Fixing my physical environment..

Small Win (5:30 AM – 7: 30 AM IST)

• Woke up at 5:30 AM IST today. It was planned for 6:00 AM but woke up before the alarm could do that honour.
• Drank two cups of lukewarm water as I usually do
• Found and fixed (cleaned, tightened the screws and placed it right) my oldy gold-y whiteboard this morning. I felt like a decent tool smith 😉
• When I was cleaning it, I looked at its slightly lousy condition. Of course it is now not as white as it used to be and, it has a couple of patches. I said to it, sorry, my dear friend whiteboard, I could have taken care of you much better. Now I will do.
• In any case, it is my old friend and will stay with me for some more years. It requires daily cleaning now.

• Washed Money plant jars, changed the water, cleaned the leaves and relocated them to my room. This way these will not be far away from my sight and I can clean them regularly.

• Cleaned desk, chair, washed pen holder and thrown out used plastic cups, cans and paper material out of my room. Moved down to stairs and put all in a dry waste dustbin. Felt like a good society man.
• Vacated my drawing room’s study table’s drawers to create a space for kids stuff and moved my stuff to my room now.
• Cleaned my washroom as well.
• Dusting and cleaning was also done after that.
• Finally made the bed.

Things went well this morning and it is going well so far.

What is your small win today?

The untitled, The unpublished, until now…

मैं निद्रामग्न एक सत्यान्वेषी,
अचानक उठा, कुछ जागा, और देख पाया 
भ्रष्ट होते,
कुछ नष्ट होते 
अपनी विधा, विद्या, कला और विज्ञान को,
धूमिल होती अपनी व्यावसायिक छवि को!

सोचा कुछ क्षणों को 
विचारमग्न रहा कुछ दिनों को,
कि,
क्यों बन गया मैं प्रतिनिधि 
श्रंगार और भक्ति रस का ?
जबकि गुरु दक्षिणा दी है मैनें 
शिष्य बनके ‘शोक रस’ की शिक्षा का!

जिज्ञासा और प्रश्नों में डूबे अस्त्र शस्त्र चलाता था 
वाद, संवाद, और कभी विवाद के अश्वों पे होके सवार,
आह
अब क्यों कुन्द हो गयी उन शस्त्रों की धार?

कहाँ गयी निडरता, नीति और योजना?
कहाँ गया कौशल, कहा गयी सजगता ?
कहा गयी निपुणता, उपयुक्त समय पर
सत्य सूचना सुनाने की कि जोखिम है

अथवा ये सूचना देने की 
कि मैं समर्थ हूँ यह कहने में 
कि जो होगा अच्छा होगा!

कुछ महिमामंडित यंत्र 
कुछ अविकसित तंत्र 
कुछ आत्ममुग्धता 
क्या  बन गए मेरी मुख्य साधना?

जिज्ञासा, प्रश्न, विश्लेषण, चिंतन
स्वाध्याय, अध्ययन, ज्ञानार्जन, स्व-कौशल
क्या बन कर रह गये प्रतीकात्मक मनोरंजन 
और दिखावे के साधन?

समय कम है 
जीवन का 
जीविका का
और  
उससे भी सर्वोपरि 
स्वयं के शुद्धिकरण का!

चिंता सरल है
चिंतन सरस पर कठिन 
शोकाकुल करना, दुखद समाचार देना, सचेत करना 
अप्रिय लग सकता है 
पर यही तो कर्तव्य है मेरा !

अगर मैं रहा मतिभ्रष्ट 
अगर चलता रहा होकर पथभ्रष्ट 
तो निश्चित है कि 
मैं करूंगा अपमान 
अपनी शिक्षा का 
अपने गुरुओं का 
और कारण बनूँगा
अपने विज्ञान, कला, कौशल और चिंतन के नाश का !

उठो, जागो!


२१ नवंबर २०१७ की एक रात, एक स्वप्न या मनोस्थिति या सत्य या भय या कुछ और ?

संदीप गर्ग 
‘सॉफ्टवेयर टैस्टिंग  का एक छात्र’

‘I’ is present and continuous

‘I,’ ‘My,’ and ‘Myself’ are three powerful words in my view and understanding.

Since I first heard the sentence ‘Aham Brahmasmi,’ it almost always got me thinking, what does / could this sentence mean?

As I grew, I shared my interpretations of this sentence but only with myself. 🙂

The most childish one was imagining someone sitting in front of me and saying to me, ‘I am Brahma, ‘The creator of the universe (as per Hindu mythology).

The other exciting interpretations were

1. Utter self-appraisal
2. Ultimate Self-Awareness
3. Self-Knowledge
4. Conveying my existence explicitly
5. Realising self-integration with the world and recognizing individualism
6. Ahankar or more concisely Ahamkara (both, usually perceived in a negative way)
7. Ghamand (usually maps to the English equivalent ‘Arrogance’)

Nevertheless, as I became an adult (at least age-wise), I found myself a proponent of individualism and got into thinking that why this ‘I’sm is ofen taken so negatively? Is it propaganda against the individual’s awareness about oneself? Is it something else?

I still don’t know, but what I think, as of today, is this. 

• Each one of us must work on oneself to build excellent ‘I’s
• Identify and associate with different such ‘I’s and co-create amazing ‘We.’

Based on this current thinking process, here I go to write A-Z of how I see myself building a ‘I’ who becomes enabled to…

1. Appreciate life and people and their helpful contribution to other’s life
2. Apologize the moment I realize to do so
3. Bring Clarity to me, my peers, and our common goals and objectives.
4. Communicate assertively to everyone
5. Declutter my mind, in different ways, the moment I feel a need to do so
6. Embrace ambiguity to an extent
7. Feel good when my peers, friends, and community members make progress in life
8. Get the right things done in the right ways
9. Honestly, accept my mistakes
10. Inquire as much I should minimize my ignorance
11. Jeopardize things and situations as minimum as possible
12. Know better about myself and the world around me
13. Laugh loudly at my stupidity and the jokes people tell me to see me laughing
14. Learn from different people, situations, and events
15. Minimize biases, misconceptions, and miscommunication 
16. Notice what’s going on
17. Offer Help without being judgemental.
18. Practice testing, good thinking, understanding, writing, and conversing
19. Question
20. Recognize the nurturing needs of my body and mind
21. Say ‘Thank You’ to someone who helps, criticizes, brings joy to work, conversation, interaction, and helps reduce my foolishness
22. Say ‘No’ when I know it is the time to say so
23. Seek Help by surrendering my ego
24. Trust people around me
25. Understand (the best I can manage to) people around me, working with me and their situations
26. Validate my assumptions by explicating those
27. Write (type) and publish, if I should

Yes, there are no X, Y, and Z, and there are no periods.

It is not a template.

It is an experience and journey.

It is present continuous

CDT, Agile Context, Selling and some Laws…

This post is an excellent example of procrastination by choice. There is no story as such. Just an attempt to solve a puzzle in my head. This post is for all my testers friends who are choosing / moving / pushed to play different roles in Agile contexts, and the new role might be very different from that of a software testing professional.

If you are not one of those friends/connections/acquaintances, you may stop here and read something else more helpful for you. But, probably, this article, even remotely, may be beneficial.

I propose to read it, and you decide for yourself.

Let me begin…

Some of you (my friends) might haven’t read Context-Driven Testing (CDT) principles. Yet, some of you were performing testing aligned with CDT principles. So if you don’t understand what CDT is, help yourself by clicking https://bit.ly/CDTPrinciples and staying for a few minutes at the landing page.

Now, suppose that, in the past,

• You have practiced testing in alignment with Context Driven Testing principles. 
• You demonstrated decent self and people-management skills.
• You solved some problems of some size, importance, and urgency daily.
• You understood what it takes to exist in a cross-functional team. One meaning, to me, is to continue developing different skills.

Then, I guess, it might become easy for you to start gracefully and firmly in ever-growing agile contexts within the software development space.

If you have ever talked to me about this before, I would have said the following to you.

Please don’t forget Context Driven Testing principles.

I usually prefer to remember them in the order of 3-6-1-2-7-5-4

CDT

But, of course, you may have a different order or may not be. As long as your testing is aligned to those principles in your context, that’s perfectly okay.

Please read the Agile manifesto carefully, and think of a value (left over right) that you haven’t learned (directly or indirectly) from CDT principles. Please note that I am not saying to look for a direct 1o1 mapping here :).

Agile

For example, pay attention to ‘Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.’

Note: Whenever something inside you tempts you to call something a law/standard/custom in Agile, remind yourself of this statement published on the top of the manifesto stating,

‘We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.’

If you become ScrumMaster, please remember that you are first and foremost a facilitator in this role. From Jerry Weinberg’s books, I got to know about three types of management. Micro mgmt., Motherly mgmt., and Masterly mgmt. So, if you ever choose to be a ScrumMaster, you would want to play a Master Facilitator role. You would want to empower and enable self-organized teams to flourish within the culture.

**I am not, by any means, an authority on ScrumMaster role’s do’s and don’t, so let me stop here, for now.

I am still looking for credible references for the Product Owner role to understand this role better. For now, I am content with https://bit.ly/PO-TA-DEEPTEST.

https://bit.ly/PO-TA-DEEPTEST

If you have become a PO/PM by now, can you help me by posting some credible references in the comments section? Please make sure that those references are at par with what I posted so far 🙂

For the Business Analyst role (if that exists in Agile contexts), I may wish to connect you with people who identified customers’ real problems, proposed reliable solutions, and helped teams deliver those solutions. I worked with some of the very humble, down to earth yet highly knowledgeable business knowing leaders. They are still focused on their new missions, as far as I know.

In parallel, you might want to read and make sense of the following laws [https://bit.ly/LawsofSD]

1. Conway’s Law – My all time favourite and I am trying to understand
2. Ziv’s Law – I recently came to know about and sounds very familiar to me. How about you?
3. Humphrey’s Law – Reading now!

The important thing: Please start / resume conversing with the people who bring money to the table. We call them salespeople. They know that the successful culmination of any job is to the outcome of collaborative work on many fronts. They know that people buy from people. They usually know more about the business while testers often focus on functional aspects of the products. You may want to spend good time with ‘Sell‘ by Subroto Bagchi.

Did I not tell you that I am just attempting to solve a puzzle in my head. I am not successful yet but you my friend should have got some ideas by now.

Signing Off for the day.

The cost of Inconsistency…

I first published this blog in July 2014, Then, stopped abruptly. After few years, I restarted blogging with a brand new one Blog – https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/. Somehow, I was not consistent here as well. One day I paid the cost as I made a login related error and I was barred from accessing the site for adding posts. I tried multiple times to recover the account but no success. I decided to come back and found that fortunately, the ownership of https://testingjourney.wordpress.com/ remains with me.

I thought to move the content from now abandoned blog to this one but then decided to post all the links here (starting from first post in April 2018 [start] up to November 2018 [end]).

So, here are the links for all the posts.

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/04/09/qc-wallclock-users/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/05/01/mind-map-the-biases-and-the-choices/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/nice-sunday-in-bengaluru-as-i-saw-it/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/03/manual-functional-v-s-non-functional-why/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/mot-30-days-of-api-testing-day-1/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/mot-30-days-of-api-testing-day-2/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/mot-30-days-of-api-testing-day-3/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/mot-30-days-of-api-testing-day-4/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/mot-30-days-of-api-testing-day-5/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/team-my-point-of-view/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/07/mot-30-days-of-api-testing-day-6/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/testing-challenge-test-without-giving-inputs-part-1/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/10/assembling-a-game-with-kids-team-work/

The question for me is would I be consistent? Let me retry and time will decide.

Day 399 – More than a year of Thinking, Study and Practice

I am back exactly after 1 year, 1 month, 3 days. In my first post, I suspected that would I be able to continue this blog? YES. I would be and this time more frequent and responsible posts.

In last few years I did some fundamental changes to improve my testing skills in terms of Thinking, Study and Practice. I introduced some good books, articles, videos to my Testing library. Then, I joined weekend testing on skype and attended sessions on that. I actively involved myself in different Testing activities like Meetups, Conferences in order to learn. I started commenting (with good enough knowledge I had at that certain time) on different blog posts, articles either to appreciate the author for insights, asking questions or contrasting the views. All for mutual learning and not to criticize someone’s work

I started identifying ‘Context’ while I test some product / project for my employer or as a freelancing activity and I became more confident. In all, to keep it short, Everyday more of Thinking, Study and Practice of Software Testing. I am happier than ever.

I will post today about some books that are a MUST (from my perspective) for every Professional Software Tester

As I said fundamental changes, I started reading (and thinking, making sense out of) Jerry Weinberg’s books. One of the treasure is Perfect Software And Other Illusions About Testing and another one is Exploring Requirements: Quality Before Design

These two books, when you study sincerely, take notes and apply ideas in your thinking and practice, give your testing skills a new dimension, an invitation to “Think Deep” and apply.

As James Bach said in some of the lessons (Lesson 17 about Epistemology & Lesson 18 about Cognitive Psychology) in his classic Lessons Learned in Software Testing: A Context-Driven Approach, that “…lots of people who never studied these subjects have done good testing, but if you want to do better than good, learn this stuff.…”. In analogy with the subjects, similar I can say about the worth of the Jerry’s work as I mentioned above.

So let’s say you are interested in understanding what a Test Case is (beyond what is commonly understood), open chapter 22 of Exploring Requirements...to have a better idea of “Test Case”.

In my further posts, I will talk more about treasures like these and I may also post some snippets (the lessons, chapters, paragraphs that hit my brain deeply) from books I read, after getting permissions from the authors.

Happy Learning and thanks for reading 🙂

Day 1 – Attended a Workshop by Santhosh and Business Talks by Praveen

Day 1

I attended a workshop in Gurgaon arranged by Smitha and delivered by Santhosh Tuppad. Santhosh delivered a speech on Hacking followed by Hadoop Testing by Ankit. Both were good but as a newbie in Hadoop, it was kind of ‘Let me think’ about it stuff about Hadoop Testing. Santhosh’s talk actually had me realized about my less knowledge about ‘Computer’ Itself. One can easily link that ‘Less Knowledge’ with kind of job they are doing or just any other thing. But to me, its simply lack of that passion about ‘Computers’. So, thanks Santhosh!

He talked about ‘Hacking Mindset’ instead of ‘Teaching Security testing’ and that’s a good thing. We as a tester should own responsibility of ‘Why’ we are interested in certain kind  of testing and ‘How’ we want to learn it. Genuine guys like Santhosh can show us the path, we have to walk.

Later, in the evening, I had opportunity to talk to my brother Praveen. We had a ‘Thought Exchanging’ conversation over so many things including How to trade off between “Being a Technology Geek” and  a “Business Owner” / “Stake Holder in Business”. We agreed upon that “Culture”, ‘Like Minded People” and “Vision” plays crucial role in “Making / Suggesting Decisions”. Anyone has more tangible to add ? It reminded me of a lesson “Know your Stakeholders” from on of my favourite book “Beautiful Testing”.

Overall a fantastic day in terms of Meeting Santhosh (No doubt about it), Meet some other enthusiastic Testers involved in Security Testing, I also met Gaurav Bansal from Xebia (who actually read my first post and encouraged me as well) and finally a wonderful evening with my brother Praveen.

More to come…

Day 0 – Confessions and Thanks Giving Day to my Coaches

Preface…..

My Dear Friends, Scholars, Coaches, Critics…

This is my first blog which I created after giving a lot of thought. My thoughts about Why I want This (just because I don’t have a blog at all, NO, that’s not the reason), For Whom (For Myself so that I can ‘Impose’ my so called ‘Testing Knowledge’ to others, NO, that’s not true as well ), Would I be able to continue it given my impulsive nature (I am not sure yet but I am Committed), Who will guide me in this Testing Journey Redefined (Some of the Fine and well ‘Testing’ Educated people on this earth, Explorers, Fellows, Colleagues) Would you accept my confessions, understand me or simply Discard me (who knows?) because you have other far Informative, Interesting blogs by Intelligent testers across the globe?

So I thought all about such questions and I found that except everything I thought about, one thing is true that it’s my passion for Software Testing that led me to instantiate this blog. I am not even giving a single thought while writing this because I want to connect to YOU in a simple “non-mechanical” manner. A simple human being who is seeking Software Testing pearls, Want to be a Professional Tester, a Scholar and learn from everyone who is willing to teach me provided I fulfill the prerequisites of their ‘Lesson Classes’.

I titled my blog as “Testing Journey Redefined” because, so far whatever I did in Testing, I think I was unable to “Realize” that in terms of ‘Actual Understanding of Software Testing’, ‘Contribution to Testing Community’, ‘Connecting to community’, ‘Value add I did so far or may be didn’t’.

So I decided to redefine my ‘Testing Journey’. Now, I would like to thank some great Testers (I interacted personally, over chat only, email communication, read papers / blogs / books / articles)

I am thankful to…

James Bach (http://www.satisfice.com) (we had a little skype chat few months back over ‘Test Strategy’) and his insightful answers on my questions, actually made me realized the “Emptiness” in me as a True Testing professional.

Dr. Cem Kaner (http://www.context-driven-testing.com/) whose papers (not all but certain) opened my eyes (I believe a bit late but yes I am AWAKE).

My brother Praveen who is a Technology geek and he made me realize the value of Technology Knowledge for a Testing professional.

Santhosh Tuppad (http://www.testinsane.com), not only because he is a good tester, but also because he is a straightforward person which whom I spent (not spent, Invested) few hours and we shared our thoughts about Personal Thinking, Experiences and Testing as well

Pradeep Sundararajan (http://testertested.blogspot.in/). See He Ho of moolya.com :). It was my tough time and he helped me in coming out of that.

Michael Bolton (http://www.developsense.com) for his insightful blogs

Shrini Kulkarni (http://shrinik.blogspot.in) – wow what a Thinker….

Alan Page (http://angryweasel.com/blog/) for teaching ‘What should be automated’. It’s a new way for me to think about Automation

Ajay Balamurugdas (http://enjoytesting.blogspot.in/) – His passion and contribution to testing community is admirable

Parimala Hariprasad (http://curioustester.blogspot.in/) – Some of the testing lessons and professional learnings really helped me in Think Big

Twitter 🙂

So Thank you to all of you. The people I mentioned above are my very first coaches (As I admit, soem of them may not even recognize me as their ‘Testing Student’ and that’s completely acceptable) on this “Redefined Journey”.

When I came out of my comfort zone (in fact a closed dark room of self-created Testing Practitioner Palace), and got “Opportunity” to “Talk”, “Study”, “Listen”, “Think” about the Real ‘Software Testing’ as Practised, Explored, Understood, Realized by these people, I found a way to Redefine my Journey.

Would I be able to understand ‘Software Testing’ the way it should be understood?

Would I be successful to continue this journey with great achievements?

What would be my learning curve?

What would be my honest and worthy contribution to ‘Testing Community?’

Answers are hidden, but, I believe I would be able to achieve my goals because it’s only the passion for this knowledge, I ‘Redefined’ my ‘Testing Journey’ and I will continue Walking, Running, Learning….

More to come…

-Sandeep Garg