I consume a lot of material in form of conference talks, and I know exactly the moment when conference talks changed for me forever. It was Scan Agile conference in Helsinki many years ago, and I had just listened to a talk from an American speaker. I enjoyed their experience as told from stage so much that I shared what I had learned with my family. Only to learn the story was fabricated.  In one go, I became suspicious of all stories told from stage. I started recognizing that my stories are lies too, they are me-sided recantations of actual events. While I don't actively go and fabrica ..read more

Today prompted by day 6 of 30 days of AI testing, I tried a tool: Testar. My reasons for giving it a go are many:  Tanja Vos as project leader for the research that generated this would get my attention I set up a research project at previous employer on AI in / for testing, and this tool's some generation was one of that project's outcomes The day 6 challenge said I should Open source over commercial for hobbyist learning attention all the way I read the code, read the website, and tried the tool. The tool did not crash but survived over an hour "testing" our software with the standard ..read more

It's day 5 of 30 days of AI testing, and they ask for reading a case study or sharing your experience. I did sharing experience already on an earlier day, and in the whim of a moment, set up a teaching example.  I google for obfuscated code in python to find https://pyobfusc.com/. I'm drawn to most reproducible, authored by mindiell and when I see the code, I'm sold. How would you test this?  Pretty little rabbit, right? Reminds me of reading some code at work, work is just less intentional with obfuscation. And really do not have the time or energy to read that. I could ..read more

I have now been through 3 out of 30 days of AI in Testing by Ministry of Testing. I was awarded my fifth Anniversary Badge, meaning that I have not shown up in that community for a while.  The first day was introduction. Second day was to read an introductory article. Third day asked to list ways AI is used in testing. As with blogging, I filled the paper and wanted to leave the notes from personal experience behind as a blog post.  Practical applications, personal reflection rather than research: Explaining code. Especially on particularly tired day while being aware that I cannot ..read more

These days writing software is not the problem. Reading software is the problem. And reading is a big part of the real problem, which is owning software. Last two years has been a particularly challenging experience in owning software, and navigating changes in owning software. I have not cracked it, I am not sure if I will crack it but I have learned a lot.  To set the stage of my experience. Imagine coming to a company with a product created over a period of 20 years. There's a lot of documentation, none of it particularly useful except code. While the shape of the existing product is i ..read more

This week Wednesday, two things happened.  I received an email from Tieturi, a Finnish training company, to respond to the question "How AI changes software testing?".  I went to Finnish Testing Meetup group to a session themed on AI & Testing.  These two events make me want to write two pieces into a single post.  My answer to the question My thinking behind answering the way I do  My Answer to the Question: How AI changes Software Testing I know the question is asking me to speculate on the future, but the future is already here, it's not just equally divided ..read more

Over my 8 years of ensemble and pair testing as primary means of teaching testers, I have come to a sad conclusion. Many people who are professionally hired as testers don't know how to test. Well, they know how to test but from their testing, there is a gaping results gap. Invisible one. One they don't manage or direct. And the sad part is that they think it is normal.   If you were hired to do 'testing' and you spent all your days doing 'testing', how dare I show up to say your testing is off?!? I look at results, and the only way to look at results you provide is to test after you.&nbs ..read more

Last year I experienced something I had not experienced for a while: a four month stabilisation period. A core of the work of testing-related transformations I had been doing with three different organizations was to bring down release timeframes, from these months long versions to less than an hour. Needless to say, I considered the four month stabilisation period a personal fail.  Just so that you don't think that you need to explain me that failing is ok, I am quite comfortable with failing. I like to think back to a phrase popularised by Bezos 'working on bigger failures right now ..read more

Sometimes, we write on topics we have not researched, but still have things to say on. This is how I frame this post: I am not an expert in framing. There is admirable levels of eloquence, excellent teaching materials I have seen, but my practice of this is one of a learner.  Me setting the stage of the post is framing. You put a perspective around a thing, that allows you to see the thing. It might be that you are framing to see things in a similar light, or you might use framing to change the narrative on a topic. Today I had two examples in mind that I wanted to make a public note of ..read more

Some of the best things about being a tester but also a manager is that I have more direct control over some of the choices we make. A year ago I took part in deciding that my main team will have no testers, while my secondary team had two testers. Then I learned secondary team did some test automation not worth having around and fixed that by hiring Ru Cindrea, co-founder of Altom, to help the secondary team. She refactored all of the secondary team's automation (with great success I might add). She took over testing an embedded product the secondary team had ownership on (with great success ..read more