will be chair for the Amsterdam 2012 edition.

I said my goodbyes at the Monastery, but there was also a drink at the Jury's Inn where I was invited to, so I tagged along with the others and had a good pint (or two) of Strongbows (to finish with what I started the whole adventure with I found that appropriate). I went to my hotel around one-ish and was surprised by one hell of a shower of rain. And of course my umbrella and poncho were still in the bag with weather-girl stuff :-), a bit of an ironic end of the the conference I thought, but what a conference it was... now to wait for a whole year for a new EuroSTAR to start, hoping to see you all there then.

Photo by Rik Marselis: Derk-Jan and Me at Schiphol Airport waiting at the passport control checkpoint

EuroSTAR 2011 diaries - part two

2011-11-27T15:04:00.001+01:00

Well as they say : "the early bird catches, gets the worm"... as I say "I'm not into earlies and I'm certainly not into worms". I had to get to the conference centre at 07.30 to practice the GMM-session again, and I can't skip it since I'm a part of it today, as if I would, because I really like participating so actively, it just gives an extra dimension to visiting a conference I find.

I figured out that the StarBucks is just around the corner of the conference so I went there first to get some (well not some, but a large cup) coffee. I even got in the auditorium in time, which is quite essential if you're the timekeeper. We practised until the audience came in and we couldn't any longer. I was putting on my poncho for the weather gig back-stage and got my adrenaline rush again. Better than coffee I thought, but it hasn't got the same easiness.

It went well I think, at least I was happy with the way it went. And I think I did some good attention drawing to the testlab (which needed the attention since it was a bit out-of-the-route) and the expo. Today I'll have to keep an eye out for the weather-forecast items for tomorrow morning.
The opening keynote was that of James Whittaker (Google). Last time I saw him was also on a testing conference, where he (than employee of MicroSoft) had an item with a movie from MicroSoft with future technologies and that testers were laughing at that since they were sure they had work for them the upcoming years, he made a point that testers and developers were different then. It made the current message from him a bit shallow. Back then tester had a job, now we should become developers. Am I to believe a message from somebody that changes the message with the changing of the name of the organization that pays his salary? He's a good speaker though and it's entertaining to listen to him. The message wasn't all that bad, I still think myself that we shouldn't be in just one small part in the development phase but that we ought to be involved in the whole phase, I think we ought to have a broader skill set (maybe only some general kwowledge) to be more involved in the whole development cycle. Having been a developer myself I don't see why I should develop myself in my current job though; there are people who are MUCH more effective in that than I am. I find it bullocks to scratch 'tester' from my job title just to get 30% more salary; I'm proud on the work I'm doing thank you very much. If I learned anything from the 'death of tester and testingphase' keynotes it's that testing is as alive as ever.

My program of this day was:

Minitracks (Martin Mussman and Jackie McDougall)
Afterlunch tracks - visiting testlab, do some conferring
checking first moments of Houston we've got a problem (Maurice Siteur and Rien v Vugt) and sneak out to finish with Social software development
Tester get out of your cave (chairing this one)
conferring time, checking the expo, maybe visit the lab again
Mixing open and commercial tools (chairing this one)
Keynote and closure
Attending North West Testing Gathering (meetup)

So after the keynote I went over to the minitracks and enjoyed some very nice minitracks. The first minitrack being of Martin Mussman about mindmapping. The mindmaps for making your testdesign is a really good idea to let everybody involved get a clear view on what's going on. So I will use my FreeMind more often (FYI: list of wikipedia mindmapping software).
Jacky McDougall did a very passionate story on educational paths in her boot-camp track, which inspired me to look into some educational stuff for my organization. Both tracks brought me something I could really take with me. So I was happy with my choice to have visited them.

I visited the expo after that, tried to find the speaker that I was to chair that afternoon and did some conferring, I didn't get to see the next mini-tracks that I planned. Time seems to be going SO fast here...

I went to Houston of my colleagues Maurice and Rien after the coffeebreak. They started with a play to illustrate the goal of the talk. I sneaked out when Rien started on statistics. I already planned not being there the whole session and this seemed as good a moment as any. What I saw was okay, but then again, I didn't see the whole session.
I really wanted to visit the testlab during my EuroSTAR conference so I hurried there. I had to install the RedNoteBook application on my laptop and re-start, that cost me some time. But I got it running and even got time to report a bug; earning me two stickers: 1) labrat sticker and 2) I logged a bug in the testlab sticker, both are now proudly showing on my laptop.
The pair-testing sessions started which I would have really liked attending, but I had two sessions to chair also, one of which started in twenty minutes so I had to run again, grab some lunch and prepare the introductions.

Jan Jaap Cannegieter was the track I was chairing and I got to sit and relax a bit while listing to this pleasant track about 'tester: come out of your cave'. Although some statistics came around (from a survey) and as I said I'm not a fan of statistics, I liked the message and the thought process that came from these numbers. And I really agreed with the statement that we should develop more political skills as testers, I'm a big fan of learning and gaining non-typical-testing skills to enhance my testing work.

I didn't get to the testing lab again, which was rather a shame though, since it was really a good place to be and learn. I really don't know anymore what I did between this session and the session I had to chair next. I know I wandered around and visited some more expo, but the rest? I haven't got a clue.

After the afternoon break I chaired Mauro Garofalo. He was an Italian guy who spoke in English for the first time. He had a good topic, about combining open source tools with COTS tools, but alas not all of it came out in the most flourishing way due to the language barrier and he really was a smart guy, only nervous as hell. It also was a bit short. I tried to make it a bit longer by trying to get to some discussion and ask questions, but I had to end the session after 35 minutes already. I picked up the Maveryx info though an I'm really going to check that one out.

I had a bit of stone in my stomach to go to the keynote. I was afraid that it would bring more doom-messages of the end-of-the-testing-world or something. I like my job, so I'm not a fan of hearing all this 'it's going to end, because I'm just a blanket' stuff. I take my job seriously and I think it takes real skills to do it in a good way. So being called a security blanket (or a snugly Slanket for my part) isn't exactly what I like to hear.
Luckily I was wrong. Daryl told about communities to make a change in the Deutsche Bank organization. I really liked the view from this perspective, helped me perceive some better in persona's. There was somebody twittering that it shouldn't be in a testing conference, I was just thinking "You're not getting the message here, you seem daft" it is exactly this what makes this conference having an added value; giving different views from different perspectives.

After closing I didn't go to the North West Testing gathering directly. Paul Gerrard was hosting a debate at the Midland Hotel about the future of the testing profession. I decided to hang out with Derk-Jan de Grood who apparently had the same plans as I had for that evening. So we went to the debate together. It was a 'fishbowl' like session. I found it a fun session, although some attendees sat on the chair and kept sitting there and didn't give other people a chance to speak their mind and claiming all the speaking-space. Enough people spoke their mind in the end though and I'm very interested to read about it and see what of this maybe comes back in the new book that Paul Gerrard is going to publish in a short while.

Derk-Jan and I set out to grab something to eat on the way to the North West Testing gathering. We ended up in a place called 'Eden'. It had a really good choice of foods and I enjoyed a really good cocktail with ginger and some roasted pork belly, while Derk-Jan's choice was a pizza with an Eastern twist. We were a bit surprised and felt a bit akward to find out it was THE gathering spot of transsexuals as groups of 'women' came in an gave us some strange looks. Time to head out to the NW Testing Gathering and grab a sturdy beer...

When entering the Lass O'Gowry it was almost a shame to have to climb the stairs to the gathering as live music was played in the bar. I felt at home though, cause I'm a bit of a StarWars nut and the hallway to the gathering room was full of StarWars stuff. The presentations were well over but the screen still showed silly, amazing and fun error-messages so I stared at the screen for a bit. I also had some good talks with some of the testers there and enjoyed the great atmosphere that was there. After finishing my pint, Derk-Jan and I decided to get back to our hotels. I still had to do my weather map for tomorrow's weather-report and Derk-Jan still had to do some editing for his movies in the session. It had been a long day and there was still (only?) one to go...

EuroSTAR 2011 diaries - day one

2011-11-27T13:05:00.001+01:00

I arrived in Manchester very late and shared a cab to the hotel with Tim Koomen en Jan Jaap Cannegieter. Well almost, they were at Jury's Inn and I was at Castlefield so I got to go on the Cab a couple of minutes longer. The staff of the hotel was most pleasant, they even opened up the cask of Strongbow's for me so I could relax a bit after my journey. The room was basic and a bit outdated, but it had all I needed and it was clean, so I was happy with it. Besides that I got a good view on the museum of Industry and Science and the possibility to have a swim in the pool or do some exercising in the gym, bot of which I would not get to this week for that matter.

On Tuesday I was planning to go to the conference centre at about eleven, but Geoff Thompson tweeted that I should be at the centre at nine for the dress rehearsal of the Opening and the Good Morning Manchester sessions. I've been involved in this thing since the beginning of this year or actually since Expo:QA in Madrid november 2010. I was sitting next to Geoff at Isabel Evans' keynote where she mentioned a sort of morning show for some fun in testing, like 'Good morning with Geoff and Nathalie' as we were the first two that were in sight. Geoff and me (and Graham Thomas) went a bit further on this concept and it grew to Good Morning Manchester. I got to be the director, which evolved to 'the teacher' role to keep the guys to their time-schedule during the GMM-session, there's a lot more to it then meets they eye at first glance. I also get to do a 'weather report' on Wednesday and Thursday morning to highlight some of the stuff during the conference, but more of that later.

So instead of getting there at eleven I had to be there at nine, which cut my lie-in morning a bit short and I actually had to hurry to get there. And although I was a bit short on my coffee intake (which always makes me bit grumpy) I had a great reception by the Qualtech team and the program team. It was way better than any coffee could accomplish, certainly regarding the coffee they make at the centre, which isn't awful, but isn't great either.We did two full and three half-runs of the opening session, still making some adjustments if they worked better than the original plan, it looked a bit like an agile project.

And then suddenly it was almost half pas one and people started coming in the auditorium. Adrenaline started flowing through my veins, I can only imagine what Derk-Jan, Morton, Graham and Geoff must have felt like standing behind the screen waiting for their grand entrance. It went great! The smokemachine worked perfectly (there were some worries there :-) ) and the lighting was done as it should be. Timing was almost disaster though, the interaction with the audience caused them to run over time almost 20%, despite me waiving my ruler franticly from the front row.

After that there was the first keynote from dr. Richard Sykes. I'm not sure weather I got it all, maybe I should lay off the twittering a bit more and get my attention to the speaker a bit more. On the other hand, when I'm very interested in a topic, I don't get to twittering a lot, so I guess I didn't find it THAT interesting. I catched some phrases about new tech being of influence on our work in testing, but that was about it. Or maybe I was just still 'into' the zone about the opening of the conference itself.

The program I set up for myself today was:

Opening and keynote (have to be there for a specific reason...)
Acceptance testing at it's best (Erik Boelen)
The pursuit of Quality (Paul Gerrard)
Keynote and drinks
Attending Intechnica drinks? (I know they have the FunTESTic cocktail developed, but am not sure wheater I'm invited actually :-&)

I almost got to keep to that program.
I went to Eric Boelen's track, although I came in a bit late and had to be out of there a bit early because I had to do EuroSTAR TV recordings. I actually forgot a bit about them but luckily my phone reminded me of the event. The Qualtech team asked me to do something spontaneous, so I got in there and planned on doing something on how nostalgia of EuroSTAR in Manchester 2006 still triggered me to stuff now. I didn't expect for me to have an hour slot, I'm not THAT a spontaneous person I could just flick my sleeve and have stuff in there to fill an hour, so I got to a twenty minutes and felt okay about the recording.
Eric Boelen's track was held at one of the 'Exchange' rooms and it was packed full, there were even people sitting on the floor at the back of the room, which seemed odd to me, because you won't be able the slides and speaker from there, but I guess it's the content that counts. What I heard made sense, Eric is a pleasant speaker with an enthusiastic story to tell and this time was no different.

After the recordings I was on time to attend the track by Paul Gerrard. I like his tracks and I don't think I ever missed one whenever he was on a conference to speak and I was there. Last year was about axioms, which was very interesting (and there's also a little book available about this), so I was very curious what this one was about. Pursuing Quality.. chasing tornado's or just hot air. I could relate to the topic, about that same things can be perceived differently by different persons; rain could be a blessing for a farmer but a disaster for a tourist for example. Then there was a whole piece about models and what the impact of that is on testdesign and perception of stakeholders. Not all new, but a good shake-up for the brain.I noticed I didn't twitter that much during the session :-)

The last keynote of the day was that of Gojko Adzic 'Death to the testing phase'. SLIDES HERE. I read Gojko's 'Specification by Example' and liked it, so I was interested in what he had to say. I liked the refreshing style of the slides at first, but after a while I got annoyed with them in a way, it was a bit belittling, like I was in kindergarten and only would understand his story by these simplistic drawings. And then he showed a joke about Berlusconi and women, my first reaction was that I found it funny, but then I actually hated it and then my state of mind was already set in a kind of way and I didn't think it would get better. The main thing I got from it was actually that I should look up my more then ten year old schoolbooks about iterative stuff and I would read the same stuff as I heard in this keynote. So yes, I got SOMETHING out of it, but it was a reminder to browse some old books.

So I was really looking forward to the conference drinks and meet up with people. I felt like I've been doing loads of stuff and actually hadn't had time to do it all satisfactory to my liking. Maybe my head was just buzzing too much with all the impressions from today. I planned going to the Cloud23 party also. But after drinks I had to get back to the auditorium and practice the GMM session for tomorrow, and when that was finished it was already late and on my invite it stated that the drinks in Cloud were till 19.00 and it was already passed that so I left it for what it was and decided to go and have dinner with the program guys. We had a really pleasant evening at a place called OXnoble, which was a gastro-pub and had really good food (2 course meal for 10 pounds). I had sausage and mash and some lovely bread pudding and was happy. Went to my hotel and fell asleep almost immediately.

EuroSTAR 2011 diaries - prologue

2011-11-21T08:43:00.001+01:00

I can't believe today is already the day I'm flying to EuroSTAR again. I have my bags packed, printed the timetable, tickets and reservation documents and am ready as can be. Alas I still have to work half a day... I like my job, don't get me wrong, but when I'm really looking forward of going somewhere like EuroSTAR, it's agony, maybe you know the feeling. The tweets on #esconfs stream don't help either... they're just enlarging the feeling of wanting to BE THERE already, but it'll have to do, at least I get to get into the conf-feeling a bit before hand.

So let me share my program (as it is now - still open for last-minute changes though)

Monday.
Arriving at Manchester (hoping that the fog won't delay me too much)
Speaker/ chair meetup at Cloud23
**UPDATE: arriving in Manchester AFTER meetup; due to fog flight is cancelled....

Tuesday.
Opening and keynote (have to be there for a specific reason...)
Acceptance testing at it's best (Erik Boelen)
The pursuit of Quality (Paul Gerrard)
Keynote and drinks
Attending Intechnica drinks? (I know they have the FunTESTic cocktail developed, but am not sure wheater I'm invited actually :-&)

Wednesday.
Opening and keynote (have to be there for a specific reason...)
Minitracks (Martin Mussman and Jackie McDougall)
Afterlunch tracks - visiting testlab, do some conferring
checking first moments of Houston we've got a problem (Maurice Siteur and Rien v Vugt) and sneak out to finish with Social software development
Tester get out of your cave (chairing this one)
conferring time, checking the expo, maybe visit the lab again
Mixing open and commercial tools (chairing this one)
Keynote and closure
Attending North West Testing Gathering (meetup)

Thursday
Opening and keynote (have to be there for a specific reason...)
Architecture testing (Peter Zimmerer)
Dashboards:... (Michael Bolton)
The challenges we face... (Lloyd Roden)
Catching a high speed train (my own track)
Keynote and finishes
Attending Galadinner

I would love to see your programs too! so please share if you dare :-)
And for now... back to work.

Portland and Pacific NW Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) 2011

2011-10-23T12:49:00.008+02:00

In the beginning of the year I got the news that my paper 'Unusual Testing; lessons learned from being a casualty simulation victim', was selected for the PNSQC programme.
I couldn't believe my luck, me - not being out of Europe ever before - got to go to India (April this year) AND to the United States in the same year, I was SO excited!

SATURDAY
October 8th I board the plane to Portland (yes, in NL we're lucky to have a direct flight to PDX) and 10 hours later I set foot on US soil for the very first time.
I found my way rather quickly; I found the airport and US infrastructure all very organised and the MAX transportation system in the 'Rose city' which Portland also is called, is very efficient (not to mention affordable in comparison to Dutch public transport fares). So barely an hour later I could drop my stuff in my hotel room.

It was very nice weather in Portland and fall was just setting in, so the trees (the Portland area is very green) had just started to change hues from green to orange, red and browns. I just HAD to visit a US StarBucks. Everybody who knows me a little, knows I'm a SB addict. There were two in the vicinity of my hotel (one even with a drive-thru!) and I walked to the one that was furthest so I could check out the surroundings a bit. I ordered a Pumpkin Spice Latte (alas not available in NL, but they should be!) and a piece of Portland Coffee Cake and sat down at one of the tables on the outside patio, catching some of the warm sun rays and observing the Portland ways-of-life.

After the vitamine-SUN injection I set out for a quick nap, I hadn't slept in the plane and in NL it was about night time by now, so I figured it would be a good idea. After the nap I ventured out to a place called 'Chipotle', a bit of organic-style Mexican fast-food place. I recommend small-portion eaters like me, to first check out what other people are ordering, the portion are HUGE! I decided to order a kids-meal (which seemed odd to the people behind the counter, since they tried to sell me an adult-meal twice and asked me whether I was sure I only wanted 1 taco). The meal was served with a child-size beverage, which is not 0,2ltr as in NL, but a 0.4ltr.

SUNDAY
Sunday was a bit more rainy, but I set out to the Portland centre. The MAX transportation system is FREE within the centre zone (cool!), so you can get around without paying a cent. I figured I would check out where the conference was held first, which was at the World Trade Centre, but there was a Marathon and a demonstration so I had to walk all the way around to get there. I noticed how well the Marathon was organized and all contesters got a foil blanket on arrival, a rose and a medallion, the last mile 'victory style' music was played through speakers to encourage the walkers.
At around 11 a.m. the shops opened up and I took the oppurtunity to buy some souvenirs (way cool Oregon Beavers sweatshirts!) and some cheap jeans at Macy's which were on sale. I grabbed a late lunch, single SteakHouse burger (which was enormous) at a place called Carls'Jr. I visited another StarBucks on my way back to the hotel and worked a bit on some mails in my room and took another nap. In the evening I visited the hotel bar and checked out the sports, the chickenstrips and had some very cool conversations with some people there. It's great to find out that the people I met in the US are so nice and conversational. I found out that Oregon has some great red wines, especially the Pinot was way better (and a bit more full and heavy) than the European Pinot's. I got into bed early, since my internal clock was totally off now and I wanted to be somewhat fresh for my performance at the PNSQC conference.

MONDAY
I got into the US commuting life early in the morning. Starting off with another StarBucks visit (those Pumpkin Spice Latte's are really good :-) ) and walked to the MAX.
The World Trade Centre, and especially the registration desk of the PNSQC conference was already buzzing with people coming in. Starting time? 07.30.
I was greeted by the registration team and it was no trouble at all to find my badge, since it was - as usual- the badge that was printed to the edges, it was decorated with a huge ribbon stating 'SPEAKER', so it was hard to miss I guess.
In the reception hall (located on Mezzanine level) I was surprised to find that StarBucks coffee was served and how cosy the venue looked despite the size of the conference centre itself.

NB: I have only written down my perceptions of the tracks, if you want a comprehensive content of the tracks, please visit: www.pnsqc.org. As I understand the papers and abstracts will be published there.

Bill Gilmore opened the conference in the Auditorium (Bridge level) and I was surprised to suddenly find Julian Harty sitting next to me, but the pieces of the puzzle fell in place when I heard that Goranka Bjedov had fallen ill and Julian was back-up for the opening Keynote. Julian had both an entertaining and interesting talk about the Future of Quality. What is our perception on faults, bugs and errors when software is free of charge? There seems to be a correlation on tolerability and the price of the software that we pay was my thought on that. I was especially impressed by two mentioned bugs. One was of a cable bill of a 17-figure sum that totalled almost 2000 times the national debt (US-debt that is): 23 quadrillion, 148 trillion, 855 billion, 308 million, 184 thousand and 500 dollars. The other was a charge for a pack of cigarettes: 23 quadrillion!

After a half-hour break in the Mezzanine, I went to Julie Fleischer from Intel. Who had a track on 'Volunteer armies can deliver quality too: Achieving a successful result in OpenSource, Standards Organizations and other Volunteer projects'. I found her presentation interesting, although the motivational aspects she mentioned (acts of kindness, non-financial stuff) also very applicable for commercial organizations.

The presentation after that was of Alan Page; an introduction to Customer Focused Test Design. I was interested to hear this one, because I wanted to figure out if 'we' in NL have a different perception or maybe run behind on this subject. But as the track went on, I didn't hear anything revelationous. What I heard was that that one should commence with non-functional quality attribute testing (such as performance, reliability and security) that have an impact on the customer perception of quality as early as possible. Maybe I'm a - as he called it- tester with a generous toolbox, but for me, that's not an eye-opener. Although I found it nice that the focus on that was a bit refreshed.

During the lunch there were Deep Dive Birds of a feather sessions, but I just took my time to have a relaxing lunch. In the afternoon I would be speaking myself and I needed to sit down and take-five. Again I had eyes as big as a saucer when I saw the sandwiches. In NL we have a sandwich with one small layer of roastbeef, maybe a slice of tomato and a leaf of lettuce, this is a sandwich with at least 3 cm thick roastbeef, mayonaisse, lettuce and tomato on it. The sandwich seems to be just to be there to hold the beef. And then there's also the bag of chips, a piece of fruit and a can beverage. I decided to cut my sandwich in two re-package the second half for later that day. I had some nice conversations with people about Agile/ SCRUM and how it was used within the organizations of my table-mates.

After lunch I visited the 'Lifecycles' track, which started with 'Increasing Software Quality with Agile Experiences in a non-technically-focussed organization' by Aaron Hockley from the Multnomah County, Oregon (of which Portland is part of btw). It was nice to hear about this case-study of Agile and how a relatively small IT department coops within a governmental user-organization.
After that it was my turn. I was nervous as hell. I just can't seem to shake those shivers no matter how many times I go before a group, and this time was extra special since I didn't have a clue on how a US crowd would react on my talk.

In NL for example it isn't customary to leave the room before the talk is over, but in US people walk in-and-out the track, for a NL speaker that might seem a signal that you're doing a bad job and you could freeze totally because of this, but that doesn't have to be the case at all in US, it's just the way of doing things here. I only had one 'leaver' at one time, and that was at the start of my 'delivery video' and he was male, so it was totally understandable :-) (I warned about the sometimes gruesome imagery ;-) ) The feedback was positive afterwards so I was pleased with the performance overall, despite the fact that there was no video sound and I had to improvise with holding my microphone close to my laptop's speakers.

After again a break. I visited 'Inspiring, Enabling and driving Quality Improvement' by Jim Sartain of McAfee and 'Audit Effectiveness - Assuring Customer Satisfaction' by Jeff Fiebrich from Freescale Semiconductor Inc. Both tracks had very interesting aspects, I liked the last one best, because it had the focus on audits which isn't a usual 'suspect' in most quality conferences. I recommend reading both the papers, because they both contain good stuff.

If you think that at 05.30 the conference is over, think again. Now the conference social kick-off with the poster-paper sessions begins till 08.00 PM. This part was also open to the public and several speakers, me included, and also non-speakers had an opportunity to present their post-papers. It's a sort of 'market' where you have your poster behind you on the wall or on a stand and where you get to talk about your subject with visitors to your paper. It gives a very intimate and free-format kind of happening. At 07.30 I had my eye-lids almost hanging on my toes though, and I decided to break things of and sneak-out to my hotel.

TUESDAY
I'm getting the hang of this commuting with a StarBuck quick-stop stuff and arrived at the WTC early. That was also because I wanted to make a better poster. I had totally not thought of bringing a poster to a poster-paper session (dumb huh) and yesterday I improvised a very simple flip-over sheet with my laptop on a table, today I wanted to have a better more attractive poster during my sessions. So I got some markers, a clean flipover paper and found myself a quiet place to be a bit creative.
I was very curious about a pink box from a place called 'Voodoo Donuts' that passed in my eye-sight. And boy you WANT to see that. If you ever get to go to Portland you should certainly visit this Voodoo Donuts joint. I got hold of a 'fruitloop donut' (which was even too sweet for my sweettooth :-D) and it was an experience. They even got 'maple nut bars with chocolate and baked bacon!!

The first keynote was that of Rob Sabourin from Amibug.com. He had this great concept of stories and when he told a story he had an image of campfire on the screen. The keynote itself had the title Value Sync. And one thing that got anchored in my mind was that a practice in one context copied 1-on-1 to another context won't work.

After the break I visited 'Michael Bolton's ' standard and deviations. I have my own thoughts on the subject and they aren't that of Michael, to say at least. Some of you might have picked up on some Twitter (@FunTESTic) discussions on this during the conference. Although I don't disagree with the content of the presentation, I don't agree with it totally either. Michael stated that the standard was a 100-page document, I know it's only 26. And although it seems from the presentation the standard itself is a bad and evil thing, I keep with the fact that it's not the standard itself but how people and organizations USE it that's the problem. What I also find a 'thing' is that although it's intended to be a guideline, the standard is presented as a mandatory rulebook. I say: if you don't agree with it or can't use it, just don't and leave it be, pursue your own ideas instead of spending (wasting) so much effort on burning it down, but that's my opinion.

After the (double session) track there was a lunch break (again with a huge lunch 'wrap'). I grabbed the opportunity to participate in the 'lightning talks', which were held during the lunch and did a statement from my Ethics Debate. Although it was only one statement, the ten minutes seemed too short. The conference attendees made a great debater audience and the interaction was great.

I went to 'No Test Levels Needed in Agile Software Development' after lunch, I intended not to see the whole session in advance so I left half way. The one thing that I noticed that when Leo van Aalst asked the question on how many people did 'Agile' more then 80% raised hands. When he showed the Agile Manifesto and asked again how many used this 'purely' and thus did 'Agile', less than 10% raised hands... Saying Agile doesn't mean Doing Agile it seems.
Ian Dees had an interesting title 'Dirty Tricks in the name of Quality' so I went to that track after Leo's. I noticed what a pleasure it was to listen to this speaker. Fun and clear, entertaining. I had a good time. And although the title might looked provocative, it wasn't all that provocative in content but I found it very educational with loads of examples (certainly recommended to check the paper!)

The last break with a poster-paper session was very well visited. I had some great discussions and had a great time explaining how I got to software testing to casualty simulation and back again.
After that I went to 'Hard Lessons About Soft Skills - understanding the psyche of the software tester'. Marlena Compton from Mozilla had a bit of bad luck because her microphone ran out of batteries, but she did a good job on the presentation where I especially loved the way that she incorporated so much of her own and made it a personal story. 'If people say why are you angry, and you are not at all' you might start wondering...
The last normal track that I visited was that of BJ Rollison from MicroSoft on 'Paramerized Random Test Data Generation'. I had to make a switch from soft-skills and processes to this very hand-ons technical en practical track. I recommend reading the paper, it's very interesting and educational for those of you who are into testdata generation!

The last keynote was a very cool one. 'The science of being HAPPY and Productive at Work' by Scott Crabtree (Happy Brain). The talk was an award winning one and was co-sponsored with the ROSE CITY SPIN. I really loved the keynote - 'BE KIND'/ 'FORGIVE', 'Savore life's joys' and 'focus on the present moment' where some phrased, but I figure that it's a very expensive speaker to have. A very good one to close my PNSQC experience!
The conference - for me- was over at 07.30 PM

THE AFTERMATH
It's raining a lot when I leave the WTC. I saw a twitter message that there is a brewery-bar called RockBottom not far from the venue, where PNSQC peeps are at. I didn't get to find them there, but I had an excellent 'October Fest Brew' and a 'home special brew' (which had loads of HOPS in it and was kind of citrussy).

The next morning I still had some hours to visit Portland once again, before having to go to the airport. So I decided to visit the Pearl District. I checked out the WholeFood grocery store (I have this funny thing of visiting supermarkets in countries that I go to :-) ) and walked around the area. I found a coffee bar and had an autumn spice latte (Peet's coffee). This district is full of fun shops and has a cool vibe. I recommend it to everybody who visits Portland.
After that short visit I returned to my hotel where I had some packing-puzzeling to do and some troubles closing my suitcase and then I returned to my Oregon-point-of-origin PDX. I grabbed a single 1/4 pound cheeseburger at Wendy's (Burger King eat your hart out!), which has a square burger ! (can you imagine you can also get a triple half-pound cheeseburger??? how do you eat that???) and I waited in the area-with-a-view on the plane that would bring me back to Amsterdam, intensely happy with the hit-and-run visit to US and the PNSQC conference.

The VacationPrep Blues

2011-09-06T07:15:00.002+02:00

Although I love my own vacation, there's one thing in the vacation season that I really dislike and that's the stress that comes from the extra activities you have to follow up on from the people that are on vacation.

I don't know why; but these activities always seem to have high priority (more than your own activities) and in the project where you are filling in, there always seems to be emergency situations that have to be managed, causing your own work to get delayed. I've been more than ever been busy telling my management that work is slow due to all - also very usefull and important - activities in other projects and workareas.

Some time ago I covered for two colleagues (and supporting the back-up of a third). I was constantly busy steering, giving people information and was doing loads of back-log administrative stuff. It was extra work since the project was getting behind schedule (this was already the case before I was involved mind!) and I'm appointed to fast-forward the activities and - because I seem to be doing stuff kinda right- more people are stopping by at my desk. Besides that, I also have to figure things out, since I'm not THAT insider in their projects.

I've come around loads of stuff that could probably have gone much easier if the transfer of the activities was done more structured. I'm the kind of person who loves structure and thrives on it and I'm a big fan of checklists. So in this blog I'm making the suggestion for all of you who go on vacation and who pass on work to other colleagues to make a checklist of things that are must-do's and won't do's.

Even if tasks or procedures might seem simple to you, it takes a lot of time when your back-up has to figure out this procedure because he/she isn't familiar with it. For example: in my case the standard defect logging procedure was clear, but I soon learned that some specific agreements were made and it cost me time to exactly get the process right. When I made the remark to my colleague about it when he came back, the answer was that the activity was so common for him that he hadn't even thought of writing it down.

The next thing might help: when you are planning your vacation, note down your activities during the week before your departure and describe the particulars of them.

Had a meeting? Make sure the minutes are available and write down any information that seems relevant and isn't in the minutes (such as: J.Doe might still have some questions about X or Selma will be coming by a couple of times to ask about, etc). This makes your back-up prepared and reduces uncertainties with other parties. Remember that your back-up is perceived, just like you, as the person who gives insight in the quality of the product, not knowing answers or not be able to answer them on a short notice, is not very comforting for your stakeholder(s).

Don't leave high-priority tasks unfinished or unmanaged. If you aren't able to finish, make sure you inform your recipient about it (as well as your back-up) and try to delegate the task to a colleague who is well informed or communicate that the task will finished when you get back.

Don't rely on your back-up too much: he/she might not have the same sense of urgency or might pick up the task completely different than you would have done, bringing you further from home.
Remember that your back-up still has his/her own job to do and is not able to squeeze in your full-weeks worth of tasks too. So don't make promises based on the same progress speed as you normally have: a task or activity will take longer to complete.

Some food for thought to close with: Everything you aren't clear about, haven't written down or have discussed with your back-up is a carte blanche. Things you had organized can turn into a whole different approach, set-up or deliverable as you had in mind. Your back-up will try to get the job done, but it might give you loads more (corrective) work to be done upon return.

Holidaytime, readingtime

2011-08-03T12:29:00.002+02:00

I'm on holiday and nothing more relaxing than to sit back in a garden chair and catch up on some reading, so that's what I did.

During the last half year I got two smaller books from Dutch testing colleagues that I still got on my to-read list and I got a book that I still had to finish so I grabbed the three, poured myself a large cool glass of (organic) pear-apple juice and started reading.

The first was finishing 'What got you here, won't get you there' by Marshall Goldsmith. (http://www.amazon.com/What-Got-Here-Wont-There/dp/1401301304/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312367632&sr=8-1). I started reading this one as a recommended book from my coach in a leadership development program. Although I'm lazy regarding the whole setup of getting feedback and follow-up and probably won't follow the whole path described in the book. I have sure (already) grabbed some stuff from this book to apply in my daily practices and it made me aware of some habit I have that I might improve and gave me tips on how to do this. I think this is a must-read for all people who aspire to be better in their jobs, leadership and what not more, I even dare to go that far that it would be a good book for people who wan't to improve their personal lives, some of the examples in the book are also good for some homeimprovement.

The next one was the Dutch 'De held die voor mijn nachtrust zorgt' by Derk-Jan de Grood (the hero that takes care of that I have a good night's sleep)(http://www.valori.nl/de_echte_wereld/de_held_die_voor_mijn_nachtrust_zorgt).
It's a small book that is published (as first one) in the Valori, real-life series. Small books that make the theories of things applicable in practice or in other words; how it applies in day to day practice.
Derk-Jan's book describes some good stuff and makes it undertandable not for only 'us testers' but also for other disciplines in the IT. It focusses on having grip in the development process (on the project) and providing comfort within the organisation, most of it from the human perspective (like perception, feeling and emotions) in stead of theoretical models.
The material is clear and simple to understand (for me at least), and is accompanied by examples from some experts known in the testing community. Although most of what I read was 'an open door' for me (and I hope it would be for most of us who are into testing, testcoordination or testmanagement) the book is a good read to refresh the memory, to re-think (an reflect) on approaches that we apply and food-for-thought on the perceptions of stakeholders in our projects that we might have overlooked over time. The size of the book makes it a handy and easy approachable reference.

After reading I couldn't help to still have the feeling 'and who is that hero then..' it just seemed to miss something. Maybe my expectancy was that it would be more a description of what the hero does, more written from the person (that would be the hero) view. I also missed this connection in the concluding chapter. I would have expected something '.. applying this and that, makes the X my hero that takes care of... etc. ', now it was more a book full of (mind: usefull!) techniques and theories, but it just wasn't applied to 'the hero' that is mentioned in the title. IT gave me a bit 'I didn't just get what I expected' feeling that would immediately inspire me to grab the material in the book and become the hero in my organisation myself. In short; the question I formed in my mind 'What can I do to become this hero' wasn't answered in an obvious way.

The last book was that of Ard Kramer and Hans de Rooij: 'Het Q-mysterie' (also a Dutch book; the Q-mystery)(http://www.eclipseit.nl/over-ons/nieuws/categorie/Algemeen/titel/publicatie-het-q-mysterie).
First of all; the book is beautiful to see. Very impressive artwork and very high-quality glossy paper, it's a treat to just flip through the pages.
But don't judge a book by it's cover right?

The book is a very easy to read one. The examples are done by metaphores and it makes it really understandable and accessible. It's contents is not about theory, but focusses on the need of quality(level) within an organisation, related to its goals and why testing should thus be applied in stead of applying a bunch of strategies, techniques and templates to coherse some (false) feeling of quality. The main goal is to make the connection between testing and acquiring the optimal return of investment. The main tool to provide insight in the exact need for quality for product or organisation is the Product Quality Strategy. The PQS, which is short for the Product Quality Strategy, is a guideline which uses the ISO 9126 quality characteristics 'Functionality, Usability, Efficiency, Maintainability, Portability and Reliability' to make a diagram of the exact needs regarding these characteristics for the component of organisation.
Although I could follow most of the text regarding this concept; the diagrams and figures where mostly confusing, there was even one diagram with ecliptic figures in it, where I still haven't figured out how to read it. I guess that when you have the theory in mind and know it by heart, it's easy to understand those (beautiful) graphics, but in my case; it just confused me and should have more information in them to explain exactly what the (parts of) the images meant.

But honestly: The book is very pleasing, both in a graphical way and in the content way. It has really applicable stuff in it and I figure Eclipe (company of the authors) might also have an oppurtunity here to develop a workshop or short course to be able to use the PQS. I think the material is really applicable and very usefull to apply on a daily basis. It won't (have to/ should) take up much (valuable) time and will certainly help to focus on the exact needs. Ard and Hans did a good job!

Tip for both Derk-Jan as Ard/ Hans: consider publishing your books in English too... I think it would really benefit our non-Dutch colleagues as well.
And... I would REALLY like to thank both Derk-Jan as Ard for handing me the books (with a personal message in the cover!) to read (and apply..): THANK YOU!

And for know... I'll get back to my garden chair with my next 'want to reads' :
Terry Pratchett's 'I shall wear midnight', some novelettes, Personal Branding by Frank Kwakman and 'Managing the Testing Process' by Rex Black.

Ti-hi-hi-hime is on my side.. yes it is!

2011-07-24T13:29:00.003+02:00

Next thing you know, you're more than one month further in time, without any blog entries. I had inspiration enough, but it was just the time and my priorities; blogging is fun to do, but also takes up time which I had to use otherwise.

It started with the preparations of the Webinar for EuroSTAR on Unusual Testing, which didn't take extensive time, but some nonetheless.

I started on a new assignment at ING, which took some adjustment but also some learning. I like to be thorough so I studied on some aspects of the domain I'm now working in. I always find it handy to know something of the business, it is just that I find I can do my testing more in context. So that took some of my time.

I found that domain knowledge, like in my previous assignment, is crucial for design of my test cases, just having an extensive testing knowledge won't do it all. I know I should also use the domain experts to keep me from having to catch up with new domains I'm joining over and over again, but it's just the availability from those experts, the communication with those experts, it's just going much more smoothly in my work as I know something of the domain, so I take my time to learn.

I also went to a meeting of the BCS SIGIST in London to do my Ethics Debate. I know the stuff by heart, but still take time each time I do the debate to prepare, like I also do with all other presentations. So that took some time too. And after the meeting I had to catch up on work again to make up for the lost day :-)
The meeting itself was excellent though! The location is in London, for me unusually usual; royal college of obstetricians and gynaecologists (for people who don't know me: I play the casualty simulation victim role of a woman in labour distress on weekly basis in a hospital in Amsterdam). Set up is small and intimate, which encourages networking amongst the visitors. Catering is very good as well and I got a gift (beautiful ball pen) which I'm very happy with, because it is a very pleasant pen to write with and for me good quality material. Also I found the materials in the handout packages very well attended to) and last but not least, the presentations where good. So I was a happy camper!

I've been doing homework for a training program on leadership and got engaged in some very interesting reading as a spin-off from this program ('What got you here, won't get you there' from Marshall Goldsmith), that also took some time.

I got sidetracked a bit because I got really into the series 'True Blood', that took some more time, which was also quality time, because I got to snuggle up on the couch with my husband watching the different episodes. And after that I just HAD to read the novels by Charlaine Harris (Sookie Stackhouse series) :-) It's not always about testing, but sometimes also about leisure in my life.

I also got selected on the PNSQC program. Which is terrific, but also takes a lot of prep-work. This conference is very extensive in poster-papers and whitepapers that go with the presentation itself, and I took very much care of writing the deliverables. That took a lot of time. And I was also very lucky to have two excellent reviewers for my paper; I'm still very much a 'Denglish' writer, so this was very necessary :-) (Reviewing Rules! - as in my Unusual Testing presentation I also state: “Another major issue is ‘language’, ’terminology’ and ‘jargon’. Not all participants speak English and not all those who claim they do – for example the Dutch- speak it in such a way that the English would necessarily recognize it”)

And I grabbed some time for reading all the different other blogs and e-magazines (like TestingCircus and TeaTime with testers). So that took all my remaining time :-)
Well that's all the time I have for now.. 'see' you next time.

Egotripping helps...

2011-05-22T15:42:00.002+02:00

It has been ages since I blogged. Last time was when the EuroSTAR VideoSTAR vote had just opened, which is almost two months ago. Alas I didn't win the competition, but I had tremendous fun making the movie and had some thrills during the voting period. Congratulations to Malini Mohankumar, Sierra Atlantic, India, who will be telling something about Teamwork within a testing team.

Speaking of India, the last two weeks of April I visited the Capgemini offices in Puné, India. I was simply astonished by the country I saw, charmed by the people I met and shocked by the traffic :-). It was terribly hot in Puné, with temperatures sometimes rising above 40 degrees Celsius. I was amazed about the discipline, expertise and eagerness of the people at the Capgemini Global Learning Center. I saw people who developed tools which where brilliant to say at least. I met a group of freshers which were so full of curiosity and where so enthusiastic to interact with the Dutch Freshers I guided and I was awed by the technical expertise of the employees there. I was even in the opportunity to share some of my knowledge by giving classes, which I found a wonderful experience.
Was it all good? well uhm.. no. I got sick, very sick. It took me a week and a half after a returned home to recuperate and be my normal self again and I'm still using pro-biotics to get to my full strength again.

Before leaving for India I visited the Dutch Testing Conference in 't Spant, Bussum. In stead of being a regular attendee, I volunteered to be a booth personnel. This is a very different experience of a conference, where you get to meet loads of people and interact. The downside is that you don't get to see much of the tracks. But luckily the DTC is - for me- much more interesting for interactions than for the tracks, which are more highlevel and scoped for clients than for testers. The Dutch Testing Conference is truly a very nice conference with loads of opportunities to have conversations accompanied by great snacks, food and drinks. If I'm able, I'll attend next year's edition too, as I did last year's edition too.

After my visit to India, I also did my Ethics Debate again at the KVIV in Antwerp. It was a very nice debate, with a small group of very fanatic debaters, Erik Boelen was my co-host there. Prize for the best debater was a piece of a local delicacy from where I live; Beemster (cheese). Apparently it was a prize to fight for, since everybody participated in the debate actively. I heard some great arguments which again proves to me that Ethics in Software Testing are all about the hues of gray, personal feelings and defining and setting agreements. I still would love to do this debate 'overseas' to see if there are marginally big differences in the debates, time will tell if I'm able to do this in US and Asia in the future.

Between my traveling I've also been writing some stuff. I did an article for Testing Circus about my casualty simulation stuff, which was rather large, so I figure they still have to divide it into smaller portions before it gets published. The article was also published in 'AppWorks' (http://www.appworks.nl/)in a Dutch translation and I got some very positive feedback on that one, so that made me proud.
I also did a smaller article for Tea Time with Testers; about how jokes can be used to explain software testing concepts. A more light reading and fun article. It got published in the May edition (http://www.teatimewithtesters.com/). I will publish the latter in some time in this blog, but first TeaTime gets the honors :-)

Another great event I attended was the TestNet SpringEvent. One of my younger colleagues; Eddy Bruin had a track there (theme being: New Heroes) about Ubiquitous Testing. I was so proud to see him pulling the presentation off!
The SpringEvent was at the same day the EuroSTAR programme was announced and YES!!! I'll be presenting at EuroSTAR this year. It's a track about my experiences at Fyra at NS Hispeed, a case-study about end-to-end testing. (Catching a high-speed train)
I'm also setting up the Hello Manchester concept together with the programme committee, which is great fun to do!

Some other very cool accomplishments:
I will be doing my 'Unusual Testing' track as webinar at EuroSTAR WebinarWeek and I get to be the kick-off webinar! (23rd of May, 2PM BST)
My paper got accepted for PNWQC, now I'm very busy with getting the funds together to get there :-), but I'm proud that I've made it so far. I also uploaded my poster-paper today just to make sure I have all items complete if I have the GO. This is SO cool!

This blog is very 'egotripping' I'm fully aware to that, but I guess, for me, this sharing how happy and proud I'm at my work and accomplishments is part of who I am, and I think everybody should be proud and share this when they accomplish something. It's sharing the happiness, passion and the proudness of our work that will make software testing even more a serious profession.

VideoSTAR vote open!

2011-03-28T11:55:00.003+02:00

From March 28th till April 1st the voting period for the VideoSTAR competition is open!
My movie is 'votable', so if you like it, please vote!

Some nice 'behind the scenes' bloopers:
The 'snot' in the movie, where I do the 'blair witch scene' is actually a green (kiwi/lime scented) soap. When I finished the scene and cleaned myself up I was a bit enthusiastic and I had a weird feeling in my nose for a couple of hours. Was very clean though.

When I just finished my make-up for the 'saw' sequence, the mailman arrived to deliver a package. Besides that I felt stupid (to say at least), the mailman didn't know if to laugh is socks off or to be very weary of a weird customer. I think he had a great story for home later that evening.

I got numerous mails from 'youtube' that my content had copyrighted stuff in it; I figured that if my acting was that good that it was considered a real scene from the actual movie that they should pass my information to the production companies. I never heard from them again :-)

Yes; the red paint from the 'saw' make-up did some staining on my face. Resulting in two very pinkish cheeks during the day. The black on my eyes resulted in a 'mascara' effect, which was actually quite nice. Although I wouldn't recommend this way of putting make-up on to anyone.

Husband got really annoyed by the editing of the music. I had to re-run it over and over again to get it somewhat right. It resulted in putting on the In Flames record afterwards though, to hear the complete song again without it being stopped all the time.

Well ... that was about it.
Again, please vote!

My 'Belgium Testing Days 2011' experience

2011-02-20T09:07:00.016+01:00

be prepared.. this is a loooooong blogpost :-)

An easygoing startup...

On Monday afternoon I embarked the Thalys to bring me to Brussels. I experienced a slight delay and the train didn't go any further then Brussels (midi), which was unfortunate for all travelers to Paris, but I was lucky because I was at least (almost) at my destination. After a short travel with the local train to Brussels Airport I arrived at the Sheraton where the Belgium Testing Days were to be held on Tuesday and Wednesday. This is my first time that I'm actually staying at the hotel which is at the same location as the conference, which is very convenient I experienced.
The room was okay; although I found that an 'open wire' on my bedside lamp was quite dangerous and the TV didn't start up because of a resolution error (- always a tester I guess, checking the room :-) )
I found a very nice gesture on the desk from the Belgium Testing Days people: a small card bidding me welcome, a small box with Belgium Chocolates and a small bag with three different kinds of 'Jenever' (Gin).

That evening a dinner party was thrown at a restaurant in the center of Brussels. As it was Valentine's day we were a bit of weird company situated in the middle of the restaurant on a large table, surrounded by all these little 2 persons tables with couples. The three course dinner was excellent, the main course was ridiculously big though! I think my entrecôte alone was more than 600 grams and then there was veggies and potatoes there too.
Remco Oostelaar and John Bertens added a nice Valentine touch, by buying a whole bush of roses from a street merchant and handing each lady in the party one.
After a (bit abrupt) end of the dinner we were brought back to the hotel, I drank a hot choco in the hotel bar and went to bed. A large meal is truly exhausting!

An invigorating day one!

Tuesday, the first day of the conference, started at 08.30. José M. Díaz Delgado opened the conference and after that Mieke Gevers introduced the first keynote which was that of Johanna Rothman: "Lessons learned from 20 years of Managing Testing".

These are the tweets related to that keynote (deleted RT's):

lol at @johannarothman's tale of getting her English degree and why she decided to get a CS degree #btd11
http://yfrog.com/h4zyfoj : lessons learned from many years of managing testing by @JohannaRothman #btd11
Great stories and food-for-thought in this track by @JohannaRothman with much embedded fun! #BTD11
Not a new msg from @johannarothman, we can't "test quality in", but still an important message - we're info providers #btd11
"Software testing has everything to do with Product Information". .. Quote from @JohannaRothman 's keynote #BTD11
We need more diversity in testing since problems are more complex, @johannarothman #btd11 "the stuff we do is really hard!"
...#BTD11 : more information means more testing approaches
The stuff we tested back in the 70's... By @JohannaRothman Wasn't aware testing existed before I did ;-) #BTD11
Excellent idea for project managers by @JohannaRothman Use weather reports instead of traffic lights or smileys! #BTD11
.@johannarothman reports that weather reporting is better than traffic lights. That's cloud reporting I think #btd #btd11
#btd11 it's more accurate to use weather report status reports than traffic light status report : ever reported a 'green light' that..1/2
#btd11 ..was truly honest? Honest is yellow, but that's meaningless, actually it's always red..
If developers look at garbage all day, they create garbage. Interesting though from @JohannaRothman #BTD11
Because we provide information, testers have /significant/ power in he organization. @johannarothman #btd11
Good advice - end the multitasking. @johannarothman #btd11
#btd11 : saying "NO" is necessary tool
@JohannaRothman says End the multitasking.Maybe for us,but a completely new multitask enabled generation is growing up at the moment #BTD11
Fun exercise to say "No" or "Yes" in @johannarothman's keynote (and get used to exercises in keynotes, I'll do them tomorrow) #btd11
@johnbertens They're not multitasking enabled, but they may have a lower cost of switching (but not necessarily) #BTD11
Nice to see that @johannarothman refers to congruent communication based upon Virginia Satir. #BTD11
I don't know when quality became software test.- @johannarothman #BTD11 +1 from my side.
Like @johannarothman I prefer to be called a "software tester" than a "s/w quality engineer" #btd11
I wonder what @johannarothman says about "Quality Assurance engineer". #BTD11
.@financialagile for me, engineers are people who took a PE exam, & s/w is more creative/craft than engineering. #btd11

It was an invigorating start of the day. Johanna really has a way to put the energy into her audience. I liked the idea of 'losing the traffic light' metaphor and introducing the weather report status overview. Is certainly more detailed, honest and accurate. I was astonished by the effect of saying NO and YES to people while walking trough the room, it gave me a bit eerie feeling on how large an effect only a word can have.

After the non-scheduled, short break, I went to "Have you met the CAT?" by Jana Noack (iSQI) and Arjan Brands (Diaz & Hilterscheid). Being involved at training and certification at my employer, I'm alway interested in developments in this area. CAT stands for 'Certified Agile Tester' (http://www.agile-tester.org/). Alas there was a very small crowd. I think 'agile' and 'certification' are a combination that doesn't appeal to people; especially when Lloyd Roden is doing a track (last-minute fill in for Miguel Lopez who just didn't show up without notice) and a 'best practices' track (Tim A. Majchrzak) is held at the same time. The content of the 'CAT' track was however very interesting. The course seems very well thought off, good build up etc. The certification is not 'just another nice paper on the wall', the emphasis is on the content of the course, the certification is (part of) the evaluation at the end. Again it was expressed that the certification doesn't make you an Agile Tester, it's the experience and practice that does. I know the content will probably be under heavy debate within the testing community, but actually I think that this is a good starting point for whomever gets involved in Agile projects.

Again a break after this (a schedule one :-) ). Great coffee here and small pastries to go with it. The expo itself isn't that large, plenty of opportunity to visit all vendors during the different breaks. Breaks always seem short during conferences, there's always some interesting conversation to be involved in and time flies by during those talks. It's always so much fun to see all these discussions amongst the audience regarding the track they just visited, adding their own ideas, agreeing, disagreeing. This is what makes a conference truly worth visiting!

After the break I went to Susan Windsor's track about 'How to create Good Testers'. I'm a bit of a fan of Susan's talks, I chaired her workshop at EuroSTAR 2009 and have been to every track of her whenever she was scheduled on the program. I always pick something up, learn something, I think the tracks have great value.

Tweets related to Susan Windor's track:

Now at Susan Windsor's track "How to Create Good Testers" http://yfrog.com/h2emzlvj #BTD11

enjoying Susan Windsor's pragmatic approach and good practices, good testers at #BTD11

#btd11 : "if 2 people agree on everything all the time, you actually only need 1 of those 2" -thought -Susan Windsor. - difference is good

Susan Windsor sez u need domain space expertise to be valuable as a functional tester, also internal network in org #BTD11

Susan Windsor: take the responsiblity to improve, take responsibility for your own career... #BTD11

Susan Windsor: performance tester: scripting is *min* reqt; understanding arch is main reqt #BTD11

Susan Windsor: Test mgr=PM+test+people+test+troubled projects+high bs detector in many disciplines #BTD11

Susan Windsor: annoys her when recruiters/hiring mgrs look for certs instead of experience. +1 from me! #BTD11

Susan Windsor: certification may not be used as a meaningful measure... #BTD11

Susan Windsor: Don't slavishly follow an industry guru. Think!! +1 from me :-) #BTD11

Susan Windsor: Thinking matters whether transferring within or hiring from outside. #BTD11

Susan Windsor: You are responsible for your own career devt. #BTD11

And another slide from Susan Windsor: http://yfrog.com/h07rohyj #BTD11 -enjoy!

Susan Windsor: to be a guru is not about reading books, it's about DOING things... #BTD11

Want to retain your personnel: tip: recognize contributing value of person :-) I

agree! -#BTD11 Susan Windsor

@jostaerwe tho reading books is good too - I know too many testers who don't even do that! #btd11

@jostaerwe I agree and it's no coincidence that all guru's and rich people read tons of books #btd11

LUNCHTIME! There was a buffet (which had been hiding behind large doors in the expo space) with all kinds of colds, hots and a VERY appealing dessert table. The desserts actually looked THAT tasty that I was seriously considering skipping the healthy stuff and only dig into the sweets. But I was 'sensible', grabbed some salad and some very good stew and did some selected sweet hunting after that.

The next track I went to was that of Remco Oostelaar and John Bertens, they are my colleagues from Capgemini and - besides that their track appealed to me- I wanted to support them in their first international performance together. Remco and John set up their track as a 'play', impersonating two testers (each a specific rol of 'old skool tester' and 'next gen tester') from the 'Bank of Angels' which is about to start with Cloud services. Their discussion leads the audience through the cloud material and the discussions that arise regarding 'V-model', 'waterfall' and 'agile', on-the-fly they show an arsenal of Cloud tools to be used in testing.

Tweets regarding this track:

In this #btd11 session on cloud computing & agile we're encouraged to tweet! Nice multi-media preso already!

COO wants a test approach that will let business really sit in the driver's seat. How can we do that? #btd11

Love the role playing approach for this preso - very effective! #btd11 true to life!

now at: @RemcoOostelaar & @johnbertens track #btd11 "the business in the driver seat with cloud computing" - a dialogue: having fun!

Cloud offers multiple levels of services - infrastructure, data, software (and one I didn't catch) #btd11

Twitter is a cloud service. Other examples, SalesForce, GoogleDocs, MS Azure, Force.com, Google apps.... #btd11

Cloud advantages: flexibility, mobility, freedom to focus on innovation, less cost, don't need to worry about updates #btd11

Thanks @FunTESTic now I have twitter ids for @johnbertens and @RemcoOostelaar, loving their preso so far #btd11

We need to get out of the testing box in the old waterfall model @RemcoOostelaar @johnbertens #btd11 Oooh, more mindmaps!

Enjoyed realtime poll from @RemcoOostelaar and @johnbertens #btd11 Cloud wins!

It's a tough way to present this way: but Remco and John seem to pull it off! Having good time...#btd11

It's funny, I think of the "cloud" as something scary that I don't know about, but actually it's something we use daily #btd11

Cloud tools focus on collaboration between teams...#btd11 john&remco

Use the cloud for networking, communication, collaborating, sharing @RemcoOostelaar @johnbertens #btd11 connect biz/tech team

hmmm, the tool they are showing looks heavyweight for an agile project - but maybe looks are deciving #btd11

Personally I still prefer post-its on paper to the cloud tool. We can take photos of the post-its on paper 4 remote ppl IME. #btd11

External testing - SOASTA, LoadStorm, Browsermob (sometime I need to check these out) #btd11

If the tools these guys are showing are from their company then I'm disappointed this is turning into a commercial. #btd11

Cool, @RemcoOostelaar & @johnbertens are showing tools that worked for them, not a commercial. #btd11 :->

Glad to see @lisacrispin wondering about the value of the cloud in #softwaretesting ... It's not scary Lisa ! ;-) #btd11

Another 'must see' (for me) after the Cloudy business. Peter Morgan's "Poor defects BUG me". Peter is very punctual, well organized and well prepared (knowing him from the EuroSTAR 2010 committee). And it shows in his presentations. Everybody got hand-outs of the slides and Peter has really a good fluent story to tell.
Tweets from this track:

Now at Peter Morgan's track at #btd11 "poor defects BUG me!" http://yfrog.com/h2mznjj (bit hiding behind the desk) :-)

Quite interesting and hilarious components in Peter Morgan's track.. Brilliant! #btd11

Peter Morgan: "A large project will stand or fall on its defect tracking mechanism" #BTD11

Peter Morgan: "Writing better defects gets them fixed" #btd11

"raise problematic items as soon as possible" - Peter Morgan #btd11

Peter Morgan on issues, bugs, defects, ... whateva. Great presentation #btd11

"track your own defects. Hassle developers, and horse-trade. Buy them lunch" - Peter Morgan #btd11

There are many lessons in this track, if you ever get a chance to see it, please visit it. It's about the impact of good bug reporting, about the agreement of terms for defects used and the expectations regarding bugs/ defects in your organization.

Finally the track-choosing was over. I'm actually no fan of choosing tracks, because although I mostly choose a great track, I can't stop wondering if I'm not missing out on the other parallel tracks (which I'm certain I do). So I'm quite happy that the rest of this day is filled with keynotes.

The first keynote is that of Stuart Reid "Innovations in Software Testing". The talks from Stuart are always under heavy debate. It occurred to me that - even if his talk isn't about certification or ISO - people start (mostly negatively) discussing or pouting regarding this subject in relation to Stuart. (what's up with that?), there are always people who are in a particular mode and are not willing (or able) to break free from this thought line. I even caught a (rather popular) blogger on saying 'I'm not agreeing to this' on a comment which basically implies he's not agreeing on stuff he usually advocates. Stating that testing shouldn't be a profession... well I find this weird. Profession is - for me- most about craftsmanship and for somebody who is a very passionate about making testing all about craftsmanship stating that testing shouldn't be a true profession... hum...well... odd...
Stuart's talk was about innovation in testing, a view into the past, the present and the future. He showed some time lines which in basic showed that some inventions or initiatives that occur at some time, couldn't have occurred when something else hadn't been there to facilitate that development. It was a basic thought, not a whole extensive lecture on each development (like some people pointed out missing the Agile developments). He also pointed out that the testing community is build up in three different levels; testers that shouldn't be called testers, the larger middle bunch and the upper level (people who're into profession c.q. craftsmanship. He also stated (later in the lightning talks) that having a degree doesn't make you a tester, 20% of the pole dancers have a degree (not a pole dancer's degree mind!), 20% of the testers also have a degree (not a testing degree mind!), but that doesn't have to say anything about the skills of that tester (could be biology degree for that part).

Tweets related to Stuart's keynote:

Getting ready for Stuart Reid's keynote at #BTD11
http://yfrog.com/h4k38kjj starting now: the keynote of Stuart Reid about innovation! #btd11

Sony lets everyone use blu-ray technology - comparison w/ VHS format success over Beta back in the day - learning fm failure #btd11

Watching dyson vacuum cleaner test video in Stuart Reid's talk #btd11 "huge amt of testing... exciting and fun", James Dyson quote

Own thought: what if somebody patented 'making fire' or 'using the wheel' , what the world would look like now? #btd11

I have not failed, not once. I've discovered a thousand of ways that don't work. Thomas Edison qoute by Stuart Reid... #BTD11

innovation comes from failure , so true, this is why companies need to tolerate failure, encourage learning/experimenting #btd11

@lisacrispin Innovation comes from learning from failure, not necessarily failure in itself. #btd11

@mgaertne @lisacrispin true, but the failure has to occur to learn from it in the first place right? #btd11

Celebrate failure RT @lisacrispin innovation comes from failure; companies need to tolerate failure, encourage learning/experimenting #btd11

Sure, requires learning from it! RT @mgaertne: Innovation comes from learning from failure, not necessarily failure in itself. #btd11

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. #btd11

Stuart forgot to mention that #testing everything is not possible in first place. #BTD11 #BTD

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution #btd11

Stuart citing Weinberg's Law. Did I miss this one? #BTD11 #BTD

@lisacrispin don't forget total quantity management! :) #BTD11 #BTD

program testing can be a very effective way to show the presence of bugs, but is hopelessly inadequate for showing their absence. #BTD11

Now it gets interesting: Risk-based testing leads to context-driven testing. #BTD11 #BTD

"High capability employees drive innovation" says Stuart. #BTD11 #BTD

Like Stuart's ideas on innovation/diversity but why did his history of testing completely ignore agile? Maybe it's still to come. #btd11

@belgiumtesting #btd11 Crosby's maturity - from Stuart - comes back in our talk tomorrow... http://tinyurl.com/5s6g34q

#btd11 Crosby's maturity - from Stuart - comes back in our talk tomorrow... http://tinyurl.com/5s6g34q

"We need to discuss ideas - we look for like-minded people" I call this confirmation bias. Sounds familiar? #BTD11 #BTD

Stuart Reid now talking on CSR? or am I mistaken? #btd11

@mgaertne I hope he is telling us to look for diverse viewpoints for discussion? #btd11

@lisacrispin Of course he is :) But why does he need to tell me this? I got other interests as well. Seems natural to me. #BTD11 #BTD

If you have two people who think the same, fire one of them. What do you need duplication for? Jerry Krause #btd11

#btd11 : Groupthinking: beware of enclosure within that group. Innovators also need to look outward!

I like the way Stuart gives his presentation. He does not run. #BTD11

ok, looks like agile will not be part of Stuart's history of testing. Oh well.

#btd11 Good stuff on innovation, creativity in his preso.

@lisacrispin Where has that interesting stuff been? Probably before I arrived. #BTD11 #BTD

@mgaertne that's to me an obvious difference between vision/thought tracks and informational talks..#btd11 #expectancymanagement

it's interesting to look at history of testing, but I'd rather talk about how to integrate testing more into s/w development. #btd11

@FunTESTic groupthinking and tunnelvision read "sway the irresistitble pull of irrational behavior" of brafman & brafman #btd11

After Stuart's keynote a very exiting keynote was announced: "Lighting Talks". In this keynote the 6 tutorial speakers (Johanna Rothman, Lisa Crispin, Julian Harty, Stuart Reid, Lloyd Roden and Hans Schaefer) and Dorothy Graham got to have a maximum of seven minutes to talk about their view on 'Looking into the Future'.
I will only post the tweets from the lightning talks, the content can be read at Markus Gärtner's blog (see last tweet)

Dot Graham lightning talk: the future of test automation. SHE is talking about agile! #btd11 Read @mgaertne's blog in a little while!

Dot Graham: Exploratory test automation! (future) #BTD11 lightning talk

There was a big line at the loo! RT @mgaertne: Why are all those folks leaving the lightning talks? I looked forward to this! :) #BTD11 #BTD

test automation is free, but only if you're willing to pay for it! Dot Graham,

#btd11 ROI on nothing = nothing!

Now #btd11 Lightning Talks, Dorothy Graham. Testautomation is free, but only if you're willing to pay for it :-)

Future of test automation: significant growth; good news for your manager: good ROI, but investment needed. By Dot Graham #btd11

Hans Schaeffer - more ppl call themselves "tester" or something with "test" in the name than 10 yrs ago, good thing. #btd11

Hans Schaefer teaches on software testing, but for all the universities he is teaching, only one has testing as a mandatory course #btd11

Nobody's timing these lightning talks, that is dangerous. Someone stop me at 7 minutes pls! #btd11

On the future of testing: The Vanguard alliance should be mentioned! #BTD11 #BTD

Now #btd11 lightning talks: Hans Schaefer. Keywords: accepted, education, cloud, virtualization, availability of tools, possibilities.

Hans Schaeffer promoting jobs for handicapped testers like autists! #btd11

@lisacrispin lightning talk about Courage #BTD11

@lisacrispin talking on the agile value of courage. #BTD11

Business people hired us to develop good quality software @lisacrispin Courage #BTD11

Now at #btd11 lightning talks Lisa Crispin: Have courage, http://yfrog.com/hsgoofqj

@lisacrispin I'll send you a license for Clockwork if you're on a Mac. http://bit.ly/hOES24 #btd11

Whoohoo I made it in 7 minutes! #btd11

Now @johannarothman telling us about the big bucks she made in her early programming days! :-> #btd11 She musta been good!

Now at #btd11 lightning talks @JohannaRothman: the myth about 100% utilization.

.@tottinge I showed off the Agile in a Flash cards & talked abt the Courage 1 in lightning #btd11, here's my slide http://yfrog.com/hskavp

You can't do much more than about 6.5 hrs technical work per day. @johannarothman #btd11

A 100% utilized road is a parking lot - I might add to @johannarothman's Lightning talk. #BTD11 #BTD

Does anyone know Julian Harty's twitter ID? #btd11 He just started his lightning talk on pushing boundaries of test automation

aautomating usability tests: http://bit.ly/gHWe9d by Julian Harty #btd11
open source library for finding layout bugs http://bit.ly/ctL50x from @julianharty #btd11

Now at #btd11 lightning talks Julian Harty: pushing the boundaries of test automation including heuristics http://yfrog.com/h063cdij

Beware of automation bias. Wish @julianharty had done a bitly or tinyurl on that link, I can't possibly type it. #btd11

Still at #btd11 lightning talks: Stuart Reid about Testing Professionals, will they still be there in the future?

Tired of ppl using "developer" as synonym for "programmer". Maybe a battle I can't win, but we ALL contribute to developing s/w. #btd11

I've personally never had trouble being accepted as a professional even tho I'm a tester. #btd11 & have been 1 a long time!

@lisacrispin what do you understand by dev and programmer? waht is the difference? #btd11

I certainly have no relevant degree level qualification, tho my BS in Animal Science (beef cattle) & MBA have served me well in s/w. #btd11

25% of pole dancers have a degree. Thats the same for testers with a degree... Stuart Reids lightning talk at #BTD11

How would anyone GET a degree in software testing? #btd11

You can't get a degree in having a good attitude, willing to learn, willing to do any job to help the team, committed 2 quality #btd11

Lloyd Roden: "I'm standing between you and a drink." lol #btd11. We're going to play Weakest Link!

And last Lightning Talk at #btd11 Lloyd Roden : test cases... Quality & quantity.. The weakest link :-D yeah! Fun!! http://yfrog.com/gywk6uj

@silverSpoon that said, even on my team the programmers call themselves developers. So, I think I should give up the fight. #btd11

Love Lloyd Roden's happy face tie. #btd11 Outdoes my donkey jewelry.

So nice of the #btd11 organizers to give us lightning talkers Leffe beer + awesome chocolate from Leuven! Thanks! The best of Belgium!

As usual, @mgaertne has done a great job summarizing the #btd11 lightning talks! http://bit.ly/faKEYN

After the Lightning Talks there was a 'conference drinks' and there was plenty of drinks and some very good snacks handed out! It was very nice to catch up with people, having conversation and discussion, while waiting for a surprise SHOW.

The show started at 18.30. It was improvisation theater and it was absolutely brilliant. (for the Dutchies: it was like the tv show: the Lama's). I found it particularly clever for three Belgians to do a whole improv in English and very much enriched with testing jargon. I had a very good time and laughed a LOT! It was well done and a perfect closure for day one.

After that I had a short dinner at the hotel bar and went to my room, where I ran through my presentation again and went to bed.

Day two: Early science and Excitement

This day started EARLY with a breakfast session, the buffet was open with breakfast stuff and in the expo a small crowd had gathered (which were able to pull themselves out of bed) to go to the first keynote of the day that started at 07.15 hours.
The surprise keynote was all about microchips and the - rather depressing- impact of those developments on testing.
It was amazing to hear about these supercomputers and their ability to calculate.
Tweets from this keynote:

#Btd11 EARLY! But at surprise breakfast session about next gen chips and cleanrooms IMEC

#btd11 interesting : ExaScience , exascale computers should be available by 2018. Exascale is 50000000 pc's when counting in FLOPs - wow!

#btd11 To run an exasystem you need 1.5 Gigawatt of energy: so you basically need a nuclear plant to power it, this is an issue to solve

http://yfrog.com/h76izroj #btd11 technology scaling , getting smaller and faster.

http://yfrog.com/h32qoscj #btd11 very, very, VERY small technology, chips smaller than virus and bacteria, known, but still impressive

#btd11 testing concurrent programs... Non-deterministic , Heisenberg's uncertainty principle... That should give some challenges in testing

#btd11 oh boy, you REALLY don't want cache balancing / coherency on the software side: tester's nightmare if no. of caches grow

#Btd11 supercomputers: the faster they get, the more hardware failures will occur: up to once every second

#Btd11 : "it's very likely that the wear out time of chips will move into its time of usage ..." [quote from presentation]

@FunTESTic It looks as if you're the only one awake there :-) #BTD11

#Btd11 imagine that your program will behave differently at every use, because of faster chips: that's a tester's challenge on predictability

Breakfast speaker fm ExaScienceLab DID kind of depress me w/ news pgms will behave diff every time they run on many core computers #btd11

After that Julian Harty's keynote started. There were quite more people in there than at the first keynote; guess that 7.15 is just too early for most testers at a conference. Julian's talk was quite controversial: "Alternative Testing: So we have to test like we always have?". Julian has an impressive track record being a tester at Google and now at eBay, sharing knowledge whenever he can and even provoking sometimes by setting statements that are - for some testers - unheard of. This track was a bit of the latter. (and detail that most of you not sitting in the front row would have seen: he's presented on his socks :-)) )
Julian did a great job in confusing the audience, letting them think about the content he was presenting, asking questions and showing examples.

Tweets related to this keynote:

@julianharty "most of the things we call testing are not testing and should be stopped" #BTD11

Morning keynote: @julianharty is challenging the traditional picture of testers referring to Facebook #BTD11

@julianharty Speed trumps everything #BTD11

@julianharty mariposa botnet story amazing #BTD11 http://bit.ly/dKbmSJ

#btd11 now at keynote of Julian Harty, alternative testing: do we have to test like we always have

Maybe I'm still not awake, I'm not relating to the keynote well. Doesn't resonate w/ my experience. #btd11

@lisacrispin Unfortunately same here. #BTD11

@julianharty testing for productivity vs. testing for quality #BTD11

@michaelbolton @julianharty just referenced testing vs. checking, making the case for exploration. #BTD11

#btd11 http://yfrog.com/h31yyqxj maybe a bit hard to read, but slide from keynote

IMO root cause analysis can be beneficial, but teams can get too caught up in it - just experiment w/ a solution. #btd11

@julianharty upgrade and roll-back. must be able to roll back! #BTD11

#btd11 read the blog about checking vs testing as mentioned by @julianharty here http://bit.ly/dvccu7

@julianharty if don't test, get answers anyway. if test, get answers sooner. effective testing gets answers sooner #BTD11

#btd11 and another slide: http://yfrog.com/hs57094191j 'what now'

James Bach on Jamie Dobson: http://bit.ly/dENYG5 #btd11

After Julian's keynote it was my turn. I did a track called "Unusual Testing: Lessons learned from being a Casualty Simulation Victim". I was - as usual- very nervous and this time particularly nervous. Before this, I did the Software Testing Ethics Debate, but compared to this track thát was quite easy, the audience itself is responsible for most of the content in the debate, but this track is actually stuff with my own opinion in it, and lessons I think are inspirational for 'us testers' :-). Well - after some technical difficulties- It went rather well and I'm actually very proud of the result!
Tweets from my track (proud that is are so much of them :-) ):

Now learning from @FunTESTic - "lessons learned from being a casualty victim" (fortunately, from simulation only) #btd11

Interesting - casualty simulation is testing - simulation of emergencies to train/test first responders #btd11 @FunTESTic

When 1st aid workers have practiced in a simulation, they aren't shocked by real thing, & can function well. #btd11 @FunTESTic

thanks @gojkoadzic for figuring out the lights! #btd11

use the testing process learned from software testing in an unfamiliar environment - casualty simulation drill #btd11 @FunTESTic

still have to set goals, get info, set up environment/scenario, prepare artificial trauma, determine specific. #btd11 @FunTESTic

I like that the casualty simulation also involves creativity, innovation - makeup for simulated wounds, setup for crash simulation #btd11

making it as real as possible, just like software testing! You have to stay in your role. #btd11 @FunTESTic

If you're in a real emergency situation you say "no play" - we might need this in s/w testing too - "no test!" #btd11 @FunTESTic

Simulated casualty victims have different goals than real ones. When we test, we have to keep our goals in mind. #btd11 @FunTESTic

@FunTestic know your goals, know your roles, stay in your role #BTD11

Evaluate - start with good points, end with what to improve. #btd11 @FunTESTic

I must say @FunTESTic is a convincing casualty victim in these photos! #btd11

Prepare - set up scenario. Specify - mind 1st-aid procedure. Execute - play the role! Have fun! Evaluate - good & faults #btd11 @FunTESTic

@FunTestic Casualty simulations actually have some fun #BTD11

They actually had a NOPLAY situation in ferry disaster simulation, casualty simulation victims got real hypothermia! @btd11 @FunTESTic

Hmmm, @FunTESTic gives birth weekly! To help medics learn to deal with childbirth emergencies. #btd11 ex. eclampsia

Video of @FunTESTic's simulated seizure is darned convincing! Now she's having a cardiac arrest. #btd11 She should win an Oscar!

You can use a tool - a doll - but a real live person provides better feedback. #btd11 @FunTESTic Feedback is important!

The more the scenario is prepared, the better the execution and results from a drill. #btd11 @FunTESTic The victim learns also!

Checklisting is a good tool during all phases of a drill #btd11 @FunTESTic (I'm a big fan of checklists myself - read Checklist Manifesto)

Better simulation results in better performance and results. Practice! learn the domain! #btd11 @FunTESTic had to learn how to "give birth"

@FunTestic Observers help with simulations. yup! #BTD11

Communication is a pitfall in every large drill. #btd11 @FunTESTic Use of observers is educational, helps prevent errors (same in s/w test)

Use of checklists is crucial in life-threatening situations. It's easy to forget under high stress. #btd11 @FunTESTic Airline crews use 2

Interesting - they do drills to test protocols for incoming foreign help in disasters. #btd11 @FunTESTic

"we learned much more from the few things that are wrong than the many that went without a glitch" from FLOODEX simulation #btd11

The experimentation done with the simulations is fascinating - eg. all-foreign modules, or teams integrated w/ multiple nationalities #btd11

Learning follows from mistakes, so we focus on mistakes even though more went right. #btd11 from video shown by @FunTESTic

"A first requirement is that participants can see who is doing what and why..." Say what you're going to do. #btd11 @FunTESTic Context!

Use of jargons and acroynms where it's assumed everyone understands can lead to miscommunication & disaster #btd11 @FunTESTic

@FunTestic what language do you speak? language, terminology, jargon, acronyms. communication is non-trivial. #BTD11

If needed, get a translater. Your client may not understand your testing jargon; you may not understand the domain. #btd11 @FunTESTic

@lisacrispin mistakes?as a golden medal volleyballcoach once said, always evaluate after a game you won, people are open for feedback #btd11

Checklists prevented almost all occurrences of surgery on the wrong eye. #btd11 @FunTESTic (I recommend _Checklist Manifesto_ 4 more ex.)

You can have a bad day and miss things, it pays to have someone there using a checklist. #btd11 @FunTESTic not a panacea of course

Speak up when you see an issue. @FunTESTic #btd11 (this relates to being a fully engaged team member at all times, never a passenger)

@FunTestic Speakup is a powerful tool when you see a problem. (I have a problem *not* speaking up) #BTD11

heh RT @johannarothman: @FunTestic Speakup is a powerful tool when you see a problem. (I have a problem *not* speaking up) #BTD11

Hobbies can inspire you in your work, and vice versa! Be inspired by things at your job and your daily life. #btd11 @FunTESTic

The more "real life", the better the results. Requires skills, preparation & domain knowledge. #btd11 @FunTESTic (words to live by!)

Experiment and look at what works best for your environment. #btd11 @FunTESTic Weigh each time what applies best to ur project.

Contact @FunTESTic if you'd like to be a casualty simulation victim in Europe! #btd11 She says it's fun... sounds a bit scary to me! :->

YES RT @lisacrispin Hobbies can inspire you in your work, and vice versa! Be inspired by things [in] your daily life. #btd11 @FunTESTic

@FunTESTic I learned a lot from your talk, interesting new perspectives! Thank you! #btd11

#btd11 darn.. I was so caught up in conversation I forgot my chocolates in THE room, save them please! I'll be right back...

Well.. I was planning for an extended break after my performance (there was a coffee break after that). I always need to relax big time after the stress (and I DO get stressed). But directly after my track was one called 'The A(utomation Team' (A-team) from Björn Boisschot and since I'm a fan of 'eighties tv shows' I really wanted to visit this track with a analogy to the A-team. It started with the intro theme of the tv-show and after that the roles and set up of an automation team were shown by relating them to the cast of the A team and their set up of approach.
There weren't actually many tweets of this track, actually two: one of me attending and one about the right tools for the job showing a picture of the ATeam van and a couple of varieties of them (among them a SMART in A-Team style: so cool!)
It was partly my fault, still catching up on the tweets from during my session, listening to the track AND my fellow-tweets were in other tracks.
It WAS however a very entertaining track AND It was - for me not being very actively involved in test automation in my current project- useful to see what particular roles there are, the ATeam analogy made it very understandable for me.

After the - again excellent- lunch, where I was again tempted to pass the healthies and go for the desserts only, I went to a keynote called "Bpost v2.011 - the journey of a complete makeover of a state-owned monopolist" by Koen van Gerven. THis was quite a stranger in our midst. Mieke Gevers explained that it would be a good addition to see info from the clients perspective, what this track was all about. It was quite interesting to see the huge changes at bpost.
Some tweets:

Now at keynote #btd11 koen v gerven about BPost v2.011 after good lunch http://yfrog.com/h3nx5nnj

I wonder... Is the bpost also using and encouraging twitter? #btd11

:-) u don't need a government, but a postal service to be civilized..bpost .. Keynote #btd11

Few years ago de bpost was still operating without an IT enabled front office. Complete paper trail. Hard to imagine nowadays. #btd11

Well, I thought it was time for my extended break after this. I was getting tired and found that I was less involved in the keynote I just visited. I decided to take a long break and relax. So I could be me more attentive in the last track and keynotes.

So my next track was one at 15.30: Graham Thomas and "How to suspend testing and still succeed - a true story". Just like Susan Windsor's tracks, I just HAVE to visit Graham Thomas' talks. I find his sense of humor absolutely brilliant, he just has this way of presenting that really appeals to me: it's always fun, always has learnings and well.. .is simple & plain: great to visit!
This track was about suspension of testing, not an easy task when on a project that has a burning rate for resources which would make me a millionaire in less than one months time. It was filled with info on spotting problems and how to coop with them, I thought it was really useful, especially because I'm involved in situations like his project too.

Tweets from the track:

http://yfrog.com/h0x2mcgyj Graham, kicking off his track #btd11. Oh, the humor is absolutely brilliant! (as ever)

Objectives were reduce lead time, incr. customer satisfaction, highly predictable product quality #btd11 testing as integral part of dev

..the first phase of external scheme testing commenced.."just the right moment for a Testmanager to get involved" [sarcasm] #btd11

Really enjoying Graham Thomas his presentation. Love the English humor and the self reflection. #btd11

Now watched a movie and moving on to suspension and the definitions of suspension #btd11 (IEEE829)

@johnbertens sometimes looks like the twilight zone..;-) #btd11

After the talk from Graham, it was already time for the last keynote of the conference. Lisa Crispin with "Learning for Testers". I 'knew' Lisa from twitter and from the lighting keynote yesterday, but that was about it, so I was very curious what the keynote would be all about.
Well, Lisa is very interactive with the audience, she even goes INTO the audience to participate more. She also had a couple of exercises during the keynote so we were kept very busy during the talk and I was - besides tweeting- very busy writing down notes. One of the highlights from the talk was that we had to write down something we wanted to learn with our e-mail address on it, than we had to exchange that card with a neighbor in the audience. I had a Selenium question for my neighbor and he had a question about Specification by Example for me. (I have been already provided with a solution and in return I bought the eBook on Specification by Example to share with him, learning also by finding the info).

Tweets from the keynote:

@lisacrispin keeps referring to @FunTESTic 's casualty victim simulation presentation. Good reason to check it out when you can! #btd11

Especially the Daniel Pink talks RT @FunTESTic: #btd11 @lisacrispin tip: learn watching the tedex video's

#btd11 http://yfrog.com/h2cvmsgj sheet from keynote by @lisacrispin

Learn sign languages to stop the shouting. Nice contribution by an attendee here in @lisacrispin's keynote. #BTD11

@lisacrispin innovations arise from a more diverse team #BTD11

#btd11 another sheet from @lisacrispin http://yfrog.com/h3vjnrhj

A community of practice in your organization is a great way to learn something new. @lisacrispin #BTD11 Agree. Try testingdojo.org

#btd11 something I picked up at @lisacrispin 's keynote "be aware of impediments you might have"

@lisacrispin create testing communities of practice in the organization. me: aha! just figured something out. #BTD11

#btd11 a lot of stuff from the whole conference is now referenced at @lisacrispin 's keynote, it all comes Together :-) really great!

#TestingDojos, #WeekendTesting, #WeeknightTesting, .... lots of ideas to learn more about #testing. @lisacrispin #BTD11

So many ideas on how to learn, very inspiring! #btd11 @lisacrispin

Lots of tweeting buzz from #btd11. Wish I was there to participate.

http://yfrog.com/gyqjbej useful resources from @lisacrispin keynote http://yfrog.com/gyuyyhij #btd11

What to Offer in Addition to Salary, http://ping.fm/fUKER #BTD11

So after Lisa Crispin, it was suddenly all over. The closing was done by José and Mieke, and some prizes were handed over to people who had participated in a quiz. When leaving the keynote room, all was already in the phase of cleaning up.
I went to the station to catch the train to Brussels Midi to get on the Thalys to Amsterdam.

In the train back I reviewed all the stuff from the conference in my mind. It had been a very fun conference, meeting people, having conversations. The venue was good (especially I liked the fact that I could sprint out of my room 5 mins before the start of the conference :-) ) and on a easy accessible location, food was good and my mind packed with 'thought goodies'. I loved the 'relax' bit of the theater. It's been a good conference in my experience when I'm happily tired out, and I was! (still am!)
When I get the chance I'll certainly go to next year's edition too and I would recommend it to others too. It's a conference packed with high quality tracks and you can see that care has been given to the compilation of the program. Pricing is a bit steep though, but I found this year's program to be value-for-that-money, especially because it's a full-day experience, you don't have to find something to do (besides that you don't have the energy for that :-) ) in the evening except going to dinner (and the hotel bar provides an excellent choice of foods).

So that's my experience of the Belgium Testing Days. It's been a pleasure all and see you at the next conference - signing off :-)

ISTQB Expert Level ITP- Shout 'nd Pout

2011-02-10T09:48:00.002+01:00

Yesterday night I went to the introduction of the brand new ISTQB Expert Level ITP (Improving the Test Process), which is the next level seen from the ISTQB Advanced Test Manager module and a 'tip of the veil' of the ISTQB Expert Level TestManager (also a next step from Advanced Test Manager). It was hosted by TestNet and presented by BNTQB. The setup was pleasant as usual and the topic interesting to say at least...

I was very exited, because rumor had it that this level would be much more about expertise and less about theory. I expected this level to be of such high level that it would challenge me, that I - still relatively short in software testing (from half 2004) - would have to wait until I could apply for such a certificate until I got enough 'years of practice'. I expected it to be some kind of 'Guild'like certificate, where you have a Master-Apprentice style evaluation (with an external/ objective evaluation added of course). I expected it to be of thát calibre that getting certified would really make me feel "WOW, I made it!" and that being certified would really MEAN something. Well... my expectancy management was a bit flawed here...

The first question that popped up in my mind was: "Why a certification on improvement of a test process and not certification on 'test process' itself?". I have been thinking this a lot lately; not only in testing, but in other areas of expertise as well, there is a lot about 'improving', but the set up of a decent/good/etc. process (or product) itself seems to be forgotten. Or maybe current set ups are thát bad that we can only think about 'improvement'.
I set aside that very persistent thought and looked at the slides and listened to the story.

The content itself is something that seemed well thought off. The presentation was high-level here and showed the differences with the content in the Advanced level. Nothing very controversial here (for me at least).

Then it came to the examination criteria. On the slide it stated: a three hour exam, consisting of 1 hour multiple choice and 2 hours of essay. Uh... WHAT? Thát's the exam? I couldn't believe what I was reading.
The next slide got into more interesting part, but that made me very uncomfortable. It was about the validity of the certification. The expert level only lasts for 5 years (that part I find Ok); BUT..in that five years you have to collect 'credits'. There are many areas on which you can earn credits. But some of them worried me, for example: One stated that you could earn credits by giving a presentation on a conference. My first concern here is that currently people are presenting on conferences because they have something to share out of passion, to educate or to really contribute to the community (or when it's a vendor to sell/ demo their product). When you reward people with 'certification credits' for giving a presentation, how many will only submit a topic just to earn those credits? There will certainly will be people who can write an abstract that is good enough to pass all the reviewing in advance and get 'on the program', but then... well I think you can figure it out.

So when the presentation was over, I was left very disappointed. I couldn't believe that my expectancy was THAT far apart from what I just heard. I couldn't believe that all those people who worked on this syllabus would really think of this for an expert certification. I did the ISEB Practitioner (old skool) exam, the one where you had to essay for three hours, not the one with the multiple choice stuff, and what I saw now wasn't that much different and this is the Expert (!!) level.

Hmmm. Okay. So here I am. Discontent about what I heard. Writing all this in a blog, still very disappointed. Is it justified? Why am I so far off in my expectancy and what I heard? Maybe it's because of what is told or what is NOT told?
The syllabus is download-able (http://istqb.org/display/ISTQB/Expert) . So let's take a look at that...

One of the paragraphs states:
"In addition to passing the exam, proof needs to be provided of practical working experience in the testing field in general and specifically in the field represented by the Expert Level Module before the Expert Level certificate is awarded. In addition to passing the exam the following requirements apply:
- at least five years of practical testing experience (CV needs to be submitted including two references)
- at least two years of experience in the Expert Level module (CV needs to be submitted including two references)
- at least one paper written and published, OR a presentation is given at a testing conference covering an Expert Level module topic. "

This wasn't mentioned in the presentation. The emphasis was on the content and the 'credits' to be earned in the five years after passing the exam. The most people I spoke where very much interested however on the examination criteria themselves (and HOW it was examined) and they were covered but it didn't state (or at least I didn't picked it up) these additional preconditions to be able pass the exam.
This makes it at least more valuable, for me.

If you have a threshold set of a minimum level of expertise before even be able to do the exam, that would certainly make it more Expert Level to me. The thing is however still how to evaluate the entry-criteria set. So I think there must be objective points to evaluate these criteria.
Example: If I have 5 years of experience in testing and 2 years in the Expert Level module topic that still doesn't say anything about whether I'm any good. I could have been sitting on my ass all the time. The references are making it more solid, but they could be friends that humor me. The paper/presentation can be done too; but maybe people ran out the room because it was too terrible or too rubbish to listen to. So I still meet the criteria (pur sec) but I'm not much of expert material.
So I plea for a sturdy and strict policy to evaluate these entry criteria and have minimum requirements to have an Expert Level candidate to be able to participate in the exam. It takes more work I agree, but at least it makes the Expert Level a real solid certification!

Well at this time only the syllabus is published. The ISTQB is still figuring out on the course itself and the examination. Until it's there we can shout and pout. But we can also help the ISTQB in making the examination a real valid one that means something, I think this will only be appreciated by the people who have worked very hard on this material, and I think this certification should be one that makes the certified Expert an Expert indeed.
(and I'm not saying that NOT having a certification means your NOT an expert :-) )

For now, I'll 'dive into' the syllabus and see what's really in there and maybe find what I didn't hear yesterday, have more understanding of what's it all about, before I 'shout&pout' :-)

Why I really love my job...

2011-01-31T12:55:00.002+01:00

Last week I send a tweet "I really love my job" into the world. A colleague of mine asked me to tell exactly why and what I loved about my job. I started typing AN answer, but before I hit the 'tweet' button I thought of another answer and another. I realized I had lots of reasons why I really love my job. So instead of tweeting the answer I figured I would blog about it. The following are not all the reasons but it'll give you an idea...

First, I love the diversity of my work. It's not that I have to do the same thing over and over again. At one moment I'm involved at design of the product or my test activities, the next moment I'm heavy battling the product itself to give up its flaws. Sometimes I'm thinking very high level stuff and I need a birds-eye view, but the next moment I'm into the details.

I love to 'dramatize' my work, and luckily my job -I feel- gives me loads of opportunities to do that. I feel that work is much more fun if you put - what I call- fun-effort in it. When something might look boring, it's because you don't try hard enough to get yourself involved. Okay, this may sound very geeky or weird, but sometimes I'm 'Sherlock Holmes' and am investigating the murder (of the requirement), the next moment I'm the CSI team from CSI Las Vegas (chasing the evidence) and the next moment I'm Spock of the Star Trek Enterprise "that is illogical'. That doesn't mean I'm making fun OF my work, that means I'm making work FUN. And the 'added value' of this, is that I sometimes think of approaches that find extra, non thought of before, defects and issues, because I've gone where no (wo)man has gone before...

Controversary is maybe not an easy to grasp one, especially in the context I'm using it. But I love the fact (or is it opinion :-) ) that my work isn't well defined yet, and it probably never will. It's an 'opinion business' and certainly is a 'peoples'business'. There's traditionalists and context driven thinkers, and agile approaches, and standard methods. I don't 'follow' one of these particularly! I love that my work doesn't need for me to conform to one specific approach, method or 'school' to do it to satisfaction of my customer (and myself); I can use ALL the stuff that gets the job done. Pick the most applicable at that specific moment or need, change it when something better comes up. And luckily there are many people who think of stuff all the time so I can make use of it. It's also a challenge to figure out the right (for me and test) stuff that I find appealing.

Not only 'on the job'. I'm not only a tester 'on the job itself'. I find my work something that has loads of opportunity for development, discussion, learning and exploring. I feel it gives an added value to participate in these extracurricular activities. Visit events and conferences, reading blogs and tweet(discussions), reading books, participate in online events etc. Not only as participant do I find this useful, but I try to be as active as possible providing content too. Maybe not all the content is THAT high-level, but as long as it inspires -if only one- person to think for themselves; I'm satisfied. Sometimes it's not even the content I'm addressing but the thought processes that get to that content that I question. Quite philosophical but so much fun.

Colleagues all over the world, with different views and open mind. I think there are little crafts or expertises that are that open about the work they do. A lot of the stuff we see in IT, is my perception, is secretly done or not shared, because a competitor might benefit of it. I feel the Software Testing Business is quite open in this regard, sharing approaches, practices and all. Just do do the best job we can to service our clients. And although there are also people who have a pretty restricted view on a particular approach, they are still willing to share (sometimes a bit TOO intrusive and obligating though ;-) ). What I find the most 'lovable' is that it is allowed to have a different view and not be perceived as 'charlatan' when having those views or thoughts; it's the actions that you do that count. Making it a profession that is not only for the 'highly educated professors' to be the thoughtleaders, but also the 'man who thought himself to do an excellent job' to be a thoughtleader as well.

Excitement is one other. Lot's and lot's and lot's! All this stuff! There's so much to discover, so much to learn, so much to do! In softwaretesting I can do or learn something new every day if I want to! I'm a bit of a techie and I like to puzzle. Sometimes I can be busy for hours building a specific scenario in for example Selenium, trying to figure out how to trigger a certain response from the system. Another day I'll be browsing through the WeekendTesting stuff and learn from there. Last weekend I downloaded the RapidSoftwareTesting presentation and the RapidReporter tool. I had it on my list for a longer period now and finally got to it. I love that I can do all this and that there IS this much.

The unexpected. Not only when physically testing I'm surprised a lot of times, which makes it an interesting job to do. But I learn from unexpected places. Things from other areas of expertise, hobbies, books and persons which I can use doing my job. I know others have this too; I saw I presentation once about rowing by Paul Gerrard, about Gardening by Isabel Evans, both had an analogy with software testing that really made sense and stuff I could use. I have it with being a Casualty Simulation victim. I thinks this also has to do with 'us testers' having a very creative mind that also happens to have the ability to make certain connections very well.

These are a couple of things that make me really love my job....Feel free to contribute your own!

Call for papers - opportunity to lift a tip of the veil

2010-12-09T11:22:00.006+01:00

Since the EuroSTAR 2011 call for papers/ abstracts will be open today (or very soon), I'm grabbing this opportunity to write a blog about the insights I had during the past year, being on the program committee for EuroSTAR 2010 (and also did the BlogSTAR pre-juring). I hope this will help you writing an abstract that had more chance of being chosen for the program. I won't give you guarantees but it might help a a bit :-)

I decided to read ALL abstracts that came in, because I wanted to make sure that abstracts that didn't score high by the reviewing committee were justly not in the 60%+ list and that when we were to make the program indeed the good stuff was in.
The call was done early. Even though I got a minor stream of abstracts during January (only 10), a bit bigger stream in February (up to 100 abstracts) and the bulk in the first week of March (closing date). With 433 abstracts in total that meant that I got more than 300 abstracts in March to read.
And although I had set a timetable and when I got tired I stopped and re-read the last 3 of that day in the next batch so that it was not affected by 'boredom/ tiredness'; I noticed that the January/ February batches got more attention than the March ones. (luckily there's also the reviewing committee who got a maximum of 2 times 30 abstracts a person).
Oh, note: I re-read all the 60% + abstracts the week before we made the program again, to make sure I was certain what was in there.
Lesson learned for me: Send in the abstract early and not on deadline-day; it might get a bit more attention and is still 'fresh' with regards to it's subject.

The theme was 'passion' last year. It inspired a lot of people to submit an abstract that had PASSION, LOVE etc. in the title (there were 21 titles alone that contained the word 'passion' and numerous (I didn't count) abstracts that had 'passion' in the text itself. Some abstract where re-used I thought and the writer had just put the words 'passion' in there randomly to make sure it had relation to the theme. It didn't help improve the quality to put it mildly.
Lesson learned for me: Don't force the theme in to your topic. If the topic is good it will speak for itself.
I mean: reading multiple texts with passion this, passion that... it takes the passion OUT of things instead of IN to things.

There apparently is a group of people who think they can send in an idea. It's just the idea, nothing more. This group - I got the feeling - thinks they'll have plenty of time to work the topic out once it has been chosen to get into the program. These people don't have a presentation outline, don't have specific information put in the abstract etc.
The reviewing is done with the help of a scoring card; this scoring card has categories for which a score is given for a certain aspect of an abstract. For EuroSTAR 2010 those were CONTENT, PRACTICALITY, INNOVATION and PASSION.
Let me explain a bit.
Content: How good is the content? Significant information? Is it believable? Credible and Convincing?
Practicality: Is the submission practical? Concrete? Feasible?
Innovation: Is this something new and exciting? Innovative? Revolutionary?
Passion: How passionate are you about this presentation? Is it inspiring? What is your gut feeling?
The CONTENT category has the most weight. If you only send in 'an idea' it WON'T score high in this area, although it might score high in the 'innovation' part, there are so many abstracts that score on ALL parts that yours won't be considered to have solid ground.
Lesson learned for me: Send in an abstract that is worked out, you should at least have a framework for the presentation, not only an idea and has a solid basis.
Note: The EuroSTAR 2011 committee might have different weighing factors or categories, so no guarantees...

Last year was extremely popular with 'Agile', it really was a buzz-word. There were some other topics too that were extremely popular. There were 24 titles that contained the word Agile and I didn't count the abstracts that had a different title but were about Agile. 8 had 'Scrum' in the title; also here, I didn't count the abstract that were about SCRUM but didn't have it in the title. And I'll will not even mention the amount of abstracts that were inspired by television series. On the other hand: cloud only had two. If you write an abstract that covers a hot topic you should REALLY make an abstract that is outstanding. The more abstracts there are of a certain topic, the smaller the percentage chance that it'll get chosen. You have more competition. A conference like EuroSTAR will only contain a certain number of tracks of a certain topic or scheme, so the more 'hot topic' your abstract is, the more competition you'll have for a spot on the program. The ones with scores above 90% will have more chance in that case than - an also good- abstract of 70%-80% range.
Oh... and when considering a FUN session; there's really little space for that...
(so if you get in with a fun session: consider yourself among the rare that did)

You can write a whole paragraph on how good YOU are, but the abstracts will be anonymized (due to fairness of course) by Qualtech before they go out to the reviewing committee. So it won't help your subject get in. Better to use that precious space on your topic...

I hope this gives you some handles to write your own (excellent) abstract.
Oh, and I would like to share this brilliant abstract that was written last year.
A (tongue in cheek) article by Peter Morgan, Nicemove, UK & Programme Committee Member, EuroSTAR 2010
Read, laugh and learn!

EuroSTAR 2010 diaries - Epilogue

2010-12-08T14:17:00.003+01:00

I didn't go home immediately after the conference. I had dinner with a group of EuroSTAR attendees in the evening in the city center and drank a nice hot cocoa in the hotel bar to warm up again after the evening walk back to the hotel.

On Friday I joined some 'stranded' Brits (because of the closure of different airports in the UK) during breakfast and had fun with the conversations going on.
Then I checked out of the hotel (Towers) and changed to another hotel in the city center (Royal). I decided to extend my stay to view the city of Copenhagen, not knowing earlier this year that it would be such cold, snowy weather this weekend. My husband wás able to fly in that evening luckily (and I got home safe on Sunday!).

I spend the Friday blogging and reflecting on the conference.

I think it was a great conference with stuff for everybody's liking. There were some good tracks and some minor tracks, depending on the audience which rating a track gets. The TestLab was excellent, although it was a pity that it was 'out of route', it could have been even more part of the conference if it was more close to the expo.
I really liked the fact that people were gathering around, especially the Alliance meetings, which I really regret having missed out on.
I think the 'lounge' with the WebVillage was really good, and I think it should be a returning item (same as TestLab actually).
The LEGO was fun to watch; although I wonder if it could have been more prominent or more integrated if a small presentation had accompanied it.

The food during the lunches was of good quality as were the pastries with the coffee. (and I really liked the Barrista in the webvillage :-) ).
I think it's great that some charity initiatives were set up (we are a caring community!); let me re-cap:
- The CartoonTester got 260 EUR for selling his cartoons (Andy Glover)
- The 'moustaches' got 200 EUR (?) for MOvember (Geoff Thompson, Clive Bates)
- Al profits from the GalaEvent tickets went to a good cause.
Again; it's great to have fun AND return something to the community.

I think the chairs really did a good job! They are probably the most under appreciated group of helpers at a conference, but they really do a good job; timekeeping, guiding and helping the speaker to be more comfy.
I also want to - again- shine a light on the Qualtech team. They really do a lot of stuff that is not so visible but is vital to the success of this conference, (and they walk/stand the whole day AND keep smiling (that's a whole accomplishment on it's own ;-) ).
I want to thank Rikard Edgren and Peter Morgan for being with me on the program committee; I think they are really great people to work with and each have their specialties; it's been a privilege gents!
And last but not least I want to thank John Fodeh for giving me the opportunity to work on this great event and to be able to experience EuroSTAR in this unique way and not only this, but you managed to create a great conference this year!

So, this is then finally my last blog from the EuroSTAR 2010 diaries.
It'll not be the last blog that is inspired by it, but it ís the conclusion of the 'reporting' on the event itself. Oh... and before I forget; if you have any ideas, suggestions and so on for the EuroSTAR conference.. please send them/ tweet them (use #esconfs) e.a. it'll be a great help for next year's team!

I hope all you who read this had a great time too and hope to see you next year in Manchester!

over-and-out :-p

EurosSTAR 2010 diaries - the conference DAY 3

2010-12-07T08:28:00.015+01:00

I can't believe it's already the last day of the conference. Everything went by so fast, and I still want to do so much.

The first track I went to was a request from a colleague of mine. He's very into ubiquitous testing and mobile and everything, so the track of Doron Reuveni about The mobile testing challenge is right up his alley and the fun part is that I get to get involved in his enthusiasm as well and learn about a part of specific testing that I'm not currently heavily involved with (except some multi channel distribution developments). I found it interesting to hear about the different aspects of mobile testing and I got to see a very interesting demo with distance control of a mobile device in an impressive tool. Doron had very clean and clear sheets with nice graphics that illustrated his story well and although I'm not a mobile testing adapt (yet) I could follow the story very well and got really interested. Maybe it's a good tip to 'swap' tracks once in a while with a colleague who is also attending the conference and tell each other about the track you attended; it really focuses you on the subject because you want to tell and summarize everything for you colleague afterwards; a sort of pairwise conferencing :-)

After that I went to Paul Gerrard's track about Advanced Testing using Axioms. I had favorited this track before hand (I always make a top 3 of tracks I must-see and than a top 5 of really-want-to see, this makes flexibility for me and gets me to the tracks I really don't want to miss). Paul didn't disappoint a bit; I liked the content and I liked the way it was presented. Some quotes that I liked best (and also tweeted)
"Test coverage models and goals that generate uniform distributions of test are inefficient and ineffective", "A TestStrategy is not a document.. it is a thought process ", "Intellectual skills and capabilities are more important than clerical skills" , "Test Process Improvement is a waste of time" and "IEEE 829 Plan and Axioms :-) ; a better test strategy and plan, different thinking"
SOme of these quotes are a bit out of context, because Paul told about them with a whole explanation, so taking these quotes by itself might lead to totally different conclusions then originally intended. I also like the 'Quantum Testing' part, because it sounded so futuristic. If you want to know more about the Axioms you can read the booklet: The Tester's Pocketbook by Paul Gerrard (Paul's request is NOT to buy it via Amazon if possible). After his presentation Paul was 'attacked' by people who wanted to have a chat with him, had his booklet signed and ask questions.

After the morning break I went to Markus Gärtner's track on alternatives paths to Self Education. I had originally planned to go to the TMMi session, but I went to *a* TMMi yesterday and figured I would get the info because of the NENwork anyway.
Markus had been very active during the whole conference so I was very curious what he had to say. The opening message: "YOU are responsible for YOUR education" is a strong one and raised my expectations of what to come. The abstract said all kinds of fun stuff so I sat there with anticipation. Alas I was somewhat disappointed, what I saw was sheet after sheet of stuff from other thought leaders which he quoted extensively. The only thing I could think at that moment was: "What a pity that somebody with such strong personality and prospects should rely on others' quotes and thoughts to make a statement. Now YOU have the stage, the time to announce YOUR ideas and you waste it on bringing another ones message". It over shadowed the rest of the messages he had (That there are good ways to educate yourself without having to go to specific courses for example making a personal journal). I also found that a lot of these paths relied on participation of third party stuff; that can be a problem if you are a loner (although weekendtesting is a good alternative then). And if you make a statement for 'alternative paths', you should at least mention the not-alternative paths to relate to (even if you oppose to them). I think the strongest message was at the end slide: "You may have preferences for one or the other, but you should apply as much as possible". And I thought that last statement beheld much more that probably intended by the speaker.

The next tracks I skipped again. I wanted to prepare for the introduction of the final keynote, which was my task and still wanted to go through all the text with the speaker and finding the speaker himself was quite a challenge itself.
I grabbed a small lunch (my stomach too tight to eat much more) and went to the auditorium again. There I met 'my speaker' and we had some time to get acquainted.

After the lunch the auditorium filled up for Dino Patti's talk on 'For the love of the game'. It was all about a game called LIMBO (for XBox) which had really excellent graphics. He had some funny inside information like that they got their first office for free because the smell there was so bad. He also introduced the concept of 'Tissue Testers'; testers that you only use one time and then discard (disposable as a tissue). It apparently 'ticked off' some testers in the audience, which I found funny in my turn. Tissue testers are in my opinion great if you want to test a specific user experience (like surprise), that doesn't mean they are worthless afterwards as testers, but it does mean you can't use thát specific tester for thát specific piece of software again to test that specific requirement. Although Dino was quite nervous he did a fun and entertaining keynote and a trailer of the game LIMBO is seen on the LIMBO site.

Ok, so now it's time for the final keynote and I have to announce it (one of the 'advantages' of being a member of the program committee ;-) ). Nerves really get the best of me and I carefully take place behind the lectern. So, in my best English, I introduced Bob Galen with his track : Moving Beyond The Status Quo – Differentiating Ourselves and Demonstrating Value .

Bob did a fun and - I found- very educational track. I found his presentation style very dynamic and of high energy. I also liked the stuff he told, he has a great sense of humor. There was a small exercise to start with, you had to introduce yourself to an (unknown) neighbor, using three points (name and role, what are your challenges and how to approach them) within a minute. The first one had less than one minute (only half a minute), the second one did better (talking faster) but also couldn't do it in half a minute :-). One of the messages Bob had was to have an elevator pitch 'in your backpocket' and practice it every day, you should even have a couple of versions to use at different circumstances/ peoples. Another message Bob had was to ask for help when needed. One I could take with me to my working space and use immediately: people only read the first 1/3 of a (first) page with interest, the rest is ignored: write your most important message in that first 1/3 of your page. He had some more valuable lessons, but I think it would be too much to put them all here (you just should have visited ;-) )

After Bob had finished there was a (final) coffee break and a final opportunity to have a look at the expo. I got a demo of GUIDancer (a tool for testing GUI's) and I found it very interesting (quite different and very understandable in comparison to winrunner for example). I know I'll look into it when I have a little time left...

After the coffee break it was time to go to the auditorium for the final stuff. The results from the TestLab (rough figures: 180 people visited, worth about 90 hours of testing, 100 bugs found) Bart Knaack, James Lyndsay, Martin Jansson, Henrik Emilsson did a great job and handed over some fun T-shirts for 'Best Bug' (Marcus Gärtner), Most enthusiastic tester (Shmuel Gershon) and most 'Evil' tester (Teemu Vesala) (although I could have accidentally switched best bug and evil tester :-) ). I know Marcus also got the Tube of Gloom (very fun stick which makes a certain noise)

John Fodeh followed next to end the conference and said thanks to all people; attendees, speakers, chairs and the qualtech team.
He also announced next years' details:
Chair: Geoff Thompson
Team: Graham Thomas, Derk-Jan de Grood and Morton Hougaard
Place: Manchester
Date: 21st till 24th of November 2011
Theme: "In pursuit of Quality"

As committee members we all got a beautiful glass 'trophy' and a recognition for our contribution to the EuroSTAR 2010 conference and John got an even bigger one from Geoff.
After all the formalities were done, most people went home but...it wasn't over yet.

I had to run over to auditorium 15 to introduce the PowerHour held by Ruud Teunissen. This powerhour was especially organized to 'get the most out of your EuroSTAR experience' and Ruud had all these tips, tricks and tools to translate all the stuff (of relevance to you) from EuroSTAR to usable and concrete actions.
One is for example to do something with info within 72 hours, after that the most info will be fading away fast.

And after that... well.. it was all over. I stared at people going away, chatting, having 'thinking faces', having smiles or frowns... and it felt a bit sad. At one side I was happy that it went so well and that the hectic was now over, but on the other side; it's like having a great party which HAS to end and HAS ended.
So, I said my goodbyes and left for the hotel... and I thought: "DARN, IT'S STILL COLD!!" :-p

Other blogs and stuff about this third day:
VideoBlog from the TeamSTAR winners
(different) Blog posts from BlogSTAR (Ajay Balamurugadas)
Fast-blogs/live blogs
The Social Tester - Rob Lambert
Markus Gärtner

EuroSTAR 2010 diaries - the conference DAY 2

2010-12-06T15:07:00.009+01:00

It's already Wednesday and the second day of the conference is about to start.
I went to the Bella Centre early and luckily stumbled into a pre-conference meeting about TMMi level 4 and 5 (where Geoff Thompson made me stay because I ate a 'Danish pastry' ;-) and the trade was: Danish yes = mandatory stay ;-) )
So I heard al about the brand new TMMi developments.

Because we (programm committee) forgot to mention the evaluation forms during the first conference day, Peter Morgan made papers for the chairs (to put on stage) to make sure they mentioned these evaluation forms that day. I had the task to bring those papers to the different rooms and was a bit late apparently because different sessions had already begun.
I sneaked into 'Dirk van Daels', Test Accounting. He's my colleague and although I'd seen the presentation before I was really keen on supporting him as a fellow Capgeminist. So, I heard all about 'the Compas' and a sheet where you can keep 'book' of your testing stuff through the whole development life cycle and the status of something in this particular life cycle. Dirk did a good job, I know him (of course) and I saw he had trouble to 'follow the red thread' and that it made him a bit more 'static', but believe me that if he hadn't done that, he would have knocked your socks off with so much info that he probably wouldn't have had enough time if he had whole day :-)

After the session I had a chat with Dirk about how it went and I finished by task of the 'evaluation papers'. I didn't attend one of the next tracks, I had planned to sneak into Palak Kedia's (Testing from a critics perspective) and then top-it-off with the final notes of Ken Johnston, but I ended up going round the conference- and expo spaces, only having a quick peek at Palak (who seemed to do very well and was glowing on stage) and didn't see Ken Johnston at all. But I had some good coffee in the Web Village and had plenty of time to get prepared for the hot topics panel session. I even got a chance to step over the doorstep of the TestLab (and got a test lab rat button!) and have some converstations with Bart Knaack about the progess and fun there!.

The hot topics panel session was to be live transmitted from EuroSTAR. John Stevenson had provided the idea of a separate hashtag for this panel (#esconfsEP) so people could easily provide topics during the conference and the discussion itself; there was also a Facebook page to submit hot topics and a whiteboard in the expo hall. The panel consisted of 5 experts and a moderator: Antony Marcano, Julie Gardiner, Michael Bolton, Tim Koomen and Rob Sabourin as experts and Lee Copeland as moderator/ leader of the pack. I had the task of tweeting the topics discussed and trying to get good topics to Lee if the previously provide topics ran out. It was more difficult than anticipated; tweeting went well, but when I had to reroute the questions to Lee I could not tweet, so this resulted in tweet-silence and I missed a couple of topics. Lesson learned for next time (if any) is that you have to have at least two twitterers to do this. I found the experience fun though and I think attendees had some fun too as well as the panel members themselves. And yes I also got the tip to involve the audience in the room a bit more, so this is a lesson learned too.

Next after the hot-topics panel was Ajay Balamudugaras' track on WeekendTesting. I don't think it needs a lot of introduction or even a description because I think it has already done great marketing on it's own. The concept is great and well thought of. I saw Ajay radiating passion for this topic, it really inspired me to see that genuine inspiration and commitment to the subject. I can recommend the participation on a Weekend/ Weekday testing session to all testers; it gives you the opportunity to practice testing in a safe environment and to share your enthusiasm, knowledge and ideas with others attending. I felt invigorated after attending this session, humbled and heavily inspired. For more info on Weekend/ Weeknight testing please visit: http://weekendtesting.com/

After the - again excellent lunch- I went to Graham Thomas' track (workshop) : The Tester's Toolbox. I volunteered to trackchair this one because I really liked the abstract and I like Graham as a speaker. I had a busy session, running around with a microphone and intensive timekeeping, but it was worth it by far! Graham has this wonderfull ability to be very stoic, a bit ironic and sarcastic and then throw in this humour in such an easy manner that it is guaranteed to make you laugh during a learning experience! This workshop really didn't let me down, I had immense fun doing the exercises, fun with the mind-stuff and fun with the food-for-thought. Never thought that I wouldn't be able to distinguish black from white! Graham also had a little surprise for Michael Bolton who attended the second part of the workshop: a sheet with a word-cloud and all words stated : "process". I heard a huge laughter behind me when the sheet was shown, so I guess the joke was appreciated. A nice tip: look on WikiPedia for 'optical illusions', you can have a days worth of fun there!

After the coffeebreak I went to see Stuart Reid's keynote: When passion obscures the facts... I think it has been the most pre-discussed track of the whole conference. Since the publication of the abstract there has been numerous blogs, tweets and forumconversations on this keynote and it's presenter (even on very personal level). I think that even if Stuart had been presenting a whole different content even then the 'contra-group' wouldn't have given him a change and would be blogging/ tweeting negatively about it. Fortunately there are still open minded people who don't just tweet or blog everything in a specific (prejudiced) mindset and where willing to listing to the plea made by Stuart and wait with comments until the whole story was done. I must admit I was a bit disappointed in a way; it took a long time to make the opening plea, which could have been shorter. I also expected a bit more scientifically under build story, I think he could have made a stronger case. I had the idea that indeed Stuart was SO passionate that facts got obscured.
On the other hand I was touched by the fact that Stuart really was passionate about his subject, was genuinely there for his topic (which some other speakers/ delegates in my opinion did not have, but where merely/ mostly quoting another man's opinion) and I found him courageous to pick up this topic, although it didn't quite work out they way it should have, I think. The main message I got from the keynote was that we should investigate and find evidence (make a solid case) to engage in a specific way of testing (not just do anything) whether this is testing in the context-driven way of testing or the traditional school of testing (to use the word 'school' in this case :-) )
The thought I had afterwards was: What a pity that people in general are so divided in two different schools. It should be AND in stead of OR. I think the context-driven mindset is an excellent addition to the traditional mindset (an vice versa) and are complementary. Alas people are apparently blinded. So it wasn't the keynote itself that made it the most valuable experience but the whole discussion around it.

The last keynote was the winner of last year's best track: The SuperTesters (a slightly true story). I saw it in Stockholm AND I saw it at TestNet in NL, so I passed this time, having a discussion with Michael Bolton on the evidence-based keynote on which he made some valid points, but I wasn't in need of convincing (sry Michael, I just wasn't in the mindset at that time). I saw some huge smiles however of people coming out of the auditorium, which made me smile inside!

After this keynote everybody (who had a ticket) hurried to the Copenhagen Town Hall for the Gala Event. The town hall of Copenhagen is a truly beautiful building and is a special treat for testers, since the architect has ordered his craftsmen to insert minor flaws in their work (imagine that huge group of tester looking very intensely to the building to be able to be the first to notice the flaws :-) )
During the ceremonies three prizes were handed out:
The best tutorial: Rob Sabourin
The best paper: Isabel Evans
and - the most prestigious - The European Testing Excellence Award: Paul Gerrard.

After the formalities the group went upstairs. We were divided into two groups: one could take the 'common' stairs and one could go via the 'noblesse' stairs. This latter had a phoenix at the entrance which guarded that only the pure of hearts could enter. I think I saw all testers upstairs, but I'm not quite sure. I was glad I was to go via the 'common' stairs :-). In a most beautiful hall a buffet with Danish food was served and everybody was chatting wildly with each other.

After the GalaEvent. I started out following the Danish Alliance group, but I lost them when I had to wait for a red traffic light (I couldn't go that fast because it was very icy and I wore high heels) and my shouts were not as loud as the traffic was. When it went green again, the group was gone.
I didn't feel like searching in the cold, so I went to my hotel and called it the night. It had been a very exciting day!

Other blogs and stuff about this second day:
VideoBlog from the TeamSTAR winners
Blog from BlogSTAR (Ajay Balamurugadas)
Fast-blogs/live blogs
The Social Tester - Rob Lambert
Markus Gärtner

ps: sorry I don't have that many pictures of this day; the ones I made later this day were all so bad, I couldn't possibly publish them with any decency.

EuroSTAR 2010 diaries - the conference DAY 1

2010-12-03T18:12:00.014+01:00

Tuesday afternoon, the conference is about to start with the opening from John Fodeh.
People are coming in at the registration desk and I 'lurk' in the main hall to see the faces of all those people coming in; are they as exited as I am? Because I helped make the program I'm specifically very curious and anxious about delegates' reactions. Some of them are in time to grab a bite in the expo hall, where the tutorial guests are still having lunch until the conference is opened.

I really like that Cognisant has placed a web village in the main hall. Earlier this year I mentioned the idea of a tester's lounge or a tester's café so that people could relax a bit and have conversations/ discussions (which for some reason goes better on an easy chair than at a standing table :-) ). It was however a question if the venue would allow such a concept AND if there would be funds to do this; apparently Cognisant wanted to do something different than a normal booth, so 1 and 1 got Web Village. Particularly cool because of the Barrista that was in there with a professional coffe machine, the BlogSTAR throne and the twitter screen.

In one corner of the main hall the CartoonTester had his gallery, which was also very cool. Missed it? You can still look at the cartoons on: cartoontester.blogspot.com.

After lunch and lurking I went to the main auditorium to see the opening of EuroSTAR 2010.

After this there were two keynotes.
The first one was of Antony Marcano (Putting Tradition to the Test: The Evolving Role of the Tester)
He started with three stories and had a bit slow, but calm voice. At the end the three stories collided and all three were actually connected to eachother in a certain way. There were three main messages here:
1) Roles become dynamic
2) Traditional roles change
3) Collaboration is key
For some vague reason people in the audience were assuming there would be no time for questions. There was one tweet and then a whole group was tweeting that there wasn't going to be time for questions and were very 'agressive'/'negative' about it without having verified if this was true. Of course there WAS time for questions, so the assumption was wrong (never assume as a tester?) and I also thought it was again a lesson that a tweetstream can actually spread wrong (and also correct) information in a amazingly fast way.

The next keynote was the one of Rob Sabourin (Monty Python's flying testcircus). Rob is a very dynamic speaker, very different than Antony Marcano who is very timid and relaxed. Rob is almost 'explosive' compared to this speaker and it makes the keynotes that more interesting that there is this difference.
I found the message of testing icw Monty Python's lessons a bit far fetched, although a lesson could also be that we can find lessons and relations in almost everything as long as we think creatively. And I love Monty Python, so this was a fun one; but a bit lazy and easy from the presentation and content side view. A lesson I got out of it was that of illogical or weird reasoning which eventually gets to the point that they have reasoned that a duck weighs the same as a witch (there are more ways to get to a point :-) and whatever works for you is good)

After the two keynotes there was a coffee break (with sweet cake again :-) ).
And after the break there were the first tracks to be chosen.
I first checked all the rooms if all speakers/chairs were all right and could start with their sessions and then I sneaked into the session of Derk-Jan de Grood (Nine causes of losing valuable testing time). Derk-Jan does a good job on stage, he has a lot of visible passion and is very dynamic, although he sometimes has a tendency of going too fast. This time he ended his session - alas- 20 minutes early leaving the audience a bit flabbergasted. It was not his fault; his chair had timed badly; giving him the timing signals 20 mins before it was actually the time, resulting in a very fast track. He also only mentioned 5 causes; because the other 4 where apparently not for testing but management related, I think he could have mentioned this a bit more clearly. Nevertheless, his story was clear and had good points.

The next track I skipped; I ran into a lot of people who I had a chat with, checked the testlab (which was unfortunately not in the centre of the Expo/ conference, but a bit more 'in the background') and drank a good coffee from the barrista in the WebVillage.

I waited at the expo until the delegates returned to the Expo hall for the conference drinks and had a couple of drinks while chatting along with some more people, asking them how they liked it so far. There were some good responses and some improvements points. It seemed that the more experienced people missed the really advanced topics and some people didn't got the info they had hoped to see in a track, but other people had really enjoyed themselves, whether it was in the testlab, meeting people or attending tracks.

Afterwards I went to the city with Paul Gerrard, Neil Thompson and Suzanne Windsor and had a great dinner with them at an Italian Restaurant.
Afterwards I heard I had missed out on the Danish Alliance (you can read some other good blogs about this event), and I saw some excellent tweets pass by.
Nevertheless I had a great time with 'the Brits' and didn't go to bed too late so I would be fresh for the Wednesday!

Other blogs and stuff about this first day:
VideoBlog from the TeamSTAR winners
Blog from BlogSTAR (Ajay Balamurugadas)
Fast-blogs/live blogs
The Social Tester - Rob Lambert
Markus Gärtner
Danish Alliance photo's by Steveo1967 - John Stevenson

EuroSTAR 2010 diaries - the tutorials

2010-12-03T13:00:00.005+01:00

Mondaymorning, started with a too expensive, but good breakfast (if you have the oppurtunity to get 'inclusive' or are in the centre of Copenhagen and are not a 'breakfast- fan', you might want to reconsider having a buffet breakfast because it's relatively expensive)
But enough of that; you probably got the message that I'm a frugal Dutch and find everyting amazingly expensive here ;-)

The first thing on my mind this morning is actually : DARN ITS COLD!!! it's not the temperature itself but the winds that make it really a though walk to the conference centre. There's a hotel being build right next to the centre, and this -alas- means you have to walk all the way around to the entrance of the centre. The positive side is that you are wide awake when you arrive there and in desperate need of some hot beverage. (I'm not saying "ANYthing warm" again because of some indecent proposals and odd smirks I got after mentioning this)

I had chosen the tutorial of Rob Sabourin to attend. There were many excellent choices though (see program on EuroSTAR website: http://www.eurostarconferences.com/conferences/2010/monday-full-day-tutorials.aspx. I knew I had to leave a bit earlier before the breaks and get in a bit later after (checking if the rest went ok :-) ) but I got the message that was send.
The one thing I found a pity was that it seems like this was a tutorial intended for more days. The first day was stuffed in the timeblock before lunch and the rest was stuffed in the time after lunch. The exercise (only one) was a bit scarce; especially for a whole day tutorial.
The exercise was fun though; especially the part of ALL the requirements and documentation of the WRAP-O-MATIC (believe me: its very extensive and very complete), I also liked the part where I had to 'play' the customer who would be buying this machine and determine this way which requirement we thought of earlier was the most important when having this role.
Luckily Rob Sabourin is a very enthusiastic and inspiring speaker so people got to have a good time and the messages that were given during the tutorial were usefull.
That the tutorial was well perceived was confirmed later in the conference during the Gala Drinks, where this tutorial got the 'best tutorial prize'.

Oh, he got to show some EDS commercials during his speach wich were absolutely brilliant! (he actually had LOADS of movies and clips on his laptop)
The first is about CAT herding (not cattle herding :-) ) YOUTUBElink, the other two were about outsourcing and security (I couldn't locate them on Youtube, so this is something you'll have to do yourself)

The lunch during this day was a 'seated' lunch. The main was 'cockerel with mushrooms and a small tart of potatoe and thyme gravy', then there was a chocolate pyramid (which was less chocolate than expected) and then coffee.
The coffeebreaks were in the morning accompanied with 'sweet danish' and in the afternoon we had 'carrotcake' (the Danish really can bake sweet stuff!)

On Tuesday I started with a 'checking round' to see if all tutorials had started ok, before attending my own. In one of them I stumbled upon a romantic scene with candles et al. I guess this was the one from Morton Hougaard - Passion And Stress…The Siamese Twins - Stress Coaching For Testers.
The (half-day) Tutorial I attended was the one of Lee Copeland (Pragmatic Testing: When Your Testing World is Messy)
and it went by really fast. I think Lee is a great speaker who has great stories to tell and has excellent metaphores and examples to emphasise his story. The most dominating message was 'There are no best practices' (only good practices depending on a certain context). Another message worth while is that 1 hour of inspections will save you at least 8 hours of work later on in the development. This is a fact proven over and over again during the past decades. "As tester's we have forgotten our history" and the 5-why technique were other snippets from Lee's tutorial.

After the tutorial there was lunch in the expo hall, which had now been totally set up (I saw it develop during the monday :-) ). The lunch was a really good buffet with good quality food and a small dessert. I met a LOT of people (being a program committee member has an effect apparently of attracking people ;-) ) all of which I had nice, interesting and fun conversations with. And with this lunch I conclude this 'chapter' of my EuroSTAR diaries; I will continue with 'the conference day's' in the next chapters.

EuroSTAR 2010 diaries - prologue

2010-12-03T12:10:00.005+01:00

Sunday afternoon, there's snow in the air and I'm finally leaving for Copenhagen. Seems like only yesterday that I was in Galway (Ireland) with John Fodeh, Peter Morgan and Rikard Edgren (and off course the Qualtech People), but time has really flown by this year.

A lot has been going on also; with the VideoSTAR, BlogSTAR, TestLab apprentices, TeamSTAR et all. I'm quite exited for the week to come... "how will the delegates respond on the program?", "how will I do myself during this week?" are a couple of thoughts I have.

The travel to Copenhagen didn't have any noticeable delays, and I was lucky I guess, since others were not that fortunate and had quite a travel to the conference. Snow and wind combined even got the airport closed on monday morning. Later I heard it has been not this cold in Copenhagen since 130 years. The hotel (Crowne Plaza Copenhagen Towers) was excellent! Very modern and easy reachable by public transport (there was a minivan to pick you up from the airport though). I had a very luxurious room, which apparently was a 'standard room'.

And I was looking forward of using the lounge chair after a conference day with a mug of (complementary) hot chocolate and have a look at the magnificent view over the city (I was on the 14th floor -cityside).

When I hung out my jackets and everything I went downstairs to the bar and met up with the Qualtech 'bunch' that were already had been very busy at the BellaCentre setting up all the stuff for the conference. They really have a lot to do before it actually starts for the delegates (something you don't actually get to see when you're 'just' visiting but in my role as program committee member has made me very aware off GREAT JOB YOU GUYS!). I didn't make it very late, because I airtravel makes me a bit tired and I really wanted to be fresh for the tutorials and the conference (and the drinks are actually VERY expensive in Copenhagen, where I paid 9 EUR for a glass of white wine in the hotelbar, so it's not that attractive to go 'slamming' very fanaticly)

- Did you know that Qualtech actually gets started on saturday before the conference morning early with building up the whole conference surroundings etc. ?
- Did you know that Qualtech had to ship 70 boxes of stuff from Galway to Copenhagen? (containing among others: the conference bags, the wristbands, the infoposters, the booklets, the speaker/ trackchair gifts and many other things?)
- Did you know that they were present even before 7 in the morning for the early birds? and that the Testlab opened up on wednesday the same time?

Frustrated by Dutch Tax Authorities

2010-11-26T12:06:00.006+01:00

As you may or may not know. I have a small company which sells Casualty Simulation Victim supplies, it's a small business with small margins due to the fact that most Casualty Sims in NL work on non-profit basis (or even charity).

My first salestax declaration I had to do by hand and was well within the time limit. The second however I had to do by a 'secured internet site'. Now you have to know, that in NL we know something that is called DigID, which is a governmental electronic ID to do all kinds of digital transactions and information on governmental sites. So I totally assumed that I had to use my DigID to do this tax declaration.

The week before the deadline (23rd of October) - well within the limits- I sat behind my computer to do this digital declaration, only to find out that I apparently needed a specific other loginID and password. It was Saturday, late in the afternoon, so I had to wait until Monday to call the Tax Authorities to request this ID and login.

I got a lady on the telephone which told me that she would send a new ID and WW which could take up to 8 (!!!) workingdays to arrive. So I told her I would be late with my declaration if it was to arrive later than the 31st of October (deadline).
She told me that when I was within 7 days of the 31 st (and I assume workingdays here too) that would make 9th of November I was still 'good'. I was worried since I'm away a lot and told her this; she told me that she would make a note and that I would be fine (perhaps she meant 'fined').

I got the ID on the 2nd of November and the password on the 4th of November. I was away then, so when I arrived at home I inmediately did my declaration (on the 11th).
Mind you: my declaration was 'negative' so the authorities would have to pay me instead of me paying them.

So, yesterday I got a 'bleu envelope' with a notice of omission and a fine for 56 EUR. and I was appalled.

Today I called the Tax Authorities and told them the story and that I followed procedures within my limits.
The guy who was on the phone simply said. You were too late and the penalty for that is 56 EUR.
When I told him of the letter that had arrive during absence and that I told the lady on the 25th and she would make a not; he said; It's not in the system, only that your declaration is too late. It's your responsibility to be at home when this letter arrives (what???) and you should have taken actions (what???). You should have known earlier that you had to have these other ID and password or you shouldn't have lost them (I didn't loose them; it was my first request!) and after that he concluded that there is no such thing as a extention of enddate for these declarations (why did the lady than say there would be a note???)

So I told him I didn't find it proper behaviour from the Tax Authorities in this case: I was on time (with both the request of the ID/Password AND the mentioning that I wouldn't be able to do the declaration because of not being on location when it would come in), than saying there would be a note and than nevertheless send me a fine... He said (and this made me really furious!) : that's your opinion but nevertheless you have to pay up.

Do they teach those guys to give answers that infuriate people?
Why aren't there any exception business rules; surely I'm not the only one that encounters these problems? Is the Dutch economic situation THAT bad that the Tax Authorities are into 'easy money' obtained by these (I find unethical) practices?

At least it 'cleares' a bit of the frustrated feeling to blog about this. I'm only a small business/ one person and the Tax Authorities are a huge organisation who can do a lot more 'nasty stuff' to you if you don't obey, so I won't be able to do much more than warn people that if 'they' say that they will make a note when requesting a extension of sales tax and it'll be okay: there is no such thing and they will fine you no matter what the circumstances and there will be no warning either.

Expo:QA 2010 - Warm welcome and conference in a bit cold Madrid, day two

2010-11-19T11:19:00.008+01:00

So, it's Friday already, the day after the ExpoQA conference. Just did breakfast with Martin Pol and Niels Malotaux and had some nice discussions about 'testing in the Cloud' or to be precise: the nonsense of this concept without knowing the true and accurate definition of 'cloud' and some other definitions. I'm already checked out and waiting for my husband to arrive, which I do currently in the 'PianoBar' of the hotel (much more comfy than the airport I thought). Time to write part two of my experiences at ExpoQA...

I woke up early on Thursday. Nervous and really still exhausted 'cause of the short night. Had a quick breakfast and ran off to the bus that was already waiting in front of the hotel to bring us to the conference venue.
I had to start this day with my 'Ethics debate', my co-host was Ewout van Driel (Sogeti, Spain) and I was introduced by Graham Thomas. It was tough and had to do some minor adjustments. A debate is especially difficult it seems in Spanish Culture, during the early morning and the simultanous translation is a bit hindering I find and the acoustics in the room were not that great either. But it went OK and the most important - and what gave me a really good feeling- was that people (although they did not perhaps have the courage to speak out in the crowd) were really discussing and debating amongst small groups. Dorothy Graham was my Mystery Guest and I think she did an excellent view on Ethics and Software Testing (thank you Dot!). She also mentioned a book you all should read, called: "Mistakes are made, but not by me". I didn't get 'high-in-the-sky' scores, but feedback was excellent and I think it's very positive sign that most people bothered to SMS (which costs money) to vote (I had 32 votes last time I checked and that was most votes of all tracks): THANK YOU ALL!!
During the day there were also numerous smaller discussion on the subject, so this made me feel very proud too.

Next I had a very though choice. Iris Pinkster did her presentation on Lean Test Management and Martin Pol on How to successfully Oursource Testing. I chose the latter. Since I will see Iris on EuroSTAR also when she's doing a Tutorial on the same subject and I won't see Martin there.

Next was the famous coffeebreak. It's amazing how much and how good the extra food and sweets are here. There's so much choice and if I didn't restrain myself I would certainly have 'pigged out' on the varous delicious sweet pastries.

After the break I went to see Jan Fish, again after a though choice, because 'Celestina Bianco's, Agile Validation for Medical Device?' seemed very interesting too. Jan Fish (USA) had a presentation about going to CMMI level 1 to 5 for QA in less than four years. And I AM very interested how she accomplished this. Three things I like to mention here are:
- Enable your people to grow
- Documented unit tests are rare
- Sticky Minds article from 30th of December 2008 by Michelle Sleiger 'Questions you should ask'
I know this is a bit out of context, but also look at the slides and the description of here track and you'll get the picture. Jan Fish is a very nice lady, and I'm glad to have met her (during the conference dinner last night I joined her (and husband's ) table and had a very good evening. She also very natural and dynamic on stage and doesn't hesitate to come of stage to approach someone in the audience that has a question.

The next track I went to was 'Help, We have QA problem!' by Niels Malotaux. That wasn't a though choice since I already volunteered to track-chair this track. I thought it was a very clear, very sound and easy to understand presentation. And others thought so too, because this track was rewarded with the Delegates Best Track award. I would like to mention here that you should read 'Deming' and two quotes:
- Let's DO something about it
- It's our business to make people HAPPY.

Dynamic Niels during his presentation...

After a great lunch, with - YEAH!!!- TAPAS again (It's really excellent lunch here!) I went to Isabel Evans' Keynote about 'Growing our Industry: cultivating testing'. It was a typical Evans keynote, easy to listen too, great stuff and very passionate about both horticulture and the testing profession. It was no surprise here that Isabel's abstract was rewarded BEST by the technical committee.
And I was very proud that the Ethics Debate was mentioned a couple of times here in relation to the contents of her keynote.
Some other things I wrote down during the keynote:
- Isabel was inspired by the level of passion and level of control combined in the Flamenco show last night.
- We are here to make the next Generation of tester even better
- Professionals have a known level of competence
All I can say is: Go see this keynote if you have a chance!

I planned to go to 'Ignacio López Carrillo's "How can you demonstrate savings from software tests?". But I ran into Derk-Jan and some other people which I had a really good social talk with. So I decided to skip the last track. It also gave me a good oppurtunity to say goodbye to some people who had to leave somewhat early of right after the conference. Luckily Derk-Jan was pursuaded to stay during the closing of the conference because his abstract got a special recognition from the technical reviewing committee being the most mentioned one! (Isabel Evans got 'best abstract').

At the closing of the conference I saw a familiar image... It was the Expo:QA cartoon from Andy Glover, a.k.a. CartoonTester (recommended blog!!!)

The prizes were handed over, the delegates, speakers and chairs were thanked and than there was a farewell coffee (again: great pastries!)

And that concluded the conference Expo:QA 2010.
I really hope to be able to attend again in the future, since I found this a very intimate and relaxed, well organized conference (about 300 delegates).

When we left for the bus to bring us to the hotel again. I approached Geoff Thompson on an idea Isabel had invoked during her keynote and I think you can expect more from this in the future! We already had a ball with the first ideas of this concept, which I'll keep a secret for now... (btw Geoff is partipating in 'Movember': this is a moustache growing sponsoring event regarding prostate cancer during the month november; please feel inspired to sponsor participants of this initiative!).

So... next I'll be blogging about will probably be my EuroSTAR 2010 adventure in Copenhagen. Hope you will tune in again then!

Expo:QA 2010 - Warm welcome and conference in a bit cold Madrid, day one

2010-11-18T19:49:00.010+01:00

Finally I got a chance to blog on Expo:QA 2010. It's been a very hectic and very busy few days, but now I'm in my hotel room after the conference has closed and have some time on my hands to blog. There wasn't any WiFi at the conference centre (wel no FREE WiFi) so I was also a bit mellow on the tweeting and the blogging certainly had to wait. So, what I've been up to the last couple of days...starting with arrival and day 1.

Some pretty pics of the flight from my window

I arrived in Madrid at 14.50 at the airport and was in my hotel (arranged by the ExpoQA people) the Avn. América Meliã (wich is quite good!) at four o'clock.
room at hotel

I met Derk-Jan de Grood of Valori in the lobby and we had a social drink before attending the track chair meeting in one of the meeting rooms in the hotel. The meeting was to instruct all the trackchairs on the procedures and the Vota-y-Gana (vote and win) system that would be used by the delegates to rank the different tracks and keynotes.
After that there was a social drink with the speakers and chairs in another meeting room, which was quite nice and informal. The only missing group were the speakers from the UK who were delayed because of heavy fog (I heard they had to wait for 5 hours at the airport to finally depart). Me, Dorothy Graham, Martin Pol and Derk-Jan decided to have dinner at the restaurant only to find out that it wouldn't be open till 20.30, so we had a 'quick bite' at the hotel bar and decided to go to bed early because most of us were very tired or had to work on their presentation some more. When we left, we ran into the heavily delayed UK people finally arrived at the hotel as well.

On Wednesday was an early start. The ExpoQA people had arranged a shuttle bus (coach) to go to the conference centre, which left at 08.15 from the hotel, which was excellent service and very relaxing since I didn't have the stress of having to find a taxi and also could have some chats in the bus with other attendants.
The venue itself is gigantic! The ExpoQA conference itself was held at the North Entrance and was at a first floor level. I found the set up excellent. Four rooms, situated around the vendor booths and two counters where coffee was served during the breaks. Coffee was always sponsored by one of the companies and accompanied by some sweet snacks.

Batch and conferenceguide of Expo:QA 2010 - I was really there :-)

Raynald Korchia opened the conference with a warm welcome to all delegates and at 9.45 the first keynote was held. It was a guest called 'Arnold Aumason'and he told us about worldwide testing services market 2010-2014: Key Growth Opportunities and Sector Trends. I didn't really hear anything new or revelationous here and the voice of the speaker was very monotonous so I couldn't get really exicted about this keynote.

The second keynote was the one of Dorothy Graham: What Managers Think They Know about Test Automation but Don't. I would like to reference to the information on the ExpoQA site (www.expoqa.com) to look into the info. There wasn't any real new information here for me, although I caught some ideas here, but specifically for the less experienced testers this was an excellent track and Dorothy is a dyed-in-the-whool speaker.

After these two keynotes there was a coffee break, with yummie treats and - for me as 'Dutchy' - a bit weird coffee where normal milk is mixed with very strong black coffee if you want 'coffee with milk' (we know 'cream', but it's an unknown concept it seems here in Spain).

When I finished my coffee and had some chats I had to choose the next track. It was a choice of four each time and this time I chose: The Cassandra Syndrome: The Tester's Dilemma and What to do about it by Rick Hower. He had a very funny anecdote about an embarrassed cat which had sprang into closed pation doors and actually looked embarrassed when he was up on his feet again. It was a very entertaining presentation with some good info and some interesting points, one statement that particularly interested me was "how much truth is too much truth?".
Rick has a site which you can visit on: www.softwareQAtest.com.

My other choice would have been the track of Derk-Jan de Grood on selecting the most effective test design techniques which - afterwards- got some excellent feedback, but in this case I choose the 'foreign' one that I was less likely to have an oppurtunity to see again. I'd like to mention here that Derk-Jan also received a special mentioning for his excellent abstract that was mentioned the most by the technical committee in the closing of the conference.
The next I chose was the track of Geoff Thompson called 'Testing, so many problems but we have the solutions don't we?". It was about 'craft' v.s. 'profession' and the Dunning Kruger effect where IT suffers from apparently. Some nice expressions from this track were 'Illusory superiority and inferiority' and 'The Silver bullet is YOU'.

The lunch after these tracks was absolutely fabulous. It was the famous TAPAS from Spain and different small delicious foods were constantly distributed during the (1,5 hour) lunch break. Accompanied by softdrinks and wine!.

It made the keynote after the lunch a though one, heavily fighting off my after-lunch-dip. But the speaker 'Alan Brown' was very good and kept me awake effortlessly. It was about 'Best Practices for Delivering Quality Solutions in a Ditributed, Agile environment' and I would like to mention 'Rational Team Concert' here, that was the main player in this keynote.

After this keynote I went to Virgina Chalegre about Accessibility Testing Methodology for Visually Handicapped in Web Environments. And I was really intrigued by a tool that read out the text from the screen and the difficulties one with a visual handicap has to face on the www. It was a track in Spanish and it was actually the first time I encountered this 'synchronous translation' and found it brilliant. Oh; also, a website that is suitable for visualy handicapped isn't per definition ugly for non-visually handicapped people.

After the coffee break I had a conversation with my co-host (Ewout van Driel) and chair (Graham Thomas). And I was actually 22 minutes too late for the next track. I chose to go to track one (Peter Farell-Vinay with Release Readiness) but in stead rushed into track 2 by mistake. It was in Spanish and I didn't have the translation headphones with me, but also to embarrassed to leave the room again and actually I didn't have the heart to leave the room again. Luckily the slides where in English and I could understand some Spanish words, so I think I got the message of Graham Moran's Test Tool Evaluation and implementation.

At 18.00 there was a bus to the hotel again, arranged by the ExpoQA people. We were supposed to leave at 19.15 again to the Florida Park to have a Networking Dinner with Flamenco show. But traffic was SO heavy we actually arrived at the hotel at 18.55 and had to really hurry up to get dressed/ have some freshing up and run to the bus again. Well the bus left at 19.30 or so and we had an excellent drink before a good dinner and a great show with - as Isabel Evans stated today- great level of passion combined with great level of control. I wasn't allowed to take any pictures inside, so you have to go and look at this show when you're in Madrid yourself.

I arrived at the hotel at 00.30 and was too exhausted to blog the day and I had to get up at 7 today again so this is why there is such a delay in my experience blogging.
I will blog about today (day 2) later on, because now I will go to dinner (it's 20.40 now) after I have also put the photo's with this blog.

Dutch Testing Day - Naturalis Leiden

2010-11-16T11:13:00.003+01:00

Currently I'm on my way to Madrid for Expo:QA and since I'm waiting for boarding, I finally have the time to blog about the Dutch Testing Day at Naturalis, Leiden on the 4th of November. Organized by Collis this time.

I went there much later then I expected; some issues at clientside occured which had to be solved first so I drove to Leiden rather late. In my mind I had the 'Corpus' as the hosting venue so I drove there. There was little parking space so I parked about a km away, walked there only to find that the Testing Day was at Naturalis. So walked back again (fighting my way through fierce winds of an autumn storm) and drove to Naturalis. There was the same parking problem there, so I parked at LUMC (hospital) and walked to the main entrance of Naturalis, only to find that I had to walk all the way back to the PestHuis where the event was held. At the door was a note with mobile numbers to call when I was to attend the Dutch Testing Day; and when I finally got in I felt I had just participated in a puzzle tour or something similar.

But I had a good lunch. I was surprised not to see any booths here from the sponsors, instead they were at a seperate hall behind the atrium where the tracks were held. I found this a bit dissapointing; a lunch is - for me- a perfect time to catch up with some vendors and competitors/ colleagues; by this setup I kinda missed this oppurtunity.

I missed the first couple of tracks. So my first track to attend was the one of Experiences with Formal Engineering: Model-based Specification, Implementation and Testing of a Software Bus by Marten Sijtema. I had forgotten the academic approach of the Dutch Testing Day and had to get used to the material for some minutes. But the track had some good points and some familiar info I had in a Dutch Testing Day (at Eindhoven) before. Next was the track of Panel questions to Model Based Testing Speakers (Jan, Neda, Axel & Marten), followed by - and this was a surprise- the track from Rik Marselis about End-to-end testing in the public domain, this one was supposed to be held in the morning so I thought I missed it, but instead I got to see it still. The last of the mid-day session was a track called "A comparison of free tools for Domain Specific Test Languages" by Martin Gijsen. I like this last one about the different tools. And I really like the setup of 1 track at a time; this way I don't have to choose which one to attend, which makes it easy :-)

The drinks were luckily at the vendor/ booth space. So I could catch up with some people and the buzz.

After the break there were two more tracks; well a track and a keynote. "The business case for Application Virtualization in testing complex distributed application architectures" by Edwin van Asch, was the first. Followed by Computer Security by Bart Jacobs, which I like a lot actually! After that there was the closing up of the event and there was a closing drink in the booth space.

I didn't attend the drinks afterward, since I was so awfully busy and had some other obligations to attend that evening. But I suppose they were ok since the whole entourage was very good.

I had a good event and heard some good stuff during the day. I found the venue a bit weird and not that well setup, but that's my point of view (and maybe the titles from the presentations where too long :-)). I liked the one-track-at-a-time setup (allthough I heard some people they would have liked a choice). The food was good (hot pastry and some good sandwiches!)
I will certainly attend next years Dutch Testing Day if possible at University of Twente (Enschede?).

Look for content on the tracks at : www.testdag.nl

So, now I'm about to board the plain to Madrid (I hope, since I don't see the actual plain yet...:-& ) and hope to keep you updated on my Expo:QA2010 adventure on this blog!

5 mins or 30 mins, that's the question...

2010-10-29T13:26:00.003+02:00

The week before this one, I commuted to work by train and got inspired for this blog.
So what's the story?

The last couple of weeks our national public transport train company - apparently- had loads of trouble keeping to their timetable (and IMHO still do but that is another story). Every single day for the past weeks the train has been delayed for 5 minutes and that made me 'tweet' the following:

"I find it more annoying to have a 5 min delay every day than to have 30 mins delay once in a while. "

and after that :

"I guess my last tweet about train travel, could very well apply to software testing too??" and "What do you think: Less annoying to have a huge bug once in a while, than numerous ones almost constantly"

I got the following responses:

@santhoshst : "True - I related it to Performance Quality criteria :) #softwaretesting

@santhoshst : "Depends on the context :)

@jahoving : "but even more annoying to have no bugs at all ;-)

@eddybruin : " 1 huge bug is better manageable than 100's of inconvenient little bugs"

There are not many replies, but all replies have something that made me think about this statement more. I have put down some thoughts/ questions that I had and would love you to respond on that!

- No bugs at all can mean a couple of things (amongst others): 1. the utopious perfect programmer has arrived to program the utopious perfect analyst's and designer's work. 2. you have not tested the right part of the software, are not performing the right tests or have automated your tests and this only checks things leaving the really important bugs unfound.

- It's annoying to get bug reports constantly. It's better to report once in a set time than to come running over to the programmer/ manager (etc.) with every single bug found. Also the 'huge bug-rule' can apply here; a huge bug can be reported immediately (it probably has to be fixed with high priority too) but all those little ones? Report it once a couple of days; else it will interrupt the programmers work (and attention) unnecessarily. It will also cloud a managers view; when you come to him constantly with every bug: the really important ones will not seem as important as they really are (famous fable of 'Peter and the Wolfe')

- When looking at performance issues. When you have - for example- a 7 seconds delay at every request this can be seen as not a big issue (in the margin) but a 1 minute delay is seen as problem. As a user 7 seconds can seem like a eternity when your on a deadline especially when you have 100's of request to work through every day. A minute delay once in a while can give you some coffee time; 7 seconds each request is simply a pain in the ...

- Of course the context has to be taken in consideration, as mentioned by santhoshst. Numerous bugs can also be very 'dangerous' when they are in a critical part of a system; even the smaller ones.

- I wondered if this one would be true: 1 bug is better manageable than 100's of little ones. I could think of a bug that had a very complex background: to get it solved it took a lot of time, management, politics and redesigning. In the same time at least 20 others with minor priority where fixed and closed. Overview can be complex for a lot of smaller ones, but it's the real big ones that can push your skill-limits. This is - mind- also related to the role and tasks you have within your organization. When this is only to report the bug and retest it when it's fixed, than the statement could well be true. When you also have to 'guide' the defect through the rework process it will probably be more like described earlier.

- When the timetable of the train at station X would be adjusted to 5 mins later, there wouldn't be a defect/bug. I wonder why they don't do this, because at the next station there is a - almost - ten minutes wait till the train leaves from there. So there is margin to set the time of departure at station X a bit later. And here comes (I know a bit unconventional) statement. Specifications can be changed to 'solve' a bug (dependent on the context/severity etc.).

I'm very anxious to see your replies. I so love discussions! and - needless to say-... please reply in one big one instead of lot's of smaller ones :-)

Continuous Quality Process Software- and Systems (CQPSS)

2010-10-08T10:09:00.002+02:00

[Blog entry from CappingITOff]

I was not always into testing. My first choice of studies, before getting entirely intrigued by IT, was that of FoodEngineering. When I got into the testing matter, I was surprised to find that in IT, testing is mostly done during development or when changes occur in the software or system. In the foodindustry there's a continuous quality process during development and during operations, this is named HACCP, the abbriviation for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points. HACCP - and I quote Wikipedia here - is a systematic preventive approach to food safety and pharmaceutical safety that addresses physical, chemical, and biological hazards as a means of prevention rather than finished product inspection. HACCP is used in the food industry to identify potential food safety hazards, so that key actions, known as Critical Control Points (CCPs) can be taken to reduce or eliminate the risk of the hazards being realized. The system is used at all stages of food production and preparation processes including packaging, distribution, etc.

I started to wonder why in IT (Testing) there is no such process implemented; our business is riskmitigation isn't it? IT is becoming more and more (or is already) essential in our businessprocesses and daily lives. Failure has such a hughe impact that I find it scary to not have constant monitoring on IT solutions. It is a known fact that testing during development can't be done with a 100% coverage of system- or software, so there are still some flaws in there that could mean disaster to your business...

I thought up the Continuous Quality Process Software- and Systems, in short (because IT likes the use of abbreviations) CQPSS. Of course I used the seven basic principles of HACCP as my baseline, so let's look at those principles, which I will map to CQPSS.

Principle 1: Conduct a hazard analysis.
Plans determine the food safety hazards and identify the preventive measures the plan can apply to control these hazards. A food safety hazard is any biological, chemical, or physical property that may cause a food to be unsafe for human consumption.

In the CQPSS it's almost the same. Every business has critical processes. In the CQPSS plan these criticall processes should be described. When testing during development is done correctly, this riskanalysis should be there and is re-usable. Ofcourse these should be updated when changes occur.

Principle 2: Identify critical control points.
A Critical Control Point (CCP) is a point, step, or procedure in a food manufacturing process at which control can be applied and, as a result, a food safety hazard can be prevented, eliminated, or reduced to an acceptable level.

In CQPSS one should look at the process that has been automated and determine the point, step or procedure where one can perform a check. Preferably these checks should be designed in such a way that this check can be done automated. Checks should be done on various points in the process and not only on the outcome. For example: in data warehouse chains one should not only perform a check on the
reporting but should perform checks on staging, calculation outcomes, the data warehouse itself and the reporting.

Principle 3: Establish critical limits for each critical control point.
A critical limit is the maximum or minimum value to which a physical, biological, or chemical hazard must be controlled at a critical control point to prevent, eliminate, or reduce to an acceptable level.

Every checkpoint from principle 2 has got to have critical limits assigned. When for instance a normal incoming cashflow is reported from sourcesystems at 60K and 130K is highly unlikely than the system should have a critical boundary at 110 or 120K at the point of staging and the processing should be stopped or paused at least, the monitoring system should issue a warning so a business expert can check whether the cashflow is due to a frantic hype or perhaps some system has issued a batch of data twice.

Principle 4: Establish critical control point monitoring requirements.
Monitoring activities are necessary to ensure that the process is under control at each critical control point. In the United States, the FSIS is requiring that each monitoring procedure and its frequency be listed in the HACCP plan.

The output from principle 2 and 3 are used here and in this step the way HOW and HOW OFTEN these points are validated is established. For instance it can be described that a calculation check, described at principle 3, on cachflow is done at end-of-day each day at batch load point with a certain formula using a certain tool.

Principle 5: Establish corrective actions.
These are actions to be taken when monitoring indicates a deviation from an established critical limit. The final rule requires a plant's HACCP plan to identify
the corrective actions to be taken if a critical limit is not met. Corrective actions are intended to ensure that no product injurious to health or otherwise adulterated as a result of the deviation enters commerce.

Again a reference to principle 3; I here stated that for example the system should state a warning when the critical boundary is met. In principle 5 is is explicitly stated what the corrective action on this warning should be. In principle 3 it was stated that in that case a business expert should check the cause. Corrective actions could in this case be: stop load process, business expert check; frantic
hype -> continue batch processing or duplicate batch -> delete batch from flow and issue warning to delivering system.

Principle 6: Establish record keeping procedures.
The HACCP regulation requires that all plants maintain certain documents, including its hazard analysis and written HACCP plan, and records documenting the monitoring of critical control points, critical limits, verification activities, and the handling of processing deviations.

In CQPSS this means that the written CQPSS plan is published within the organisation is know to all the stakeholders of the process that is described and everybody is known with the actions to be taken. The results from the monitoring process should be archived as well; the way how to do this and how long data is to be kept is also to be described in the CQPSS plan. I like to mention here that it is especially of importance to highlight (or record extra in a specific overview) the derivations/ exceptions from the process, this way any changes in frequency or other anomalies in the process can be specificly monitored and acted upon; perhaps even a prediction can be made and adjustments (change request) can be issued.

Principle 7: Establish procedures for ensuring the HACCP system is working as intended.
Validation ensures that the plants do what they were designed to do; that is, they are successful in ensuring the production of safe product. Plants will be required to validate their own HACCP plans. FSIS will not approve HACCP plans in advance, but will review them for conformance with the final rule.

There are various monitoring ánd testtool that can be installed also on a production environment for monitoring purposes. These tools can be outfitted with specific testcases and checkpoints. When a fully automated process is in place, the control on the process is somewhat 'out of sight'. When this process is not working correctly it will never be noticed when regular checks on this process are
not in place. The CQPSS plan and its implemented process should be checked - preferably by an independent party- at regular intervals to check if the quality process is still working as intended. There should also be a validation on relevance of the process; are the checks being performed still covering all the risks that ought to be covered?

By implementing a process like CQPSS the measuring of quality of the system is not only done during the development phase (the traditional testing) but is extended to the complete lifecycle of the product/process. It makes the way to a more safer, more reliable and more trustworthy businessprocess where the monitored IT-component is implemented and - last but not least- makes it easier to apply for ((inter)national) certification of your business.

Expo:QA 2010 - Discount and chance for an iPad

2010-09-30T09:47:00.002+02:00

I will be doing the Software Testing Ethics Debate in Madrid, together with Wouter van Driel (Sogeti), at Expo:QA 2010 as Keynote!. And... we have a very exciting special/ mystery guest. So if you're there, be sure to attend!

If you register at this page http://www.expoqa.com/en/conference-inscripcion.php (English Page): With - Very important- this code : IPNAVADE you get a 5% discount on the admittance. If you do this before the 12th of October you also participate in a draw to win an iPad!

NoorderTest 2010

2010-09-28T19:42:00.003+02:00

Last Thursday I attended 'NoorderTest'. This conference was held in the CJIB building in Leeuwarden and there were 160 participants. NoorderTest is a community of testers in the Nordic Region of the Netherlands consisting of testers working at (semi)governmental companies. Once every year they organize a larger conference so they can benefit from knowledge sharing.
This year my 'Ethics Debate' was selected on the program so I had the oppurtunity as non-Nordic-tester to attend!

The reception at the venue was very nice. Every speaker was guided through the building and their rooms were their track was given was inspected so it was made sure that everything was in order. There was coffee/tea and a piece of cake at the main hall were all attendees gathered till the kick-off was done. People were already in a conversational mood, because some effort had to be made to get everybody quiet for the opening speech :-)
The main thing that occurred to me that is was such a pleasant environment and mood.

The first track I attended was that of Rik Marselis. He had an interactive session about Chaintesting according to TMap. Different people participated in the different discussions which made it nice session to have visited. Although I have to make a remark that people who were not familiar with TMap or with the book about ChainTesting according to TMap had some difficulties with some material in the track and not all information came across to each participant.

Each track was seperated by a break in which people had plenty of oppurtunity to reflect on the track they attended. Some people found these breaks a bit too long, other people really liked the longer time in between. I was of the latter group; I liked the oppurtunity to reflect a bit longer on the track I just attended; it just seemed to make it more interactive as a whole.
The second track was my own :-) Together with Budimir Hrnjak, a colleague of mine I hosted the Ethics Debate, which was fully booked! (every track had to be booked beforehand). My Mystery Guest this time was Gerard Numan of Polteq; he had a great piece about the theory of Ethics and the relation to testers and the debates held just prior to his plea.

In the break after my track several groups were still debating the stuff from the session I heard in passing by the tables, so I found this very cool. Feedback was also very good; especially to the MysteryGuest :-) Maybe I'll have to hire him to do more Mystery/Ethics stuff in the future.

The last track I missed; alas. I was still so busy with all kinds of conversations that the next tracks already started and I didn't have the heart to interrupt any speaker. So I used the time to fill out the puzzle that was in the program booklet.
At the draw it seemed that I had not wasted my time: I won the romantic night for two that was the prize to be won with the puzzle :-)

After the last speech, people had the oppurtunity to have dinner (buffet). It was a ham-mellon cocktail for starters, than Macaroni/cheese or Ham/Potatoes or Rice/Goulash and a desert. I missed the desert and the drinks afterwards because I had another appointment nearby. But I can imagine it was still a good gathering then.
The farewell gift was a black chalkboardlike mug with a crayon (so you could write on the mug) and a small box of mints.

I had a good experience at this conference. Alas it's only for members of NoorderTest, for which you have to work at one of these Nordic Companies. But if you are in the oppurtunity to attend, I would certainly recommend this meeting!

Expo:QA 2010

2010-09-09T16:34:00.004+02:00

Are we there yet?

2010-07-15T16:32:00.002+02:00

I'm dragging myself towards the holidays, two more weeks left of work and then there will be two weeks of nothingness, well almost, the first couple of days I'll be at RockArea festival at the Loreley theatre in Germany, but after that: I'll just lay back on my garden chair with a lousy novelette. At least there are no suprises there: woman meets man, they come together, they fight and they come together again, and live happily ever after. Man is always handsome and rich of course and the woman always has had issues in her passed which are generously forgiven by the man. Finally issues that really get solved :-)

Why not a good book or literature? Well; I've read my share of serious knowledge at the beginning of this year, and it seems that I'll be reading a lot more in the months to come - believe me-, so I refuse to do any serious reading in between.

Last couple of weeks have been very hectic with my project, luckily it went live this week [successfully] so now the only tasks ahead are wrapping up the last bits-and-pieces; writing the end reports, evaluating, that kind of stuff. I think it has never been so relaxed in the weeks before my vacation; and I think I've never been more bored. I like some action at the workside; that makes it more rewarding to relax at home. I like the fact that I won't have any late-night chores for work (part of the hectic stuff) but now the project is delivered for this stage, the work is TOO slow. Makes me wan't to cry out: 'Are we there yet?'.

So what do you do when work is slow? Yes indeed: you relax at work, but that means you make pace at home (world turned around). This means I have loads of work at home and non-client related stuff. The stuff I don't come around to do when work's hectic.
So currently I'm working on a new presentation called "Unusual testing: Lessons learned from being a casualty simulations victim", to be held at Capgemini's TestEvent 2010. I'm still working on some sessions of the 'Software Testing Ethics Debate', one to be held at NoorderTest 2010 in Leeuwarden and one to be held at ExpoQA:2010 in Madrid. I still have some work on Business Intelligence Testing (formerly known as Data Warehouse Testing) and Test Architecture Framework, and some reviewing on NEN/ISO items that are test-related (or related to some other field of expertise which I'm familiar with). So now I'm so busy at home that I really look forward to my holiday and desperately cry out: "Are whe there yet???"

All : have a happy and relaxed vacation! I know I will :-)

A lot on my mind...

2010-05-19T14:29:00.002+02:00

Lately I've visited some presentations and read some stuff about certification, standardisation, evidence and the different opinions about those, and I can't help myself but I feel anger and frustration when I read certain blogs and the comments on those blog entries.
I find that a certification like ISTQB doesn't make me a better tester, but it didn't make me a worse tester either. What makes me a better tester, in my opinion, is that I explore different possibilities and what I find important is that I have knowledge on all areas of testing and am capable to use that knowledge in the best way for the organisation I'm testing for.
I find both knowledge on ISO, IEEE and BS (ISTQB) as usefull as other information and knowledge about testing (exploratory, agile, etc),not matter what origination. What I DO with it and HOW I use this information most in the most valuable and effective way is quite another issue.

I NEED structure that schools, trainings and courses provide to learn. I don't have the discipline to set myself to learn it all, although I can sometimes set myself goals and learn about stuff, that is not always the case. Certificates give me a certain feeling of pride, I don't know why, it is just so. That doens't mean I don't value or practice self eduction. What pisses me off is the fact that certain people don't respect that.

A couple of months ago I had a discussion on Twitter, that person even disrespected me even more by saying that 'if I wanted to learn testing I was always welcome to attend his course'. It was perceived by me that, because I was proud on having learned and passed the ISEB Practicioner exam, I didn't know about testing. The person in question could judge me completely on those couple of tweets posted.
In the same way home-made-psychology is used, this person KNEW as a fact that I didn't know how to test apparently. This felt to me as complete disrespect, give me some credits please!
My 'plan of approach' or the way I work preferably is that I know about all historical and new developements, THAN I use the knowledge to get to a effective and - for the client comfortable and understandable- way of working. This isn't directed by the ISO standard, the ISTQB certification or the teachings about exploratory testing and storybased testing. I don't think either way is better or worse, I think 'traditional' ways are as usefull as 'new' ways, both should be added to our own knowledge base and be put to good use. That could be that one way is totally unusefull for that particular organisation, but at least I KNOW the contents of what I dismiss and if I have a discussion at least I know what the theory says and can compare it to practical usage.

A filosopher once said that by knowing more, we even know less. I think certain people forget about that basic principle, for it could also be used in other perspectives. By teaching 'non schooling' you become that what you oppose to: a teacher that gives an outlined (and scoped) teaching. By evangelising a way of working it becomes (or has a chance of becoming) a (defacto) standard and that standard was the thing the evangalist was all against in the first place.

In one of the comments it was mentioned that development of the standard was taking five years, it was mentioned with a certain amount of disbelief and in a way that it was the 'fault' of the person that leads that particular project. This triggered another 'pissed at' moment.
First of all the development of the standard takes that long because prescribed procedure of ISO/IEC doesn't allow it to be shorter.
Secondly a lot of arguments come from people from a country that doesn't provide any subject matter experts to the project (except for an ISO 'veteran' who doesn't have software testing as expertise apparently), it's easy to have comments on something, but it's - IMHO- better to participate and provide valuable input or feedback so we can get to a better product. And again I like to mention here: a standard isn't a commandment, it's a GUIDELINE! (there seems to be a lot of arguments on that)

Some other writings that I read have whole argumental epistels on what they THINK is about to be presented. Why do I put it like this? Well the subject discussed (a track at EuroSTAR 2010) has not been presented yet and still whole arguments are already written about it, based purely on what the abstract (!!) states. Mind: it still has to be presented, so the arguments are based on - in my opinion a very non-testing thing- assumptions. The most worrying thing about this is that the arguments are stated by visionairs and thoughtleaders in the software testing 'science'. (I myself don't think it's a science but a profession) . The arguments are also written in an agressive, non respective way in my perception.
I really don't like these kind of developments, they give me chills and make me sad and angry. I cannot help myself by finding that having read the pieces a personal vendetta is fought out. This has nothing to do with 'making your point' I feel, but more like 'I'm always right and everybody else (and in particular that person) is wrong'. BLERGH!

All this stuff: It gives me a bad taste in my mouth, something similar as with discrimination and generalizing.
So let me share some thoughts:

I think everybody is entitled to have his or her own opinion.
I think everybody should be able to practice the way of education he or she prefers, without being judged on what path is chosen
I think nobody should judge something on assumptions (let alone argument on that judgement!) [and yes, I'm guilty too I guess]
I think everybody is entitled to respectfull manners no matter if you agree or disagree
I think nobody should be excluded from oppurtunities based on 'a piece of paper', but everybody should have an oppurtunity based on (valid) experience
I think nobody is 'better' of 'worse' based on 'a piece of paper' (but that also counts for 'having done a course' or 'not having a piece of paper')
I think everybody has a right to speak his/her mind (but doesn't have a right to 'go for the man' or has a right to do so on anothers expense)
I think there isn't a right way or a wrong way; it's DIFFERENT ways that matter

I think I think a lot of things right now. But most of all I think of one word: RESPECT
Let's all cherish this in a grande way so we can all be passionate about -what we feel is the best and most fun- way to practice the profession of software testing.

A visit to the DutchTestingConference 2010

2010-04-23T13:33:00.013+02:00

It's Wednesday 21st of April. Today is the first edition of the Dutch Testing Conference at 't Spant! in Bussum and I'll be attending it.
There where also two tutorial days, but I didn't actually got to register for those because I only heard later on (from a colleague) that these where actually held [shame on the marketing of DTC...]

Before I can go there I have a LOTUS job, so I arrive just before the first coffeebreak. It seems I haven't missed a lot, most people I talk to say that the keynote was very 'dry' stuff; you could also read the slides and know just as much. It seemed that the speaker just read out the tekst on the slides. I haven't seen it myself so I'll have to take their word for it. Alas this keynote is one of the presentations that aren't downloadable from the site (it only shows the abstract) so I'll never know.

Sogeti has some sweet little cakes during the coffeebreak. Apparently they have 'sold' their 100.000th book (http://eng.tmap.net/Home/archief/958058.jsp) if you want to see the picture look at the Dutch version of the article (http://www.tmap.net/Home/archief/858036.jsp), because there is a picture on the NL but not on the UK version.

After the break I attend the track: FEAR: The psychology of software testing, by
Rik Marselis of Sogeti. I like Rik as a speaker and I'm alway curious on what he has to say.

Rik doesn't dissapoint on the point of presentation and fun, but on content I found the presentation a bit light. I liked the idea of using the 7 habits of Highly effective people by Covey and the thought on the fear of the unknown. I also liked the 'testers happiness curve'.

But to be honest, I had a little trouble with the 'red line' in the whole presentation and the 'what's in it for me'. Maybe my expectations where just too high.

The next track: Omgaan met complexiteit by Peter Wanders, KLM & Boukje van Tulder, Logica was far worse, it made the presentation of Rik rather excellent material.
It was a shame to see that the whole presentation was set up around development and test and the business (focus of DTC is Business-audience as far as I know) was completely ignored. At some point an idea grew in my mind about a tool that was shown so I have to admit I was at some point inspired, but the rest of the presentation didn't even slightly live up to my expectations. Apparently the complexity adressed was the complexity in end-to-end or chaintesting, coping with these was adressed by suggestions. When I asked the question about how the business perceived these suggestions when implemented (did they find it usefull, did the see advantages regarding transparency etc.) the answer was that 1. they didn't implement all suggestions (so no experience but only theory) and 2. apparently the suggestions implemented weren't validated with business in mind, the answer given was just to uncertain.

I went of to lunch a bit disillusioned. Lunch itself was good though. Quality of the food was excellent and the organization made sure we had healthy stuff with all the fruity drinks and smoothies that where there.
An attempt for a 'tweeting' failed alas. I only saw three tweeps at the entrance of the DTC so that was a pity.

I walked around the expo a bit. Met up with a lot of testcolleagues and chatted a lot (no I won't say anything about what I know about the EuroSTAR programme ;-) ). There was champaign at Polteq who celebrated their 10th anniversary. And I filled in a card for the lottery to win an iPad at Systemation/ iTKO-LISA.

Full of good hope I went to the afternoon keynote: The Dolt's Guide to Self-Organization by Jurgen Appelo of Sociotoco. (http://www.noop.nl/)
It started out rather good, people where really enthusiastic there and didn't have any trouble with the dreaded 'after lunch dip'. Slide deck was good, dynamic.
Some quotes and phrases where absolutely brilliant: "That is like teaching people all about fruit flies, And then lumping everything else together in the group of… non-fruit flies".

“Self-organization is a process of attraction and repulsion in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases in complexity without being guided or managed by an outside source.”
Alas, after twenty minutes or so the presentation style of Jurgen seemed not to win of the after-lunch-dip for several attendees. The two gents on either side of me dozed off (when mentioning this later on one of the 'dozers' said "I was in deep thought on the content of the presentation" ;-) - yeah right). For those who read this and want to catch up: this presentation was based upon an upcoming book about Management 3.0: www.management30.com

After a coffee break, again with the healthy touch of fruit, fruity drinks and smoothies.
I went to Beyond Agile Testing, Sander Hoogendoorn, Capgemini. I saw his presentation on the COP Testing of Capgemini and I was curious in what way he changed his presentation with the given suggestions and to give support. There's no doubt he is a smooth (and FAST) speaker. Although the contents is now a bit too familiar for me, the overal respons of the audience seemed to be positive and I saw a lot of positive nods here and there. I like some dept, which wasn't in this presentation, but in this case the audience and the purpose (business scope) made this presentation just right. Time management is still an issue with Sander, with an overrun of 5 mins. So no time for questions and a shorter break, which little people seemed to mind.

The last track I visited was Defect Prevention: a wake-up call by Geert Lemmens, Coralius NV. I guess I missed the wake-up call here. I really like everything with defect management, defect prevention, the IEEE 1044 and so on, but the presentation just wasn't inspiring or invigorating. Reading the sheets, no interaction with the audience, in short: boring. How difficult can it be to insert some examples and make it applicable? Some of the other attendees probably felt the same because some critical questions that where answered received some dissaproving nods.
Underneath are some sheets, the first one is rather funny I have to say.

After the tracks there was a 'meet and drink' in the expohall (more chatting! and no: I still won't say anything about the EuroSTAR programme...).
There was also a prize for the best presentation. Which was 'Omgaan met complexiteit by Peter Wanders, KLM & Boukje van Tulder, Logica. I honoustly have no clue how the expert-panel came to this presentation. Was the rest thát bad??? I don't mean to offend anybody, but seriously I see some submissions on the program that must have been - no doubt about it- better.

After this prize a couple of vendors that where on the expo found it nescessary to also hand over their prizes. Sogeti had five winners for their Lecture Dinners, Google had a lot of prizes (by lotery) for a lot of people and Systemation had a lottery for the (very wanted) iPad. I found that the timing and the place were wrong. There should've been only the 'best presentation' (should have been the highlight) and prizes from vendors should have been done before that or at their own booth.

Overall:
the venue location was very good
food and drinks were excellent
the venue itself was very good
presentation level was meagre
network value was pretty good

Going next year? - maybe... I might.

My first article in print

2010-04-01T09:14:00.002+02:00

Very short 'blog', well more of a message actually....

My first article in print got published in the Software Test & Performance, vol. 7 no. 4.
It's about the Software Testing Ethics Debate.
and I'm very proud of the result!

With thanks to Julian Harty and the crew of STP Collaborative!

http://www.stpcollaborative.com/knowledge/594-the-ethics-debate

Blooming of the Testing Garden

2010-03-27T16:47:00.002+01:00

*** Column published in Capgemini's CoP IT Testing Newsletter ***

Days are getting longer and some of the bulbs my husband and I planted in autumn last year are already blossoming. As I watch this coming alive in our garden, I think of all the ideas that are blossoming in the testing industry. Creativity and innovativeness are qualities that particularly seem to bloom in the spring, as do the bulbs. Spring also seems the time that many professionals choose to share their experiences on usage of new ideas in practice. Currently I’m in the position that I get to see lots of these ideas, inspiring ideas and enthusiastic stories.

So let me share some insights with you.

Two years ago ‘Agile’ was just a hype word, a bulb that was planted but many could not see what the result would be, very conceptual. Last year Agile became more ‘solid’, it showed its potential and was applied in some projects with successful or not so successful results; like the bulbs you put in the ground in autumn, some come above the ground, but some of them didn’t seem to be ‘doing’ a lot. This year, ‘Agile’ is definitely grounded, all bulbs have fully bloomed. In fact, I read so much about ‘Agile’ now, that I get a bit tired of it, a bit numb. I even see some developments on Agile, specialized process improvement, specialized tooling, specialized test management. A lot is evolving around ‘Agile’, the bulbs are not only blooming, but they are also cultured more and more.

Another bulb that will bloom strongly this year is Chain testing and testing of software integrated in the actual organization. Not only from a testers perspective this is blooming, but also from the organizations’ perspective. It seems like organizations are now, more than ever, becoming aware of the importance of testing. Organizations with a solid test program in place are willing to share their stories and organizations that don’t have them, will – I expect- definitely be willing to have testing integrated in their processes.

Organization-wise there is also a need for quality in their information processes. BI(M) and Testing thereof will also be a flourishing field. Data warehouse testing will definitely have its roots solid in the soil this year. There aren’t yet that many specialists on this area it seems, so this will be an area that will have to be developed and teached. I encourage people to gather information on the subject and help develop this underestimated field of expertise.

Some other bulbs that will be planted or will start showing their beauty this year are ‘Testing as a Service’, Cloud related testing (testing of applications in clouds or cloudofferings in testing), Weekendtesting (just Google…) , other test process improvement methods than TPI and TMMi and all kinds of Exploratory-like testing techniques.

So this year will be a very colorful garden which will certainly need it’s gardeners, but will also provide beauty and enough flowers to pick from.
Get inspired to plant your own testing bulbs or to pick from those wonderful flowers that have already bloomed! I’m certain that something beautiful will bloom in our Testing Garden.

's been a while...

2010-03-13T11:30:00.002+01:00

I realize it’s been a while – again- since I blogged. I’ve been just so very busy, that blogging just moved to the background.

Firstly I’ve been writing my first large article, which will be published in the Software Test & Performance of April. It’s about Software Testing Ethics and I’ve written about some feedback that I got in the debates I held till now, among others the Ethics Debate held at EuroSTAR 2009. It was a lot of work, but I’m pretty proud of the achievement.

Secondly I also worked on an article on Test Architecture, Test Architecture Framework and the use of Eclipse Method Composer, together with a colleague of mine, for Testing Experience. Alas the editing board thought it was a sales pitch so it was rejected for publication. So me and my colleague (mostly my colleague) are now rewriting the article so that it will be a more scientific article, as the article was intended to be. We never set out to write a ‘sales pitch’.
Although, also this project is a bit on the background now, due to....

The larger part of my time I’ve been – besides working a lot- busy with reviewing the EuroSTAR 2010 submissions. I’ve set out on a quest to review all the submissions. It just seemed fair to know them all, before making the decision on the final program.
And there have been a LOT of submissions, it’s a record number this year! 433 submissions have reached my mailbox and I’m only as far as 229 in my reviewing process.
It is a slow process, since I take a lot of breaks, every submission deserves a fresh review without being ‘numb’ of reading dozens before.
Qualtech has anonymized them all (I can’t even imagine the amount of work that must have been), so I review purely on contents, applicability, innovation and – what else – passion, so I’m not biased by the knowledge of who the submittee is.
It’s a fun progress to be engaged in, but again, it takes a lot more dedication and effort than I would have suspected. Nice is that by making small notes on the subjects and keeping ‘topic keywords’ I’m a bit able to make some statistics. Alas, I’m not able to share anything of content related material of information at this time. But perhaps later this year, I’ll write another blog about this or a small article in the STARtester, we’ll see.

So, until I’ve reviewed all the submissions on EuroSTAR, I guess blogging is on the second plan. Hang in there and take care!

STaaS on Request

2010-03-01T11:46:00.000+01:00

Suddenly it was there in my mailbox: “How do you feel about Software Testing as a Service, a.k.a. STaaS and could you blog about that?”. A request for a blogpost, hmmm, that’s different. Especially since I haven’t had much to do with the subject (yet), other than reading the different articles and offerings on Cloud, SaaS and the sporadic services that are offered as ‘hosted testing software’. But I like a challenge and I’m also interested in the topic so I set out on my information-gathering quest, there’s no such thing in my world as giving an opinion without knowing the background of the subject under discussion.
Sure I got a feeling, but is that feeling realistic and based on founded grounds or is it just based on (false) assumptions?

First of all: is STaaS any different than SaaS? Well, simply said: NO. Bottomline is that SaaS is, for those of you who didn’t already know, software that is offered as an online service. So if looked at it black-and-white; STaaS is nothing more than offering software that can enable software testing activities offered as an online service.
When I look at it this way, I say: “Good initiative”. Organizations that don’t have testing as a core business or don’t have the infrastructure (or recources) to host that kind of software, this would be a great solution. Think about the possibilities: imagine a big library-like site where you can choose-and-click the software testing software you need and then make use of it as long as you like without having the pains of administration.

Alas, STaaS as term, is used for more types of ‘products’ or ‘services’. So with the explanation above, I won’t be giving a complete answer. There are at least two more perspectives.
The first one is the infrastructure for testing ones software itself (the space/ hardware), for which I find the STaaS term isn’t appropriate. This should be more like ‘Serviced Test Environment’ or something like that. You can think of ‘virtual environments’ and so on. For example: when more testruns are done where older versions have to be ‘frozen’, this is ideal, because you can temporarily upscale your infrastructural capacity without having to buy the whole hardware package yourself. When not needed anymore the virtuals are just ‘deleted’ and you don’t have the hardware still in your server room and thus no maintenance and administration costs.

The second one is the service of Software Testing itself (activity). I find, that there is nothing new here and certainly not worth naming ‘STaaS’. For one, the meaning of aaS is that of product-like nature and not activity-like nature. Secondly; when one hires people for doing their testwork one can call it ‘Consultancy’ or if one hires people who test their software off-site, than it’s called, among others, ‘outsourcing’, ‘offshoring’ or even ‘testfactory’.
I do – however- think there’s still some development in these kinds of offerings. I think there are still services to be offered that will fit much more to the business needs than just ‘hiring people’ or ‘letting the product be tested by a company’. All of these shouldn’t be named ‘STaaS’ though.

So, my conclusion (now), is that STaaS as term isn’t necessary at all, it’s redundant and confusing. SaaS will do just fine. The ideas behind the different explanations of STaaS are however worth developing or investigating, but should be named in a way it’s clear what is meant by it. I think organizations will benefit from products which will enable high qualitative software activities without having to be burdened by the administrative and organizational hassle. I think this kind of products, services and offerings are still scarcely out of the egg and need some serious development, but it has an important role in the way software testing will be done in the future.

The Way of Wishes

2010-02-01T10:57:00.002+01:00

*** Column published in Capgemini's COP IT Testing Newsletter ***

As I’m writing this column the snow that has been ‘harassing’ me the last couple of weeks is retreating slowly from the garden and the streets. You should think that would make me some kind of happy, but that isn’t the case, not entirely. It isn’t that the snow is finally going away, that’s the part that’s OK. But it is the way it’s going. It should have been a temperature rise and a bit of sun perhaps that would initiate ‘the melt’, but in this case it’s rain that causes it to disappear. And I guess I like rain even less, in combination with melting snow that is.

In a time that a lot of people have made resolutions for the new year and are spreading ‘best wishes’ it started me thinking. What if some of it came true, but the way you intended it to come true wasn’t exactly what you had in mind.
For example; you have a resolution that says ‘this year I’ll quit smoking’, a very common resolution as I may add and normally a very healthy one. I guess everybody agrees with this resolution, because most people have the frame of reference that the way this is done is by a live person not lighting a cigarette anymore. But it’s another story when one ‘quits’ smoking because they die. I’m certain that nobody had dying in mind when setting this resolution.

The key point here is -I think- the accuracy and completeness that has not been made. And then it occurred to me that ‘requirements’ for software- and systems are set in the same way and that in some cases when we get to testing these requirements are implemented exactly as they are described, but the client isn’t happy at all with the solution. A lot of times this causes incomprehension and even arguments. I think that it is important to remember in these cases that maybe the requirement itself isn’t the most important part, but the way that the solution to this requirement is implemented is.

I know it isn’t the job of a tester to set up the requirements, but as tester we do have a lot to do with them, and in my personal experience I do have the occasional argument with a client that the solution to the requirement is exactly implemented as described but the client persists in not being satisfied with the solution.

I think the requirement specifier should be very specific by adding the way a solution is – process wise- implemented and as a tester we should be extra aware that when testing solutions the description of the corresponding requirement is in such a way documented that it is clear what the solution should exactly be, including the expectations of the client. Having said this, I think we can deliver a more satisfying product to our customer when applying this knowledge.
With regards to 2010 intentions and best wishes I would like to conclude with a very known saying: Be careful what you wish for, it might come true!

Testing the Cloud, a thought on the fogginess.

2010-01-08T08:58:00.002+01:00

***Column 'Capping IT Off', January 2010***

According to a large number of articles in different specialist journals ‘The Cloud’ will be (or already is) the next big thing in IT-land, so I guess it will be important in testing too. Most articles are very positive on the possibilities of this concept, but as is testers own, I get a little skeptic and weary.

Since the first publications on the subject a group of testers in Capgemini’s Community of Practice Testing started following the news. As I said; MOST articles are positive, but lately some doubts have risen. Companies seem to see the possibilities, but also have questions on subjects like ‘security’, ‘performance’ and ‘traceability’. These latter three are quality attributes typically covered by testing.

So will testing the cloud specifically for ones organization take away these doubts? Testing is all about giving the stakeholders insight in the degree of quality of their systems- and processes (and I mean this in ‘fit for purpose’-way, because there are a lot of definitions on quality). As a tester myself I find the name of this concept appropriate. One of the ‘–noun’ definitions in the dictionary states: “a dim or obscure area in something otherwise clear or transparent”. Things like system management that is normally in-house and controllable is now in some vague area out of sight of the organization itself.
Another one states: “a great number of insects, birds, etc., flying together: a cloud of locusts obscuring the sun.”, and I can’t help myself by thinking: THAT many bugs together? – that can’t be a good sign.

So does this cloud also has a silver lining? The process of testing itself will not be different, but the way testing is managed all the more, as are the emphasis on certain quality attributes. Is testing a regular complex system normally a challenge, testing a cloud related system will be more so, but certainly not impossible.

So yes, from a testers point of view, this cloud certainly has a silver lining, but it will take an experienced tester to make it so, else it will stay just as the dictionary also states: “anything that obscures or darkens something, or causes gloom, trouble, suspicion, disgrace, etc.” instead of being (-idioms definition): “on a cloud, Informal. exceedingly happy; in high spirits”

Epilogue; EuroSTAR 2009, two weeks after

2009-12-18T09:45:00.002+01:00

Currently I'm working from home, the snow and iciness made me think twice before commuting to Amsterdam again. Yesterday it took me two hours to get home, a journey that normally takes an hour. So I have (not so environmental friendly - I know) set the heater a degree higher, made myself I nice cup of coffee and started working on the planning and preparation of the chaintest which is to be executed next year March and will do some testing on a system.

It's been two weeks since EuroSTAR 2009 ended, and my mind has been racing with ideas since then. Not only that, I've been busy implementing a lot of stuff and tips I got in the conference too in my current projects.

Since I'm testing and managing a whole program, I really had use of the information provided in the 'Program Test Management- a survival kit' by Graham Thomas. I checked the 'best practices' lists in the sheets and checked the 'anti-practices' lists and set them beside the stuff I already did in my project.
One of the needed skills was negotiating and influencing, I noticed I hadn't been very strong in that department: I used the stuff learned in the workshop 'Chatterboxes and Cavedwellers' of Naomi Karten to pinpoint the problem; since I'm an introvert at doing things and my 'audience' is mostly extrovert, I suddenly understood why my message may not have been landing as I thought it did.
One of the other things in 'Survival kit' was that there should be a 'clear test organisation structure with matrixedrelationships' and another 'Clear and agreed interface with stakeholders and sponsors' and a third 'To ensure that your stakeholders and sponsors clearly understand what testing is doing for them', I realized that a part was missing: namely the program itself. I decided to combine all four (three from the track and my addition). In one large overview of the program: picturing the systems, what the connections are, who is responsible (owner, tester and users) and dates that are important. I'll also use these as 'talk-images' to align all stakeholders (first try-out was very positive!). In addendum with these images, I made a scenario with activities, time, input needed, output needed and who is responsible. Thirdly I made a gannt-diagram for time-overview. All three parts are aligned to eachother by use of colors, so the process of one piece may be 'blue' in all three documents. On the way I also made use of the things learned in 'Rik Teubens track; Many can quarrel, fewer can argue.
My 'testcase' pointed out that he really liked the overview; since he was able to place himself in the bigger picture in relation to other parts in the program (which was normally out of scope for him), he also like that he was able to easily identify the timelines and activities in the other documents because he only had to find 'his' colour.
(and I've been also thinking about another lay-over for the images like Neil Pandits' visualized Risk-based testing, heatmaps)

The second positive improvement I made in my workingarea, and this is the system I'm testing (not the program), Is the stuff on exploratory testing, the workshop of Michael Bolton really had loads of stuff in it I could use to stretch the abilities of the system under test. Resulting in some stress in the organisation though, but when I argued (;-) ) this was all beneficial to really get a good look on the quality of the system and preventing more 'pain' in the future, they were (mostly) convinced. And the secundary part of this, is that it made testing this (a bit dull but complex) system fun again.

So, I guess there's still a lot to implement from the EuroSTAR 2009 conference. I haven't been able to work out all the stuff yet, since I also had to catch up on the work I left behind when going to Stockholm, but I'm confident it will all has a place somewhere.

FunTESTic goes EuroSTAR, part five: the final chapter

2009-12-03T22:56:00.002+01:00

What a day, what a day!
Sorry I didn't tweet the first keynote, but I was a little busy with my own track at that moment (timetable etc), so you didn't miss it: it just wasn't there.

The first track I went to, was the track by Stuart Reid, about the ISO/IEC 29119 software testing standard. I'm quite sure I saw some of the stuff we as dutch workinggroup of TestNet issued after the last review were taken in consideration and put in there.

And then; it finally was the time for my own (double) session. Susan Windsor was my chair and she is really a great support and chair. The room was re-arranged so there were two opposite sides (in stead of rows). It wasn't very crowded, but the people who attended made it (far) worth the while! What a great debate it grew out to be! And our Mystery guest: Michael Bolton, did a very good piece on Ethics and Testing which was really good! I had fun, which is the most important and it was an excellent experience!

After the lunchbreak and some 'chilling' (literally because it's very cold outside!) I went to Graham Thomas' track on Test Program Managememt; a survival kit. I find Graham a very interesting speaker, easy to listen to and with lots of (a bit cynical) humor. This track provided me information on some key aspects that are to be considered at Test Program management, so in my current working situation very handy!

After that I went to a track that was called 'The supertesters - a slightly true story' and this was an absolutely brilliant track! I'm glad I chose this one to attend. If you EVER have the chance to see this track somewhere; GO SEE IT!!! it's a must-see by Anna and Linda Hoff and Jarl Kristoffer. It's to odd to describe but I definitely can recommend this track.

And then al the tracks were over and it was time to go to the close-up sessions of the day. This started with a summary of the testlab (which I didn't visit :-( ). James Lindsay and Bart Knaack did the hosting of that and as I heard it, I regretted a bit that I didn't go.

The next slot was for a panel discussion. And I was one of the panel members! I was asked by Julian Harty (host to the session) to participate because of my twittering. The only 'catch' was that I had to answer in 140 characters because a tweet is 140 too. I was on the panel together with Geoff Thompson (last year's winner of the Testing Excellence award), John Fodeh (next year's chair for EuroSTAR 2010), Tobias Fors (my fellow-tweeter and DEVELOPER!!!) and me. We got questions from the hot-topics-board (whiteboard were people could write down topics) which we got to answer. It seemed a good idea when Julian asked me, but at that table... suddenly it didn't seem a good idea at all... suddenly there were 300+ people in the auditorium before me and sitting beside two major test'names', not to mention I'm not native AND I had to answer questions directly (which I'm not really good at cause I like to think a while on stuff). I guess there will be pictures of that on the ES site... and I guess it went well for the circumstances :-)

(btw I'm eating a muesli bar now which I bought in Stockholm C.; it's not recommendable...)

The next bit was the award-ceremony. I kind of forgot the most of the names, but I still now Anne-Mette Hass won the Excellence Award this year!
And with that Dorothy started the end-speech in which she announced that EuroSTAR 2010 will be held at Kopenhagen and that the chair will be John Fodeh.

My whole week has been an invigorating experience, which were for a large part also dominated by my nerves for today. Monday it seemed so far away, but now ES is over, it seems like it's over in the blink of an eye.

So maybe I'll be twittering next year too, maybe not, who knows... we'll see in time I guess.

(that muesli bar is REALLY terrible, but I'm really into a snack...hmmm)
(I also got promoted to Managing Consultant today!)
(I haven't uploaded any pictures of today yet, so please be patient to look on Flickr for impressions)

See you next year!

FunTESTic goes EuroSTAR part four: in the middle of it

2009-12-03T08:31:00.002+01:00

So, this was already the second conference day. Time really flies! So much to see, to learn, to do and so many people to meet, so little time!

Today I planned a full program, but as the day went along I changed my mind a couple of times. One reason is I'm getting nervous and can't always focus on the subject of the track, the second one is that I wanted some 'easy time' in between :-)

I started early today. The opening keynote of today was of Naomi Karten. I went to Naomi's tutorial on Tuesday and - just like that day- I really liked the contents of this track. This keynote was about the process of change and how to communicate and manage this. Naomi used a model which made this very visual. You have status quo, then the 'POW', then chaos, some adjustment etc. and only after time there's a new status quo.

The first track I visited was that of Matthias Ratert. His subject was Incremental Scenario Testing; beyond exploratory testing. At first - I have to admit- I didn't really see the use, but later on as I discussed the track again with a testing colleague, it suddenly occurred to me that what was said was really 'nifty'! Maybe I can't use it in my current project, but it certainly has potential in other situations.

After this session I took a looooong break to get back at my track-record ;-) at Erik Boelen's track on 'the power of risk'. It was interesting to hear about the practical appliance en the proven advantages of a risk based teststrategy and plan.
The lunch was a bit short today, or at least it seemed shorter because in no-time I had taken seat in the T5 room where Rik Teuben held a track about ‘Many can quarrel, fewer can argue’. I like the sheets of Rik, they are nice and clean, just like the steps explained that a stakeholder has to be ‘classified’, then the arguestyle has to be chosen and last part the connected communication.

I sort of then stayed in the room, because after the afternoonbreak I had the honour to chair the track of Susan Windsor; ‘Don’t shoot the messenger’. This was a double track with exercises and it was really fun! The audience was very active in – for example- an exercise where one had to draw a circle put in communication means which you normally use (comfort zone) and then a second circle with communication means written down in that one that you would like to use (getting out of your comfort zone). And what about a topic on ‘story telling’! You got to love that! So this double track was over before I knew it.

The closing keynote of the day was the winning track of last year; Gitte Ottosen with ‘Agile and Process Maturity – of course they mix!’. I went to this track in The Hague, so I knew the contents. It was nice to hear that some of the ‘under construction’ parts of last year had developed further. Like the development and test team becoming a fully integrated group now.

Tomorrow I’ll probably will not tweet at much I guess. Since I have my own track after Stuart Reids’ ISO 29119 track. I’m really excited at this moment! I’ll probably will have a short sleep.

ps: since my internetconnection suddenly failed last night, I'm currently posting on a public computer so I don't have the time to add all the photo's I took, so take a look at my Flickr fotostream to get a visual impression!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/funtestic/sets/72157622905897826/

FunTESTic goes to EuroSTAR - part three; the startingday of the conference

2009-12-01T23:06:00.003+01:00

Hello everybody, here I am again with news from Stockholm. I just arrived at my hotel after a very nice dinner with 4 Dutch testing colleagues in the old center of Stockholm and read all my e-mail and answered it where necessary, so now I have time to write my blog again.

It was a very dynamic day today. I got to the Mässan at about 8.15 and had plenty of time to get to my tutorial. A great start of the day with Naomi Karten's tutorial on 'cavedwellers and chatterboxes' also known as 'introverts and extraverts'(not a type-o!) I learned a lot from that session, for one reason why my messages by mail (introverts tend so set important things in writing) aren't perceived as important by an extravert, who wants to be informed on important things verbally. But also on how my behaviour is perceived by an introvert.

After the lunch it was time for Doroty Graham to open the EuroSTAR 2009 conference. It was fun to see some history of IT 17 years ago when Dorothy was first chair of EuroSTAR.

Lee Copeland had the honour of opening with the first keynote, which was on software testing innovations. If you look very closely to the picture below, you can see that there are nine points, where among others are 'good books', crowdtesting, testing in the cloud and virtualisation.

I then had the oppurtunity to visit different short tracks (track of 20 minutes). Personnally I found them a bit short wich resulted in a bit of chaotic day, but nonetheless I saw some great stuff. Of Paula O'Grady, Geoff Thompson (what a great speaker he is!), Michael Bolton (burning issues) and Neil Pandit. The last track of the day track I didn't go to, firstly I couldn't choose and secondly I wanted to walk around a bit too and organise my thoughts. Below are the pictures I took during the different sessions. I've taken quite a bit more, but they were directly posted on my twitterstream (@funTESTic with hashtag 'esconfs')

More to be written and shown tomorrow!
God natt!

FunTESTic goes to EuroSTAR - part two; the Tutorial Day

2009-11-30T20:30:00.003+01:00

It's now 20.30h and my first day in Stockholm is coming to an end. It's been an inspiring day to say at least.
I woke up at about 6.30 this morning, after a terrible almost sleepless night (what fluffy beds they have here!) and went to breakfast (or 'Frukost' as they call it here). I've never seen so much types of food for breakfast! There was an whole Japanese buffet (with tofu, misosoup and seaweed) and a Skandanavian buffet (with pickled herring, cottagecheese and other strange stuff) and an English type breakfast.. I saw six very thin stewardesses in purple tenues with such large piles of food on their plate that I guess they won't be flying for much longer or have a type of boulimia.

After breakfast I took the train to the Stockholmsmässan, which is about ten minutes from here and was on time for registration. How cool to register at the 'speakersdesk'! I got a cool toy for thanx, it's an USB stick with a laserpointer in it and I got a poloshirt (not a sweater this time ;-) ) which has - for me - the extra word 'trackchair' embroidered on the back.

Coffee is not that bad here, so I got a big mug of coffee and went to hall T1 where Michael Bolton was about to give the tutorial: 'Masterclass Exploratory Testing'.
I was very much inspired by the tutorial and learned a lot this day. One of the things I also 'twittered' today was that apparently 'boundary' in 'boundary value analysis' is foremost applicable to the testers mind or the scope of his/her testing and less to the technique itself. Michael showed that there are dynamics in boundaries which makes the -1, boundary, +1 rather silly. I also learned a lot of tips and tricks that I could apply in my own testing and also that exploratory testing can be much more lucrative (and has larger ROI) then scripted testing.
He also showed that a lot of the so called automated testing we do, is no more then checking. There was a fun anekdote of 'the point of view' (reference) and that this can be limiting.
The Turkey finds the farmer a cool guy. He gets food every day, gets shelter and gets to run around outside a bit with the other turkeys. Every day the turkey has the same reference and he finds the farmer more and more a great guy. Untill, one day, right before Thanksgiving the turkey is in for a big and unpleasant surprise...
Expect the unexpected, don't repeat the same test every day for it narrows your scope of view. That is wat automated scripts are all about.
Another part of the tutorial was an exercise where we had to write down all kinds of characteristics/ values of a wineglass which could be important the some user at some time. The exercise was rounded up by a sheet which contained the ISO standard for wine tasting glasses and a picture of a wineglass found in Pompeï, which showed the controversary of both.
And so I had more then eight hours of revealing insights and thoughts (he stopped at 17.30 in stead of 17.00), which are too many to write down in this blog. Please also look at Michael Bolton's website where you can find lots of information and presentations on this subject! (www.developsense.com).

After the Tutorial I took the train back to Stockholm Central and I decided to eat at the 'Stockholm FISK' in my hotel, which is apparently a popular fish restaurant. I had 'stockfish' (stokvis) which is typical Skandinavian and found it very good! (I had to admit I was a bit reluctant because of my 'knowledge' of the process to get to stockfish). I didn't stay for dessert but went to a coffeebar instead to have a large coffee (with chai syrup) and a 'Morotkaka' (carrotcake) which I found a pleasant surprise too! It's nice and sweet.
So now I've just finished my coffee and am ready to take a shower and then go to bed. Tomorrow I'll be attending a tutorial and a lot of tracks and I want to be fresh at the start of the day.

God natt!

A flight to Stockholm

2009-11-29T23:41:00.002+01:00

So, I finally made it to downtown Stockholm and am sitting in the hotel right across the central station. And that's also pretty much what I've seen of Stockholm so far (dark! cold!)
I had a terrible flight though! My ears were especially sensitive this time, popping all the time. Then - after an hour or so (still an hour to go) I got restless legs. The sandwich I bought was an insult; it was roastbeef, but over-done and with pickles on it. After a couple of minutes I had to go to the toilet, but the couple next to me were sleeping and I didn't have the heart to wake them with just a half hour to go. And on top of that there was a lot of turbulence wich prevented me from opening my can of cola. Normally I find flying an exiting experience, but now I think the ES nerves have a grip on me.
A nice thing was that the flight was early, with more then a quarter of an hour shorter flight-time we landed on Arlanda ánd I got lucky to get my suitcase very quick, which enabled me to catch the Arlanda Express right in time and had a quick journey to the hotel.
Seemingly there's also a fast way to get to the Messe, so I'm very curious what tomorrow will bring.
The room is excellent! There are even bathrobes and slippers on the bed for usage, coffee, tea for free, bathstuff for free (and nice smelling) and a waaaaay to expensive minibar. There's also a SKY bar in the hotel which I plan to visit tomorrow, it's on the ninth (I'm on the seventh) and has a great view over the city according to the receptionist.

But now I'm off to bed, tomorrow I've a tutorial to attend! Nightynight!

FunTESTic goes to EuroSTAR - part one

2009-11-27T21:22:00.002+01:00

As I sit "relatively relaxed" on the couch this evening, 'Slanket' wrapped around me, can of 'RockStar punched' beside me and a piece of 'la Tur' cheese in front of me on the table, I thought that it would be a nice idea to blog about my upcoming EuroSTAR adventure, and so here I am, typing my first entry of my adventure.

I've finished some last preparations today for my TH8, thursday track: The Ethics Debate. In one of the earlier sessions it seemed a good idea to make some marketing means for the track in the form of so called 'Loesjes', so Julien (red; my co-speaker) and I tracked down some of these statements and I resized the posters to flyer-format and printed them. Tomorrow I need to cut them, but the prints are ready.
I went to the prizes shop today too, to get the engraved prize for 'the Best Debater' and it has become a pretty little cup!
Last but not least I went to the hairsalon and had my hair cut and remodelled, so I'm a bit more stylish for my 'big performance';-)

I't a bit weird though. Since 2004 I tried so hard to get to EuroSTAR as a speaker with various submissions and this year I finally got the chance! It's an odd feeling, especially when suddenly Dot Graham is on the phone telling that she is considering your submission to add to the program, but I'm so exited! And now it's only two days away and then I'll be on the plain to Stockholm, time has gone so fast since I started the preparations.
Making the slides, making an intro for the booklet, setting up a forum where the Ethics Debate can go further even after the session itself (http://www.atfreeforum.com/funtestic/), writing the scripts, approaching the mystery guest, etc. etc.

And then the 'preparations' as a visitor too. Luckily the flight and hotel are booked by my company, but it seemed a good idea to visit the city itself too, so I added some nights at the hotel and booked a flight for my husband to fly in on Friday. I figured out which program I wanted to see at EuroSTAR, and the travels from airport to hotel and from hotel to the conference centre and I still have to plan some things I really want to see, like the Vasa museum and the harbor.

I'm planning to update on my visit to EuroSTAR regularly; by Twitter (www.twitter.com/funTESTic)(and will try to tag 'esconfs') and on this blog, so if you don't have the opportunity to go yourself and it seems a fun idea to read some from my point of view, please check back in regularly!

My program at this moment:
Monday tutorial: Exploratory Masterclass

Tuesday tutorial: Chatterboxes and Cave-Dwellers: Understanding Extraversion and Introversion in the Workplace

Tuesday conference:Prioritising Tests? Use Your Gut Instinct; A Visual Approach to Risk-Based Integration Testing; If Only We Could Make Them Listen!; Burning Issues of the Day; and maybe Is "Agile" Distracting You?, but I'm not sure about the last track yet.

Wednesday conference: Incremental Scenario Testing: Beyond Exploratory Testing; Risk-based Testing - Details of our Success; The Power of Risk; Effective Bug Management - Challenges and Best Practices (not sure yet); Don’t Shoot the Messenger! (I'm track chair here so this is a certain visit)

Thursday conference: ISO 29919, my own track; The Ethics Debate, Program Test Management: A Survival Kit (if I don't need a big break then ;-) ) ; The Supertesters - a Slightly True Story

and off course I'll be visiting the expo and the keynotes!
so stay tuned for part two!

Testing Tapas LiveMeeting next summer?

2009-11-25T11:05:00.000+01:00

This column was published in Capgemini's COP IT Testing Newsletter

Since the clock went to wintertime, I seem to have done the same. My days are shorter and my nights longer. Ok, I guess this needs some explanation. My days seem shorter because they are filled with lots of work, before I know it, it’s time to go home and lately I feel like I have done tons of work, but nothing seems to be done from my to-do list which I set out to complete that day. My nights seem longer though, not only do I try to sleep an hour more (lately I have had shorter and shorter nights, not resulting in a very energetic me) but I also seem to be getting more done. I find the evenings very pleasant to work on articles, innovations and concepts, reading and following up on mail. Twitter seems more alive (due to the fact the overseas testing colleagues are mostly posting then) and if I have to use the test environment, I don’t have troubles with the performance because I’m the only one (or at least one of little instead of many) working on it. Two weeks ago I did the course on webcast (LiveMeeting and communicator usage) and I got really enthusiastic about the possibilities, I really hope everybody gets this course soon and gets as enthusiastic as I am. I’m thinking about organizing one-hour SIG like meetings which everybody can join from home, making it also possible for the people who normally can’t attend a meeting at Papendorp to join in. And since it’s wintertime nobody will be out in the garden or on terraces drinking nice rosé and enjoying tapas, but now I come to think of it; a Testing Tapas session on LiveMeeting in the garden is not a bad idea at all… any up-front joiners?

Testing Enterprise Architectures

2009-11-15T13:59:00.000+01:00

Blogpost as published on Capping IT off: http://www.capgemini.com/technology-blog/

As testers we know that being involved in an early stage of the development cycle will save money on defect solving in the last stages of the development cycle. This is also confirmed and visualized by Boehm. As a frequent test(manager) in chain testing assignments I see much more then only the software that is to be used, but also get involved in the processes that are set up around the usage of the software (and even non-software-usage-processes) and more than once have I found that it would have been very nice to have been involved in the ‘design’ of those too, the earlier the better. So that got me thinking, what is before processes and software? Well, for instance; Enterprise Architecture.
And then I really got going. Are Enterprise Architectures testable? And will the impact be the same if a tester is involved in setting up one as the Boehm curve says, if so, what money will that save? What ís the financial impact of an error in an Enterprise Architecture, or for that manner, what is the image damage when an enterprise architecture isn’t set up right or is the impact of a defect in the set up architecture that big, that it will affect the whole existence of an organization? Then I got more practical; how does one test an Enterprise Architecture? I think to answer that question is to firstly get clarity on the requirements of an Enterprise Architecture and that’s where the crux is, because most requirements that I found, mind: I only did some brief investigation here, on Enterprise Architectures aren’t very measurable or SMART (or checked for that matter). So in able to test an Enterprise Architecture in the future, I plea for starting to involve testers right at the setup, so we can learn and develop this area of expertise, I’m convinced that it will have huge benefits to have a validated architecture in the future, which –if Boehm ís applicable- will save a lot of money. I’m very interested to hear more opinions on this, so please don’t hesitate to contact me on this one, I’d love to hear it! To be continued (I’m sure!)…

Standardization Agile, Agile Standardization

2009-11-04T13:27:00.002+01:00

(previous Dutch blog in English version - on request :-) )
Discussion can be joined at: FunTESTic's Forum

The last couple of weeks two subjects have been in the spotlight for me: 'Agile', because of TestingExperience had a special (sept. 2008, issue nr. 7) and 'Standardization', because I'm a member of the NEN NC 381007 and have a lot to do with that in that role.

Off course a connection is quickly made and then I started thinking about standardization within Agile of even 'Agile standardization' (can that be done?). It occured to me that a lot of colleagues that I talked to, the subjects rule eachother out. Apparently the perception is that 'standardization' hinders an agile project per definition. Standardization is associated with slow, sluggish and bureaucratic while 'agile' is associated with fast, flexible and non-bureaucratic. Further more is seems that almost everybody seems to think that 'standardization' (and with that 'certification' and normalization) stands in the way of innovation (whether this is innovation of programming or processes)

I wouldn't write about this if I didn't have another opinion. I experience a hgreat amount of freedom to nnovate when there's standardization, I'm not occupied with worries of connecting and making sure everything fits toghther. I can use time to work on new ideas instead and it stimulates my creativity to find solutions that fall within the boundaries of a standard. Also, even though standards are in place to create a solid ground, it doesn't forbid to suggest improvements. Standards are just as good prone to development as any other product, progressing insights and innovation can have an impact on an approved standard so that it can evolve to a newer version of this standard.

And than the Agile stuff; I don't see this as a hindrance either.
I think diversity within the Agile area causes delay, first one must define wich boundaries there are at development, while a standard has that allready in place so that everybode can start right away and there will be no discussions on the way to work. I wont'discuss al the aspects here, because I think the bottomline is clear. I'm curious how others think about this, so please join this discussion!

Standaardisering Agile, Agile Standaardisering

2009-10-26T13:08:00.001+01:00

De afgelopen weken hebben bij mij voornamelijk de onderwerpen ‘Agile’ en ‘Standaardisering’ in de schijnwerpers gestaan. ‘Agile’, omdat de TestingExperience er een hele uitgave (sept. 2008, nr. 7) aan gewijd heeft en ik collegae heb die het onderwerp veel aanstippen. Standaardisering omdat ik nu eenmaal in een standaardiseringorgaan zit als actief lid en als zodanig er veel mee te maken heb.
Nu is natuurlijk een link snel gelegd en dan ga je denken over standaardisering binnen ‘Agile’ of zelfs ‘Agile standaardisering’ (kun je dat hebben?). Het viel mij op dat het bij veel collegae die ik spreek het ene onderwerp het andere eigenlijk al uitsluit, want blijkbaar is de perceptie dat standaardisering per definitie een ‘Agile’ project in de weg staat. Standaardisering wordt geassocieerd met traag, log en bureaucratisch terwijl ‘Agile’ juist voor snel, flexibel en non bureaucratisch te boek staat.
Verder lijkt men, uitzonderingen daargelaten, ook te denken dat ‘standaardisering’ (en mede daarmee ook ‘certificering’ en normering) een (hoge mate van) innovatie (of dit nu innovatie in programmeerwijzen of processen zijn) in de weg staat.
Ik zou hier niet wat over schrijven als ik niet een andere mening aangedaan was. Ik ervaar een hoge mate van vrijheid om te innoveren wanneer er gestandaardiseerd is; ik ben immers niet bezig met zorgen dat alles gelijk is en aansluit, maar kan tijd besteden aan nieuwe ideeën en het stimuleert mijn creativiteit om oplossingen te vinden die binnen de grenzen van een standaard vallen. Bovendien zijn standaarden er dan wel om standvastigheid te creëren, maar het verbiedt niet om verbeteringen aan te dragen. Standaarden en normen zijn net zo goed onderhevig aan ontwikkelingen als ieder ander product, voortschrijdend inzicht en innovatie kunnen net zo goed invloed hebben op een geaccepteerde standaard zodat deze evolueert tot een nieuwe versie of standaard. En dan de ‘Agile’ stuff; ook hier zie ik standaardisering niet als struikelblok. Ik denk dat de diversiteit binnen het ‘Agile’ gebied juist voor een vertraging zorgt, er moet immers eerst worden bepaald binnen welke grenzen alles wordt ontwikkeld, terwijl een standaard dat juist al duidelijk aangeeft zodat een ieder gelijk van start kan gaan en er over werkwijzen geen discussie kan ontstaan. Het gaat te ver om alle aspecten hier te behandelen, maar ik denk dat de bottomline wel duidelijk ik. Ik ben benieuwd hoe anderen hier over denken dus ik zie graag reacties tegemoet.

FYRA-ious, a new train, press and money

2009-10-10T10:07:00.005+02:00

***my latest column in the Capgemini CoP IT Testing Newsletter***

It has taken a couple of years, but finally it happened: We are riding! The last couple of months have been a sequence of events, last minutes checks, experimental farms, checking again and making small adjustments (and checking again), marketing events and an excited buzz in the office hallways. Finally I didn’t have to set a whole new test planning to a new (predicted) launch date. No, this time it was for real!

It all started with the introduction of our ‘mascotte’, an odd figure with a very funny hairdo that walked through the office to introduce himself as ‘hispeed’. I think most of the colleagues were afraid of him because there seemed to be a spontaneous migration from people from one office to another; mostly to the location where the funny lad didn’t reside.
Then there was the introduction of the new train, with a visit to the Watergraafsmeer where the ‘Albatros V250’ was to be seen (it was pushed to this location by another locomotive, but that didn’t spoil the fun) and a large press event. We also received a nice gadget; a USB stick in the shape of a V250 with the promo film on it, complete with pink champagne and biscuit with pink aniseed comfits.

Next was the launch of THE NAME: FYRA. Again a party and again cake. For me – as tester – a huge blessing, because finally I could perform my last tests with the final name (instead of using ‘Albatros’ or ‘XXXX’), again one to scratch of the list!

The press is publishing like crazy about almost everything to do with the train, but also over things that have nothing to do with Fyra. For example an article in the Telegraaf: HSL almost causes accident in Rotterdam. Well actually it was the common intercity of NS (domestic) that had to break. Fyra had nothing to do with it. The so called almost-accident happened at 23.30 in the evening according to the article with a Fyra coming from Rotterdam. Odd, when you know that the last Fyra to leave Rotterdam (also during the test period) is at 22.00. The last train to ‘wear’ the Hispeed colours is the normal intercity from Brussels (23.10) which has been riding that trajectory for years. And how about the view from the window at that time? Ever tried looking outside the window of an intercity at night (the ones with the bended windows)? You don’t see a thing except some lights, let alone the colours of a train ‘raging by’. When I confronted the Telegraaf with the facts, their first reaction was that my findings had nothing to do with the article. When I even quoted pieces of the article and referenced them with the correct information, I was ignored completely. They refused to rectify the article or place the rectifying comments I wrote. Awake? Not really. Censure? You bet!

And then the lasts steps; the train itself (not yet the fast edition but the slow-Fyra) has to go in production. Everything is set onto pre-production, again checking the systems one last time. And then on the 7th of September it is finally happening: all systems are live and at 05.00 I’m buying a ticket via the yellow vendor machine on the station of Alkmaar, the whole backup team is stand-by and ‘the first’ departs Rotterdam at 06.00. Fingers crossed and…. YES, it works! Finally after two years of delay we have a running Fyra, which –by the way- is riding on schedule perfectly!

Oh, and are you reading about ‘that expensive’ train, then I would like to invite you to do your own independent investigation (some media are a bit ‘coloured’ in their publishing). For example; a return ticket from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, second class will cost you (in the introduction period) 4 euro’s for a supplement (that is extra on the regular NS ticket). Your gain is 20 minutes per travel, thus 40 minutes for 4 euro’s or 6 euro’s per hour. Is that expensive? I hope, for their sake, that those journalists earn a bit more, but apparently they find themselves expensive at 6 euro’s per hour and therefore they are payed way too much!

Me @ Capgemini's TestEvent 2009

2009-09-11T14:35:00.004+02:00

It went well I think, it felt good and reactions were positive. That must count for something ;-)
Now I'm awaiting the results from the survey held afterwards...exiting!

Here are some pics of me during my presentation on Capgemini's TestEvent 2009 and during the 'thankyou's' at the end.

Telegraaf's Harry van Gelder blunders bigtime, should have tested his material first

2009-09-04T13:15:00.005+02:00

Today a newsitem about Fyra was printed on the frontpage of the dutch newspaper 'de Telegraaf'

(http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/4753011/__Bijna-treinbotsing_hsl__.html?p=15,2)

According to the article there was a near-collision at Rotterdam with the new high speed train (Fyra) and an intercity from the Hague.
The journalist [Harry van Gelder] writes that the incident happened about 23.30h.

That rang a bell...because that makes the whole article one great farce! And I checked the one fact that made my bell ring:

The last high speed train leaves Rotterdam at 22.00h. (and yes, I know that traines do have a tendency to get delayed but not an hour and a half on a distance of a mile)
So how on earth can it be that de high speed train and an intercity nearly-collisioned at Rotterdam? The only possibility here is that the train mistaken for the high speed train was the normal Intercity between Brussel and Amsterdam, which leaves the Rotterdam station at 22.08h.

I tried to leave a reaction at the newssite of the Telegraaf but for some reason they keep refusing the message....I wonder why they are censuring me?
I think Harry should have tested his info first, before writing this article and making himself guilty of pure rabble-rousing.

***addendum ***

I did some further investigation on the near-collision article.

There was a TESTtrain (new material V250) driving from the HSL track TOWARDS the Rotterdam station (thus not as in the article is stated 'FROM Rotterdam'), it COULD have been around the time of 23.30, but this is still under investigation.
Certain is that this train is not a train in the regular train time table but an extra train due to testing.
This testtrain however was not driving fast or 'raging' as the journalist states, it was especially and carefully regulated over track-network just because of the fact it wasn't a regular train in the timetable.

When the train is driving FROM Rotterdam it couldn't have been the HST, but only the NS Hispeed intercity from Brussel and Antwerp, and then too it couldn't have been raging because then the train just left the station (and it doesn't start with a catapult as far as I know of ;-) )

It still makes the article HIGHLY UNLIKELY and a Monkey's sandwich.

Time flies

2009-08-14T08:34:00.002+02:00

Again more than a month has passed since my last Blog, seems like only yesterday I wrote about the introduction of the name Fyra, but the datestamp doesn't lie (in this case) it is really more than a month. Time flies when you're having fun they say, so did I have fun?
Well.... in some cases I really did and in some cases it was just hard work.
I celebrated my vacation in the passed few weeks, so that was the really fun part. I was in Sumar (FR, NL) and some days at home, working on my Miniature House (which is one of my hobbies, you can see pictures of it on my Hyves). I visited the Planetarium of Eijse Eijsingha in Franeker, which I found very interesting! I also visited the seal shelter of Leny 't Hart in Pieterburen (they can use donations :-) ) and we visited SneekWeek for a day.
Before I could enjoy these fun days I had to work my **s off to get everything in order. My project was planned to go live on the 11th of August so everyting had to be allright, because I was to return on the 10th of August. Luckily it did, I finished the work that had to be done AND the project went live succesfully on the 11th (you can now buy tickets for Fyra :-) )
The last news I like to share is that I'm speaker at the Capgemini TestEvent 2009. It's about standardisation, normalization and certification as stable factor within a very rural (test)market. (and I still have to write the whole article :-$ AND make the presentation)
So I guess my time will still be flying the next couple of weeks!

And the name is.... FYRA

2009-07-07T16:01:00.004+02:00

I haven't been blogging last month, sorry 'bout that. It's been absurdly crazy at my job client-side, testing on different projects, real-life testing with paying customers, etc.
But also starting on the presentationmaterial for EuroSTAR later this year, allthough the deadline is at the 4th of August, due to vacations it had to be done last week.
And off course the beautifull weather didn't work in the favour for blogging either; I have been spending a lot of evenings in the garden, enjoying glasses of (different kinds) Rosé (testing which one appealed to me most ;-) )

But today I had some news I just hád to share. After two years of secrecy and mystery about the name of the train (and believe me; in the different ticketingprojects I have a lot of occasions where the name is an issue). No more 'Albatros' (workname), no more 'XXXX' (sensored name).
From today on I can just say, I work on the ticketing program for FYRA!

And because of the introduction of the name, we all got a fun USB stick in the shape of the train (with a promo film on it)

Finally available: MAcceptance

2009-06-05T11:48:00.006+02:00

Recently I got into a discussion with a good friend of mine on functionality and usability on the Apple platform, this was emphasized by the fact that the site we were looking on (he on Mac, I on Windows) was working fine on my side of the line, but was not on his.

As he has his business in Graphical Services, a branch common to use the Apple platform extensively, he has lot's of experience and knowledge on usability, graphics AND the Apple. I, on the other hand, have the test expertise. We decided to team up and TADA: MAcceptance testing was born.

Below is the (first) text I wrote on the subject {for now in Dutch}:
And on the website of Studio Tim Keller there is also information {Dutch} and one is able to get in contact with the MAcceptance team.

In de hedendaagse wereld is E-Business niet meer weg te denken. Bedrijven hebben over het algemeen, op zijn minst een website voor informatieve doeleinden, maar nog veel vaker maakt het internet deel uit van de verkoopkanalen of corebusiness. Het maakt hierbij niet uit of het om Business-2-Business of om Business-2-Consumer gaat; feit blijft dat u wilt dat uw internetsite, dan wel applicaties voor een maximale groep gebruikers bereikbaar is.

U heeft, om de kwaliteit te borgen en de risico’s te minimaliseren , uw internettoepassing uitgebreid laten testen. Toch is er naar alle waarschijnlijkheid een grote groep gebruikers waarbij u het risico loopt deze te VERLIEZEN of zelfs in het geheel NIET te bereiken.

Uw tests zullen ongetwijfeld goed voorbereid en uitgevoerd zijn, wellicht zelfs volgens de gebruikelijke methoden als TMap® (Next), TestFrame of ISTQB gebaseerd. Dit is echter gebeurd op het platform dat uw organisatie of uw ontwikkelaar heeft en naar alle waarschijnlijkheid is dit MicroSoft’s Windows©.

Het marktaandeel van Apple stijgt jaarlijks. Hiervan wordt melding gemaakt in diverse artikelen die op het internet gevonden kunnen worden.

Inherent hieraan zal ook het aandeel van uw potentiële en bestaande clientèle die een Apple hebben toenemen.

Uit steekproeven bij diverse sites die een duidelijk commercieel belang van een bedrijf behartigen blijkt dat de groep Apple gebruikers ernstig benadeeld worden bij het gebruik van deze toepassing. Buttons werken bijvoorbeeld anders dan bij een MicroSoft Windows platform of zelfs niet, de vormgeving is geheel anders of zelfs de melding “Deze website ondersteund geen Apple MacIntosh” wordt gegeven.

Wij bieden een mogelijkheid om uw webtoepassing te onderwerpen aan een uitgebreide (Gebruikers)Acceptatietest op de meest gangbare Apple MacIntosh configuraties in ons MacUsabilityLab zoals dit ook is gedaan op het Windows® platform. We zijn thuis in de diverse gestandaardiseerde testmethoden & technieken en zijn specialisten op het gebied van vormgeving en gebruikersvriendelijkheid, zodat we hierbij ook nog gericht kunnen adviseren.

Wil u zelf een Apple MacIntosh configuratie opnemen binnen uw testomgeving dan bieden we de mogelijkheid u hierover te adviseren en/of dit bij u te implementeren en te beheren in aanvulling op uw reguliere systeembeheer.

TÜV-softwarecertificaat voor vier organisaties [DUTCH]

2009-06-03T15:19:00.003+02:00

Vorige week was ik bij de uitrijking van de eerste vier TüV-certificaten voor maintainability (ISO 9126), door mevr. Oudeman, Executive Director Corus Strip Products Division en lid van het Nederlandse Innovatie Platform in het KLM Hoofdkantoor te Amstelveen. Hiervoor was ik uitgenodigd door SIG's (Software Improvement Group) dr. Joost Visser, die met mij in de NEN Normcommissie (NC381007) zit. Op dit moment geeft alleen SIG dit certificaat uit, waarbij ze gecontroleerd wordt (4 eyes principe) door de TüV. Meerdere bedrijven kunnen hiervoor op termijn geaccrediteerd worden, dus ik zie voor mijzelf wel wat missiewerk ontstaan op korte termijn. Zie hieronder het artikel dat gepubliceerd is op de site van Computable
(http://www.computable.nl/artikel/ict_topics/development/2961343/1277180/tvsoftwarecertificaat-voor-vier-organisaties.html)

KLM, ProRail, KAS BANK en Rabobank zijn de eerste vier Nederlandse organisaties die een TÜV-certificaat voor door hun gebruikte software in ontvangst hebben mogen nemen. Het TÜV it-certificaat is als kwaliteitsnorm voor de softwareproducerende industrie specifiek gericht op verbetering van de technische kwaliteit van softwaresystemen. Het nieuwe certificaat moet volgens innovatieplatform Software Improvement Group (SIG) uitgroeien tot een nieuwe wereldstandaard.

Het certificaat, dat in samenwerking met het Duitse test- en meetinstituut TÜV is ontwikkeld, is volgens een woordvoerder van SIG -een afsplitsing van het centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI)- bedoeld als aanvulling op de algemene industrienormen. Het certificaat is in het bijzonder gericht op duurzame kwaliteit en transparantie van het product. Het TÜV-certificaat verklaart dat de onderzochte en goedgekeurde softwaresystemen aanpasbaar zijn aan toekomstige veranderingsbehoeften. Wanneer bijvoorbeeld wettelijke eisen om wijziging in de software vragen, moet de software aan te passen zijn. Hetzelfde geldt voor eventuele vereiste aanpassingen bij nieuwe zakelijke scenario´s.

Behalve op flexibiliteit wordt volgens SIG ook gekeken of de onderzochte software bijdraagt aan het terugdringen van kosten en bijdraagt aan het beheer van risico´s. Ook wordt gekeken of de software voldoende ondersteuning biedt bij het vaststellen van duidelijke afspraken tussen klanten en leveranciers in de ict-industrie. Het onderzoek van SIG wordt uitgevoerd op basis van een geautomatiseerde analyse van de broncode.

De Software Improvement Group hoopt dat het nieuwe certificaat transparantie zal bieden in de de kwaliteit van de software. Het innovatieplatform hoopt dat bedrijven door een dergelijke toename in transparantie meer bereid zullen zijn om te blijven investeren in ict en in de innovatie daarvan. Verder verwacht het SIG dat leveranciers het certificaat zullen gebruiken om aan te tonen dat de kwaliteit van hun systeem optimaal is.

For and English version :
http://www.sig.nl/en/News%20&%20publications/News/420.html

My mobile phone is one hypocrite piece of work!

2009-05-28T12:09:00.000+02:00

Since a couple of days I have a new mobile phone, since my old one was very outdated and the new Apple IPhone hasn't arrived yet.

Today I recharged the battery completely for the first time (since I got the thing I already charged it partly a couple of times).

When I looked on the display after a couple of hours a message was shown: Conserve Energy! Please remove the charger from the socket.

And this struck me as hypocrite as can be... because I've never had a mobile device which battery is empty as quickly as this one!

EuroSTAR 2009 Programme Announcement

2009-05-20T10:19:00.000+02:00

Finally, the EuroSTAR programme has been published!
http://www.eurostarconferences.com/conferences/2009.aspx

And I'm finally able to tell that I'm in the programme! On a Thursday, my 'Ethics Debate' [doublesession!] has been selected. Julien Bensaid will be my co-speaker.
isn't it great? I'm so thrilled!

LIVEX 2009 - addendum

2009-05-17T20:04:00.000+02:00

Yeah!

I allready spotted me in some pictures online, but very small...

and finally :

http://www.nuvideo.nl/algemeen/26873/grote-reddingsoefening-voor-kust-ijmuiden.html

in this movie at 1.31/ 1.32

I'm the 'victim' (in the yellow blanket), with light yellow sweater, beige pants and bloody leg... my two seconds of fame! ;-)

also seen in this one:
http://www.ijmuidercourant.nl/nieuws/regionaal/ijmond/article4712396.ece/Rampoefening_op_zee_lijkt_geslaagd

LIVEX 2009

2009-05-17T12:01:00.000+02:00

On saturday may 16th I participated as LOTUS in the largest evac-drill in Europe ever; the LIVEX 2009.

The scenario from my point of view:
A ferry of DFDS seaways went out at sea and on deck 7 a fire started. As passengers we are 'requested' to go to deck 8 and 9. I'm on deck 10 with a group of friends when the alarm goes off. A panic. We start to run down, but in the tumult I'm run over by other passengers, fall down the stairs and trampled upon. I'm badly injured; I have a large wound on the right upper thigh, it bleeds very much and I'm going into shock. Friends stay with me; some in psychosomatic shock, some in panic.
My friends, exept one (also my observer because of the shock-play) are directed to the evac point, a perser stays with me (who is VERY uncomftable to stay with me because of the large wound and the shock ;-) ).
After a while I'm evacuated by stretcher to the ship's hospital. There a marine doctor who has been flewn in by heli 'tags' me as T1. I get an IV and oxygen and am carried to the heli-deck to be evacced to the hospital.
-- I have to stop my play, because I'm not really evacced by heli; I don't have educuate training- instead all T1's are evacced by speedboat of KNRM to the shore (this is really awesome! 'high sea',very fast ship!) --
On shore whe have a no-play situation; there are some really sick people (sea sickness and hypothermia) and we cannot play our injuries for SIGMA/ GHOR and Ambu; because they are busy with the real sick. We are brought by bus to the shelter location and this is end-of-practice (alas!)

This day was really, and I mean really awesome!
And there was a lot of media attention (lot's of fotocamera's on board and on shore; on shore there were also filmcamera's), so there's lot's of stuff to be found on the net.

Some links below...

and some more (thanx to my LOTUS colleague Ben!):

Large drill 'Terrorist Attack' in Amsterdam - VUmc

2009-05-10T18:16:00.000+02:00

Saturday I participated as "victim" in a very large drill at VUmc in Amsterdam (Testing disasters :-)).
I had an internal injury (Pneumothorax right) and was classified 'T1' - later T2 and in the hospital T1 again. So I got the whole 'traumatreatment' (which also resulted in me going back in bathingsuit and hospital-peejays to the casualties union room, because the cut off my clothes)

There were several newsitems on AT5 and some other articles on the web. And I'm expecting some pictures of my fictive 'brother'. I'm on several pictures actually, but alas I only know It's me because I recognise my sneakers or know I'm at that spot at that time (not recognisable in other words)
Nevertheless the pics are great! ;-)

http://www.hv-amsterdam.nl/index.php?Archive=286
http://www.at5.nl/artikelen/16454/grote-rampoefening-bij-het-v-umc
http://gespot.at5.nl/2009/05/09/grote-rampoefening-bij-vumc/
http://www.regionieuws.nl/link/390887/Grote_rampoefening_in_en_rond_VU.html
http://www.blikop112.nl/bericht/6007/grote_rampoefening_in_en_rond_vu.html
http://www.nu.nl/algemeen/1961608/rampenoefening-vumc-verloopt-goed.html
http://www.blikopnieuws.nl/popup/video/96577 [filmpje!]

Next saturday I will participate in again a large drill (largest sea-safety-drill in Europe till now!), I will write about that next week.

Tester's screenshot...

2009-05-03T20:50:00.000+02:00

Normally I make screenshots of software under test, this time the tester herself got screenshot :-)

I went to a fotoshoot to let a pro make some pictures of me, so also the different publications etc. can be illustrated with a better picture then with the one I had on my own disc...

I gave the photographer the instruction to capture - a bit of - my spirit in a business picture (***grin*** kind of impossible I think...). Below is one of the pics. Some others I published on Flickr.

Sunshine!

2009-04-28T22:06:00.000+02:00

Finally the winter is over. I had some trouble with the winter this year so I really am glad Spring has sprung. And it has sprung I can tell you that!

I’m full of inspiration and energy. And talking about energy; I saw an article in the computable feature ‘hebben’ (‘wannahaves’) on a laptop bag with solarpanel and with our new way of working I see a lot of new workplaces with an opportunity to enjoy the sun; and because of the solarpanel it’s obligatory to be in the sun the whole time! The good thing about this is also the environmental friendly way of working, solar power doesn’t have a negative effect on our environmental footprint. So not only you’ll feel good because of sitting in the sun (think of the warmth and extra vitamine D!) but also because of the contribution to the environment.

I will mention also the manufacturer is claiming the bag won’t fit all laptops, but will highly probable fit the Apple, Dell, HP and – this is the beautifull part- the IBM Lenovo. Sony and Toshiba will be condemned to their desk with airconditioning for the time being.

For more information (http://www.voltaicsystems.com/bag_generator.shtml). It will come with a price though; it’s about 500 dollar, but it will buy you some freedom and a lot of sunshine!

Happy spring (and summer)!

Multiple keys and crashes

2009-04-12T21:31:00.001+02:00

Sometimes I run into a couple of picture on 'cheezburgers' I really, really like and can't resist share them with more people! See the three below of kittehs who like to test multiple keys and the system crash...ENJOY!

What if...

2009-04-12T15:50:00.001+02:00

A friend of mine once told me that sharing dreams would help them come true. I'm not so supersticious, but I can't help but thinking; what if...
So here are some dreams and wishes that I have...

- travel to: Australia, Indonesia, China and Peru (backpack and adventurous), rest in the Sheychels...
- build a log-house and live totally selfsupportive (wind energy, solar power, heliophytephilters and my own beehyve for the honey!)
- see the Niagara falls and get wet from the spray...
- see the sunset from the Kylimanjaro...
- for once get breakfast in bed, I can't remember the last time I got one...
- Paraglide
- Dive at the Great barrier reef
- Pick my own Hibiscus on Hawaii of Mauii, wriggle my toes in the black sand...

***sigh***
I think I'm gonna dream on a little further!

Article on drill firedepartment Castricum (Dutch)

2009-04-09T22:54:00.000+02:00

Below an article on a drill of the firedepartment of Castricum, held in March.
I'm on the picture (casualties union) playing a hysterical woman in a burning vehicle. I have to be rescued by cutting the door en with bodyboard, because I'm stuck in the car. Cool huh!

Spring Stresstest

2009-04-08T07:13:00.000+02:00

Feels like I'm putting myself to the test at this moment, the stresstest to be exact. How many things, tasks and thoughts can one handle at one time; well I can tell you that it is 'many' when it's positive and 'none' if they're not.
Fortunately at this moment it's all very positive what's happening and I'm handling with ease. I think some of it has to do with the sunshine in the air, some of it with the fact that some of my projects I'm testing on are finally showing 'OK's', some of it because of news I got, the brilliant LOTUS (Casualties Union) work I scored and some of it because of history that's catching up and catching fire.

Just another bad day...

2009-03-27T09:06:00.000+01:00

How (a bad day) day fills itself with impressions:

No parkingspace at station; GRMBL
A long walk through pouring rain to station; GRMBL ánd bad hairday...
Train 17 minutes late; GRMBL
Clerk at shop finds it necessary to 'be smart' ; JUST LISTEN AND GIVE WHAT I ASKED
Test, software not OK; HMMMM
Test2, first bug gone, second one found; HMMMM
Test3, blocking, stop testing; GRMBL
Make report using lots of bright and happy colours to make NOGO message a happy one?
Most men in 1st class coach have stupid shawls; STUPID!!!
Men with Fisherman's Friends find it necessary to smack their lips; IRRITATING!!!
Men in first class stare at you (I'm wearing jeans and sweater) because they think you are in first 'illegal', just to look outside or in the paper after the conducteur came by and 'OK-ed' my ticket; IDIOTS (and SNOBS!)
Man in first class found it necessary to wriggle himself through people on the balcony of train just to find at the station that everybody has to get out there (that was the reason everybody was on the balcony perhaps?): STUPID!!!
Long walk back to car; GRMBL
Husband has really awfull 'music' on at home; GRMBL
I'm starting to really get a cold; GRMBL

NS BusinessCard especially business for NS (Dutch Railways)

2009-03-13T13:33:00.000+01:00

One of my intentions for this year is making use of my NS Businesscard optimally now this card is also available for employees of our company without a leasecar. But apparently the advantage is mostly for the Dutch Railways themselves!

I commute between Alkmaar and Amsterdam on daily bases by thirst class coach. I don’t buy a return-ticket, because it is cheaper to buy a single trip in the morning (rush hour tariff) and a single trip in the afternoon (reduced tariff) in combination with a ‘Reduction hours cars’ (dutch: voordeelurenkaart). (EUR 21,20 v.s. EUR 18,40).
With the businesscard I get a discount of 13% in the rush hour period and a reduction of 20% in the reduced tariff period. A return ticket with the business card costs EUR 18,44.
I seems cheaper to use the businesscard because the reductioncard also costs money (EUR 55,00/ year), but this isn’t entirely true.

With the businesscard, I can’t take somebody with me on reduced tariff and with the reductioncard I can. If I use the reductioncard next to the businesscard the advantage is more visible. With my contruction of buying a single trip in the morning and in the afternoon, I pay EUR 16,90. After 37 days the break-even point for my reductioncard is reached. The businesscard hasn’t given me a ‘hughe’ advantage except the 13% in rush-hour.

Now this seems a nice benefit, but not everything is like it seems. This benefit is only applicable when booked via internet. On the internet no costs are calculated, when using the phone the costs are ’10 eurocents par minute (plus the costs of your mobile provider)’. And then the misery really starts: a voice response system. I don’t know if anybody has ever used a similar system, then you probably know what menace this can be!

The computer doesn’t tolerate any backgroundnoises. It starts with the originating station. I can now tell from experience that ‘Alkmaar Noord’ apparently sounds like ‘Emmeloord’ and all other places ending on ‘Noord’ or ‘Oord’. Sometimes even stations like ‘Horst Sevenum’, ‘Schiedam’and ‘Amersfoort Schothorst’ are confirmed and I can’t imagine my speech is that miserable. I can imagine that by getting more and more frustrated you try to articulate more and more and the computer understands less and less of this (not to mention the surprised faces on the platforms). The average time a call lasts is 6 minutes, the longest call was 12 where I finally had to record my journey on a tape so a typist could insert my journey later on. ‘The computer was very sorry, but couldn’t understand my journey’, I couldn’t either: Rotterdam Blaak to Leeuwarden via AlkmaarNoord before nine o’clock in the morning. The costs for a call are from EUR 0,60 to EUR 1,20 average. My profits with the businesscard are thus reduced to ‘nihil’ when using the card for which it is intended: traveling by train.

But apparently there are also all kinds of other extra’s. Like the Hispeed Businesslounge. In Utrecht open till 22.00 (other locations 20.00), always handy when waiting on the train after a practicemeeting which lasted till ten.

Or what about the SMART that awaits on a station. Easy access; businesscard against the window (reservations to be made first), businesscard in the computer and the glove compartment opens with the fuel card, parking card and keys are inside.
How convenient… well it should for EUR 10 per hour!
Mind; at SIXX a smart costs EUR 5 per day and at the Smart dealer EUR 5 lease, per day. When reservations are made you can rent a smart at Herz (directly situated behind the station of Utrecht) for EUR 20,00 a day.

When traveling to Papendorp by bus (before 6 o’clock this is easily done) and back to the station by taxi I travel much cheaper. The bus costs EUR 2,40 and the taxi (UTC) EUR 12,50, which adds up to EUR 14,90. Last time I rented the NS Smart from 16.30 – 22.30 I paid EUR 60,- . When renting a taxi via the businesscard the taxi is more expensive mind you, because you have to book from a preferred supplier.

The OV Bike I haven’t tried yet. But because of my experiences I wonder if there is any advantage or that it is also an empty gesture.

The next huge advantage is parking at the station. Normally I park for free, but sometimes I have to park at a paid lot. A day ticket costs EUR 3.90. With the business card I pay EUR 3.40. I find this a huge profit! - NOT

The last benefit of the businesscard I tried is the HOTSPOT pre-paid account for EUR 9,95.
Ever tried to connect to the internet, make a VPN connection AND download your mail in the time a train stops at a station? You better pray that an old lady with rollator wants to get the train and the conductor is nice enough to wait.

There are even some disadvantages of using the businesscard (which is also a OV card) where I won’t get into in this blog, which is long enough already.
It’s nice to have a card which is supposed to give a lot of profit, but in this case the profit isn’t that obvious. Despite my good intentions.

Municipality Menace

2009-02-19T12:19:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I celebrated my birthday (a big thanks for everybody who send me a message!) and it was fun until the evening, then the municipality of Alkmaar thouroughly ruined my day within ten minutes of time!

In the evening we decided to go out for dinner. Our choice was 'the Eetpaleis' in the center of Alkmaar. It was a quarter passed seven as we drove away from home and arrived in the city center round half past seven. We parked in a street called 'Laat', and walked to the parking machine. Mind you: it is February, no shops are open because it's wednesday, no events and Alkmaar wants you to pay for parking till eight in the evening (idiocy!). But okay; I call my husband, because I left my wallet at home. My husband only has his paycard with him, because he also didn't expect a fee for parking at this time. We decide to walk over to the bank to load money on the 'chipknip' (sort of e-purse) to pay for the parking. As we come walking back there is it; a parking ticket!

For 50 EURO's (plus the hourly fee of 2,30 EUR) and the parking survaillance is no-where to be seen anymore! So, my dinner was ruined, no money for desert now.... It is now 46 past 7 (about ten minutes have passed since we went to the bank and returned to the car, the car is still hot of driving) and I'm angry and frustrated like hell! Happy birthday by the Alkmaar Municipality Menace.

Sustainability Testing

2009-02-15T09:54:00.000+01:00

In the last couple of months I've been seeing more and more articles, messages and initiatives (http://www.blackle.nl/ (claiming black is more environmental friendly than white, because the pixels use less energy)) about the environment and IT. The latest was a large frontpage issue on the 'Automatisering Gids' (a weekly, dutch, newspaperlike magazine about IT), about 'Green (web)Sites'.
Then it occured to me that a new quality characteristic is 'born', not yet foreseen in both TMap(R)'s or ISO 9126 list of characteristics: Sustainability.

Sustainability is affiliated to efficiency I think, but doens't cover the overtones.
Sustainability is a set of attributes that bear on what degree the software will be sparingly on the (ecological) environment

use of energy/ energy-saving
supportive of environmental initiatives (i.e. webbased that reduces travel)
climate neutrality

A colleague of mine also talked about testing in the light of Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR. So I think this is one aspect of the three area's mentioned in there (People, planet en profit). I see a whole market for testingspecialists in the area of sustainability (perhaps wearing goat-haired socks and using solar-powered laptops). There's still a lot to be developed on this area, but the world is changing into a more envrionmental focussed one, so I thing sustainability will be a serious topic to research for testing goals. And to be far ahead of things, I even think the 'people' part will be a characteristic to be tested one day.

'Humanability', a set of attributes that all bear on what degree the software supports the well-being of people, is affiated to usability, but doesn't quite cover the overtones.... I will meditate on this a bit further....

Philosophize...

2009-02-14T20:38:00.000+01:00

With money you can...

Buy a house, but not a home
Buy a clock, but not time
Buy a bed, but not sleep
Buy sex, but not love
Buy a book, but not knowledge
Buy status, but not respect

free translation of a chinese saying

Well begun is half done…

2009-02-12T12:48:00.000+01:00

2009 has just started but already the publications on software and the bugs they contain are starting to come in my mailbox regularly. The ‘automatiseringsgids’ as well as the blog of Michael Bolton (the tester, not the singer) publish about the top 25 blunders made in software that lead to cybercrime. (http://www.automatiseringgids.nl/Technologie/Software/2009/3/Expertgroep%20publiceert%20top%2025%20softwaremissers.aspx (Dutch) and http://www.developsense.com/2009/01/most-serious-programming-error.html)
If I’m to believe the saying ‘well begun is half done’ then I have half a job to do this year! Uhmmm… can I put some questionmarks here?

2009 has just started and the ‘calls for papers’ and invitations are pouring into my mailbox. A super start thus! I saw a call for paper from EuroSTAR some time ago and to my horror I realized the deadline is on the 27th of February! I saw a very good initiative from our own Knowledge SIG to boost the (testing)information on [internal]wiki; every third Monday in a month they organize a writers evening. I saw an invitation to a SEPA training and the invitation from TestNet for their first meeting. This is where I really start to doubt the saying… this good start doubles my work instead of halving it!

So I hereby can say: I tested the ‘well begun is half done’ statement and concluded that it failed. My advice on this is to change the saying to a more accurate approach. Well begun, means lots of work still has to be done!
Please comment for all other suggestions!

Have a good 2009 with loads of activities within the testing profession!

***this Blogpost is from my column in our Internal Newsletter on Testing ***

Testing and Ethics II

2009-02-01T14:34:00.000+01:00

I held a common house discussion last week on this subject at my office, with help of a colleague. Alas there where a lot of no-shows, so the group was small. Fortunately the people who showed up where fanatic and did some good work on the discussion.

I had prepared, again with help of a colleague, 10 statements on which half of the group were obligated to defend this statement (pro) and the other half were obligated to take the opposition (against). This made it really fun and answers where suprising at least! I'm writing a piece (synopsis) to submit for EuroSTAR 2009 in Stockholm toghether with another colleague for a workshop because I would really like to follow up seriously on this subject.

Don't underestimate the power of the Dark side... is a famous quote among fans an is surely applicable on this subject.

Below are the statements I prepared, I you would like to contribute to this discussion please leave a comment or look for the discussion on LinkedIn - groups.
Have fun!

You can break the law to get meet your test goals

To protect yourself and/ or your company you may not mention (certain) results

Manipulation of test is allowed:

Execute only the right-paths

Execute only cases you know will have a positive result

Execute those cases where you want to have the answers on

You must always tell the truth

You must always be able to use Privacy sensitive data to test

You can drop test cases to your own insight if necessary to be ready on time

You must always pass on your work when your own standards and values get into a corner

As tester you should set aside your own standards and values to test thoroughly

As tester you shouldn’t have professional ethical code because it hinders the good execution of tests

Testing and ethics don’t mix

A testers life for me!

2009-01-23T21:59:00.000+01:00

I had a fantastic week this week, full of creativity, energy, ideas and good conversations. Surprises and - allthough work got tough this week on my projects and I mad tooooooo much hours- a very satisfying week worth of work. Not only this week but also the week before that was very much full of positive energy.
The world around me maybe in crisis financially, I'm determined to keep up the good faith!

Highlights:
I did a couple of 'speeddatesessions' on schools with girls who have to choose their profile this year. As a woman who has done the Bèta profile and studied something technical (resp; Chemical Technology, Food Technology and IT) I'm proud to be a 'mirrorimage' or rolemodel for VHTO (www.vhto.nl) and I hope to excite these girls (3 HAVO/VWO) to choose a 'NT' profile.

I did loads of development, research and writing on testing (some things for internal use, so sorry I can't publish them here) and I've still loads of info in my head. I did 1 entry for EuroSTAR individually and have 2 still to be entered (so it will get late this evening for I plan to finish the draft versions this evening)

I had two very good conversations these week. One was on code-reviewing and certificationlevels hereoff and the second was on ExpertGroup Development and controversial / innovative developement within the Testing profession AND - very important - the human side of the profession. With IfSq and TestValue respectively. Gentlemen: again my thanks to both of you for the very inspirational talks and compliments! I have allready ordered special extra wide shoes so I won't be able to walk besides them (of course they are 'IS SHOES' (see entry earlier).
Also I would like to mention in this light: I'm going to do research the upcoming period and rethink some topics discussed! To be continued!

I did my first NEN session today. It was an introductary session where everybody introduced himself / herself and where goals where clarified. I expect great things from this group and look forward to the upcoming timeperiod in which the sessions to develop the standard on softwaretesting are going to be held.

I got my official certificate by snailmail on 'Senior Test Engineer' (SE2) also OpenGroup certification level 1. And a beautyfull bouquet of my employer!

Last Highlight was the surprise of a colleague who suddenly appeared at work for a visit (an short meeting) since long time of sickness. I thought this the most bright moment of the week since not only I but also my colleague was involved!

and cheezeburgers was particularily funny this week... but this was not really an important highlight, but made some happy moments anyway.

Yep, a testers life for me!

Low power

2008-12-24T12:40:00.000+01:00

December is - for me- always a month which seems to be full of activities that require al lot of energy and when my personal activity level is on low.

First there is 'Sinterklaas', the day children get their way, too much presents and have the opportunity to cry, get sick on too much sweets and 'pepernoten' and be ungreatfull. My own tradition is to make a very good swiss cheesefondue with a good bottle of white wine and afterwards a good cappuccino with Australian chocolates.

Between 'Sinterklaas' and 'Santaclaus' there are a couple of weeks with obligatory christmass drinks, receptions, 'last things before the holidays', hectic work and deadlines, mixed with overcrowded shops and supermarkets and commercials on perfume, expensive clothes and jewelry and off course my end-of-year assessment interview and the end-of-year bills of the companies who want to pay their employess a royal end-of-year bonus as well.

I resent the 'jolly' days; the people who I want to celebrate it are dead or have another mindset on those days, so I feel mostly sad those days. Normally I don't celebrate my birthday but instead our family celebrated christmass with lots of presents. My husband hates this tradition (and the whole christmass thought) so alas...

This year I won a Wii on EuroSTAR though. I decided to buy the MarioKart and wheels and bought Guitar Hero with two guitars and a microphone. Allthough I allready had the oppurtunity to find a bug in Guitar Hero (it got stuk when I won the easy level on Rock Legends) I find this very amusing and a good way to break with traditions.

of other traditions to be broken; normally I'm a real cuisine on christmass (this my husband really likes this part) this year I don't cook a luscious meal but 'saurkraut with pork and sausace' instead so I have more time for the Rock on Sock!

Happy Holidays!

btw: pic is taken from http://icanhascheezburger.com/ makes me laugh in the sad days!

Wanted: Tester

2008-11-30T20:26:00.000+01:00

This night when reading some newsletters that had accumulated in my mailbox, I was triggered by an article about an intelligent pill (sorry, the article is in Dutch). This pill had a built in processor which is able to determine where it is located in the body and where to drop certain medication. I found it a very beautiful innovation. But I couldn’t stop wondering: Who has
done the testing? And what test cases where designed. What were the quality characteristics?
More so, because I attended a lecture by James Whittaker where a movie was shown about future appliances (also in the medical sector), and he was apparently sitting beside a group of testers widely grinning and when asked, they said ‘There’s no way this is going to work man!’ (believe me if I say it was funny when he said it). I immediately connected this movie and the given reactions to the article. Not that it will not work, it probably will, since the article states that Philips has got a prototype which is ready for mass production. But on the testing area I started to imagine the following user acceptance test, yes: in this case taken literally.

- insert pill
And this immediately is THE issue, isn’t it? How and where is this pill to be inserted exactly? Not that it matters: A good tester always tests the wrong and the right way and I don’t mean try the ear or nose. Get the picture? Still keeps me wondering who the test team is; if you see people walking funny in or near the Philips labs, please let me know, I would like to ask them about their testing infrastructural appliance and how they managed.

Philips komt met 'intelligente pil'
12 november 2008 door: Freek Blankena
Philips heeft een prototype ontwikkeld van een 'elektronische pil' met ingebouwde microprocessor. De iPill moet medicijnen kunnen afleveren op een specifieke locatie in het lichaam. Naast de processor bevat de 'intelligente pil' een batterijtje, een radiozender/ontvanger en een klein medicatiereservoir met een minipompje. Ook heeft de pil een sensor die de zuurgraad en de temperatuur van zijn omgeving meet en waarmee de pil kan 'zien' waar
hij zich in het spijsverteringskanaal bevindt. Met de iPill wordt het volgens Philips mogelijk
aandoeningen in met name het spijsverteringskanaal, zoals de ziekte van Crohn, meer lokaal te behandelen. Zo kan de hoeveelheid toegediende medicijnen beperkt blijven. Volgens Philips is het prototype klaar voor massaproductie.

Brainwave

2008-11-20T12:08:00.000+01:00

I'm starting a new business: it's called IsShoes and it makes shoes.
Those IsShoes can be made in India at a cheap price or in EasternEurope.
Hughe IsShoes from the States and the latest IsShoes from that special designer.
Then a new hype will start and everybody will have IsShoes!
and then a magazine that is called 'D-Facts' will have a special issue on IsShoes!

Do you allready have your IsShoes?

My Testersheart is violated

2008-11-19T23:07:00.000+01:00

My testerheart was violated today! I feel like nothing has meaning, nothing I ever accomplished, ever thought of, ever published, spoke about and learned others: nothing has meaning, seems pale.
I don't trust anybody anymore; for everything I confide somebody in, they will rip it from me, make sure I won't get the credits for work done, won't have any real say in it... Is this my punishment for the earlier mistake I made on the talk on TestNet fallevent?

What happenend?
Two years ago I joined a certain project, it was very rudimentary back then but very much fun. I participated by mail, discussed and followed all updates and progress. This year the group had something more substantial and asked participants. A certain somebody within my company send a question in our test community and a certain other colleague responded, at first not even that enthusiastic. So did I, because I wanted an official participation so much!, and I told the asking colleague that I was allready in the loop of the project. How I longed for this chance! But, today, alas I found out the true nature of my colleague! And I even did some extra work (how naive!) and got a (I'm sure really sincere, yeah right!) compliment on the action. I'm not to participate as member of the official delegation within this project...

And I am heartbroken.
Not only because I feel passed by but - more important- because of stupid reasons! The other person has 'a network' or has 'more years in the business'...what about 'personality?' what about professional enthusiasm? what about 'wanting it soooooo badly?', what about 'feel strong about it'?

I feel sick with anger, sick of grief.
I don't have the energy and enthusiasm to develop anything right now....why should I? somebody else will probably steal it from me, use it for their own use, use me, my ideas or would 'write a book quickly' because 'they are experienced' and quickly put their names on it (how about; youngster have to learn? how about: people who worked for it would also like a chance?).

I know I'm overreacting, but I'm so passionate about my work, my ideas. I feel like my little baby has been ripped out of my arms and is now to be raised by another parent and I'm allowed to debate in a group within my company to deliver ideas so this delegate can present them in the official group.... Like hell I will!

Did you hear about the Phenomenon?

2008-10-24T12:38:00.000+02:00

http://5x5m.com/lp/285/us.html

The Phenomenon on the yearlyJournal (US)