the ugly duckling - the changing face of testing

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“The Ugly Duckling”The changing face of testing

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The story tells of a homely little bird born in a barnyard who suffers abuse from his neighbors, until much to his delight (and to the surprise of others), he matures into a graceful swan, the most beautiful bird of all.

The story is beloved around the world as a tale about personal transformation for the better.

"The Ugly Duckling" is a literary fairy tale by

Hans Christian Anderson.

http://www.stagsoftware.com



Once upon a time, there lived Joe, a quiet hard-working soul. He was assigned to check if the product worked fine. He was part of the dev team and shared the environment with them. He did whatever he could, to find bugs in the product. The manager used him to test & retest and the good soul put the bugs on the table. The engineering team picked up what they could fix but told him to be quiet if he raised his voice. The product was simple, the process ad-hoc/lightweight, and tools were not very many. Joe worked tirelessly, was voiceless but still did his best...

He was the black “duck”...

As time went by, things changed.. and Joe also changed....




More Joe’s were added, the team grew, and they became an independent team. They setup systems, trained better and found more and better bugs. Their collective voice was heard.

DevQA

Dev QA Dev QA Dev QA

He also found that he had teams outside his company and also a bunch of freelance testers on the Internet...




... wanted more at lower cost

... wanted quicker turnaround

... wanted faster ramp-up

... expected higher productivity

His customer C.Omer saw results & wanted more...




Joe figured out that “Hard work is not enough anymore”

Joe & co are recognized for the value they deliver, not for the effort they put in.

Joe & co now work on fixed price.

Joe & co not has only deliver work on time, they also give SLA guarantees.

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Joe understood C.Omer expects higher quality. He started to focus on non-functional tests.

Functionality

Load, stress

Performance

Security, Usability

…




Joe figured that he needed specialists & built specialized teams.

A team

Multiple specialized teams..to

Certifications became popular.




Joe also realized that every member needs to be multi-skilled.

Single skilled -> Multi-skilled

Broad based testing skillsTooling skillsSpecific domain skillsDeeper technology skills




Joe &Co’s work was recognized and attitude towards them changed..

Do what I say(authoritarian)

Tell me what to do(consultative)

to




Joe & Co realized that test data needs to reflect real life data and he needed larger data sets. He invested in data creation and population tools.

In some cases, he needed dedicated test infrastructure. He had bigger budgets now.He also figured that in some cases “cloud” was helpful.

Test infrastructure became complex.... multiple distributed systems... higher dependency on third party software

Now Joe had to worry about infrastructure & how to optimize the same.




The process models changed and Joe had to adapt..

Monolithic & Slow to Sliced & Agile

Testing big chunks to multiple byte sized

Document based to Intelligent understanding based

Intrinsic measures to Extrinsic measures




Technology evolved rapidly and life became more interesting..

Distributed applications

Service based applications

Numerous specialized technologies

Rapid obsolescence rate

Open source became mainstream...




Distributed marketplace – Differing needs, sensitivities, tolerances

Distributed development – Differing styles,processes,expectations

Distributed infrastructure–Dependencies, availabilities

Distributed deployment –Multiple failure points

Co-existence – Multiple applications & technologies: Old & New

Place Shifting

Systemic changes were happening and Joe evolved.




Now Joe has a large team(own & contracted), distributed across the world, with dedicated complex infrastructure, plethora of tools , a multi-skilled & certified team, validating builds by the hour, working across a wide spectrum of domains and technologies conforming to a variety of process models and test technologies.

C.Omer is still breathing down his neck with higher expectations.

But Joe is in control and enjoying every moment. He is confident that he can handle any complex testing job. He is widely respected and admired.

He had evolved into a “beautiful swan”.




Thank you!

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This was presented as a keynote talk at SoftTec 2010 Conference, Bangalore.



the ugly duckling - the changing face of testing

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