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Finnish testing competence in the future · 2015-06-22 · Finnish testing competence in the future...
Transcript of Finnish testing competence in the future · 2015-06-22 · Finnish testing competence in the future...
Finnish testing competence in the future
– The view of the testing community Version for Testing Day (Testauspäivä) 2014-06-03.
Matti Vuori, Tampere University of Technology 2014-06-24
Contents 1/5
Introduction 7
About the future... 9
A good future in a profession 10
Literacy of the future 11
What did the people say? 12
Colour code of the graphs drawn from the responses 13
Disclaimer 14
Warning: Not looking for super people 15
For orientation: common views about the future 16
Attitude and character 17
Reflections 18
Goals of work – Why-> What -> How 20
Reflections 21
What does the tester concentrate on? 23
Contents 2/5
Reflections 24
Business knowhow 25
Reflections 26
Business knowhow 27
Acting in the organisation 31
Reflections 32
Acting in projects 33
Reflections 34
Adaptation to contexts 35
Reflections 36
Breath of work profile 38
Reflections 39
Competence palette 40
Reflections 41
Contents 3/5
Nature of testing competence 43
Reflections 44
Competence of the ICT world 45
Reflections 46
Deeper understanding 47
Effectiveness and efficiency − choices 49
Intelligent efficiency 50
Reflections 51
Methods and isms 54
Reflections 55
Nature of systems that are tested 56
Reflections 57
Communication skills 58
Reflections 59
Contents 4/5
Central things to test 60
Reflections 61
Computer aided testing 62
Reflections 63
Work environments 64
Reflections 65
Test environments 66
Reflections 67
Sources of competences 68
Reflections 69
Polarisation of jobs 70
Reflections 71
Specificity of role and title 72
Reflections 73
Contents 5/5
Changing of jobs 75
Testing services in companies 76
Reflections 77
Testing service providers 78
Nature of companies 79
Reflections 80
Turning point of society 81
Reflections 82
10 top things 83
For reading 84
Introduction 1/2
• How the members of the Finnish testing community – the professionals
of the field – regard as the central testing competences in the future?
• A survey was made in spring of 2014 to TestausOSY
(www.testausosy.fi) members. The e-mail list of the community (980
addresses when the survey starter) the community's LinkedIn group
(820 members) were used as channels. Both populations are mainly the
same people.
• A survey about the future challenging, it was expected that the number
of respondents would not be large. However, a high number would not
be essential, but bringing out the views of people who really had thought
about it. There indeed were on 13 respondents, which matched the
expectations.
• As could be expected, the ones who answered were very experienced
in the field, 14 years (a scale 3 … more than 30 years) on average.
When they has seen the history, she can more easily see the
trajectories into the future.
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Introduction 2/2
• The questioning was simple:
• What would a good tester be in your opinion good tester in Finland
in the year 2030? What are all things that she does? What things is
she good at, what can she especially do? What does she
concentrate on?
• Rationalise a little, for example by giving your view on the tester's
future operating environment? (Such as organisational practices,
tools, etc...). Frame as needed – tell for example in what domain you
see the tester you describe.
• Survey used open ended questions, because purpose was not to get
selections from a ready-made list of possible answers, but to give room
for new thoughts and questions.
• Even though the survey used term "osaaminen" (skills & know-
how), it is really more about competence, where the essential
characteristic is the focus of skills: what needs to be done?
Understanding that is a key issue.
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About the future...
• The world changes, but in the development of activity we often repair
problems of the old world, because new things emerge sneaking and
unnoticed.
• Therefore we must open our eyes for the future and genuinely rethink
what things are done and how they are done.
• Testing reacts to the changes in its operating environment, but also in its
core new things are continuously learned – the current wisdoms will at
some point o seem old-fashioned and silly.
• There are many different viewpoints about the future and the world Is
also full of contradictions.
• When we think of our national success, we must not blindly copy
phenomena, activity, principles or practices that are happening
elsewhere, but we must find unique characteristics and strengths.
• We have a permission to create our future.
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A good future in a profession
• Responding with the best ways to changes in the operating
environment.
• Getting the wished results.
• The future Is motivating, fruitful and interesting.
• Support the characteristics of ”good work”.
• Thinking of different scenarios and aiming at the best ones.
• Deal in a smart way with even the unpleasant developments.
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Literacy of the future
• Trends. The megatrends of the world and smaller trends.
• How the world changes. In which direction do we want to change
Finland?
• Cumulating competence.
• Identification of hype, seeing through it and over it.
• Differentiating of marketing and real needs.
• Reflecting about one's own experiences – from where we have come
and where we are going.
• Ability to identify changes – contexts, development stages, needs, the
objectives, attitudes, ways to act, tools...
• Criticism of the common sense: rethinking is not always intuitive (cf.
Lea: how tailored manufacturing could be more efficient than a series
manufacturing.)
• Thinking about what is being thought about and what is not.
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What did the people say?
• Each respondent has a slightly different story.
• They all told their own hypothesis, views to the possibilities, what
might be coming.
• Influencing this are the respondents' domains. That produces
contextual understanding about what things are those that specially
competent people are needed for.
• For example in the making of embedded systems different things
are emphasised than in the making of tailored information systems.
• The next pages will present diagrams drawn directly from what the
people said. In them, the views of various people are combined by
themes and the diagrams have been added with some derived benefit
or explanations.
• Between the diagram slides there are some summarising, reflecting
slides.
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Colour code of the graphs drawn from the responses
Green background = Results
Blue background = direct people's telling
Grey background = Added explanations
Therefore
Disclaimer
• There are no silver bullets for handling the future.
• There is a large number of relevant viewpoints.
• In this survey and slide set we will tackle on a part
of them.
• And in this presentation today only about a part of
them are presented.
• Of other things, more will be said later, somewhere
else...
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Warning: Not looking for super
people
• When we hear about a need for expanding competences, one
must remember that it is unrealistic to expect any kind of super
people in testing or anywhere else.
• Instead:
• It is good to have versatile, broad competence. One does not
need to hide her skills. There is a need for all skills we have.
The employers should support versatile competences.
• One must not always have deep understanding about things
or advanced skills to do related actions. It suffices when one
understands things and what experts do with them. Then one
can support the activities by own actions.
• The core competences of testing are the things that
differentiate testers from others. Developing those is the most
important thing. But even the core evolves…
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For orientation: common views about
the future
• The speed and agility of product development increase.
• Dynamism of the operating environment. Existence is at stake
continuously.
• Instead of large corporations smaller companies and startups
are essential.
• Challenging technology.
• Growing requirements.
• Integrating systems.
• A need to understands more business, or the real needs of the
customers.
• Therefore: competence is emphasised, a need to put all
available brains to use. Companies must find own
practices that are the best for them. Everyone must be
ready for anything all the time.
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Attitude and character
Gives strong added value, leadership, being grown-ups
Proud of occupations (2)
Competence, ethics, action in order
Wants to be a holistic ambassador of
quality Quality leadership
Thinking, experimenting, bold,
curious
Is [a genuine] professional
Likes problem solving
Social
Will to learn
Other added value than testing
Does not even in a hurry resort to making
wrong kind of compromises Is
quality
Therefore
Enables in team
Enables
Reflections 1/2
• Feeling of tester's own professional identity is essential professionalism and
the added value produced through it.
• This no matter what the professional special areas and practices would be.
• This is emphasised because in the fragmentation and chaos of the world,
clarity at personal level is needed – as it may not always exist in in processes
or in culture.
• Identity produces understanding, clarity, potential for passion towards work and
that in turn gives many essential benefits – a will to do excellent work, to
develop practices, to take responsibility.
• A central part of identity is ethics. See (in Finnish):. http://www.mattivuori.net/julkaisuluettelo/liitteet/Tester's_eettiset_periaatteet.pdf
• That is also helped by passion. See (in Finnish):
http://www.mattivuori.net/julkaisuluettelo/liitteet/tyo_intohimona.pdf
• Identity does not mean limitations to the work profile (”I don't do that”), but the
opposite: when the goals of own role are understood (in a context of shared
goals), one can find new means. Still: one needs to protect own focus when it
is in danger to get lost.
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Reflections 2/2
• What is quality leadership?
• "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." –
management guru Drucker.
• In the old time it would have been psychological leadership by top
management: the company makes quality, it Is important, don't do
compromises, think about the customer. A leader gives vision, shows
example, maintains morale. Sometimes a company might have had a quality
manager, but her job is more measurement, reporting, process improvement
– not leadership.
• It is needed in teams (product teams, all startup) viewpoint that maintains the
processes, gets people to concentrate on the right things, helps people
identify quality problems, helps improve things, reminds all about factors that
are important for success, maintains memory of past pitfalls, maintains
dialogue about quality, helps people learn about quality and how to produce
it.
• It requires orientation, motivation, vision, inner flame, competence... From
which roles / jobs could such be found?
• More important than previously and importance continues to increase.
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Goals of work – Why-> What -> How
Can perceive testing requirements
(Understands, what should be tested, what is important, what are the risks
Can perceive wholenesses (2)
Can question things Takes user's perspective
Finds relevant problems
Knows the background of the
test target
Can start immediately
Has no preoccupations about
work
Understands, why testing is done
Gives added value
Can support needs of business
Therefore
In changing environment
Reflections 1/2
• ”The previous world”:
• A technological world.
• Stable, manageable by doing the same things always more
accurately and better, things change slowly in a cumulating manner.
• Competences and competence needs evolve linearly.
• Big stories and one only truth.
• ”The new world”:
• A world of values and meaning.
• Business viewpoint, real product development.
• Unstable, chaotic.
• Systemic, various kinds of actors, need to understand wholes, no
local optimisations.
• Managed by doing new things differently than before.
• A world of big risks.
• Several different realities, with different rules.
• Organisations can (”may”) find their own style and ways – also in
testing. 21(84)
Reflections 2/2
• In the ”new world”, the most important question is ”why” – that is no longer
heard from a distant client, but the answer must be found by oneself, at each
level of activity.
• Based on that one can find out, ”what” should be done and finally ”how” and
”who".
• Therefore one must understand business, characteristics of systems, the
needs of various parties – and be able to question old thinking, because
everything changes.
• The world of systems has changed from technical design to real product
development and production of value than matches the needs.
• Business and needs are very contextual. The previous world of technology is
context free, based on mechanistic paradigms and ideals.
• One must identify what is needed and how things pay off to do NOW and
HERE.
• There will be an expansion to what kind of information is searched for – for
example A/B testing requires many kinds of new thinking and synergies of
competencies.
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What does the tester concentrate on?
Bringing unclear issues to discussion
End user point of view
added value: quality, focus, risk
management Assuring of value to
business
As early as possible in project
Testing has a purpose
Reflections
• Raising issues to discussion is important. Not only defects, but any
things that should be tackled. Sometimes those are issues that others
seem reluctant to face or are ignoring.
• If doing that becomes, team dynamically, a task for someone, it is
hard to think that she would be someone other than a tester.
• Unlike others, a tester has tools for that. Therefore the issues can be
raised in a fruitful way: there are facts, experiences, the ability to
analyse the information.
• Many core ideas of testing culminate in this task:
• Responsibility about quality.
• Producing information – making sure that people have the facts they
need for addressing the issues.
• Communication in a way that supports common goals.
• Collecting of facts to support decision making.
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Business knowhow
Understands why things are tested and what is expected of
testing
Business related knowledge much deeper than now
Knows the business domain
Each tester is an expert of her domain
(energy, finance, telecom etc.)
Knows customer's needs
Reflections
• Business competence must not be understood wrong. It is not about:
• Budget calculations.
• Understanding about product pricing.
• Becoming an economist.
• Throwing away ideas for gaining fast profits.
• Agreeing about everything with product managers.
• Misunderstandings are easy to make, because even the business
culture in Finland has been calculation oriented – but that changes
too, when the world changes...
• Instead, business competence is about understanding about things.
• One must not be able to do everything business related, but
understand the general state of things so that one can support
the right things.
• For example (next page): 26(84)
Business knowhow 1/4
• Business in general
• Understanding that this is not a game, but a matter of succeeding in
big things.
• How things are thought about in business?
• What is ”quality”?
• What are business risks like?
• How are businessmen different from product developers and
testers?
• What is the world of product manager / PO like? What does she do,
think, what pressures does she work under?
• About the viewpoints of other parties (in Finnish): ”Testaus
organisaatiossa – eri osapuolten näkökulmia laadunvarmistukseen
and testaamiseen” http://www.mattivuori.net/julkaisuluettelo/liitteet/nakokulmia_testaamiseen.pdf
• The whole of the activity, systems, ecosystems.
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Business knowhow 2/4
• Culture of the domain
• Generic nature of the domain – is it strict engineering or something
more free-form?
• What is the communication like– reports or chatting?
• Are they assurers or risk takers? What kind of things characterise
the domain?
• What are the customers like, what do they need?
• What are we sharp in and when are we not?
• Knowing the essential concepts and terms of the domain. What
things are so obvious that the customer does not even mention
them?
• The enablers and limitations of the domain. Legislation and
important standards.
• Ecosystems.
• In the context of national cultures, cultural skills and training are
often talked about. This is a similar area.
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Business knowhow 3/4
• The customer of testing – the business actor
• Central goals of business, the mission.
• What goals do the organisations, units and individuals have?
• Why does the customer need systems? What is their "beef"? How
do they use them? To what kind of operations, how do information
and money flow?
• What is important for the customers in their everyday? Is speed,
quality, comfort or safety (for example) above others?
• What is the use environment of the systems like, other systems?
• Understanding about risks related to schedules and taking systems
into use?
• What is essential in starting a new business (with an information
system)? What things will happen, what all must succeed, what
definitely must not fail?
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Business knowhow 4/4
• The systems that are developed and tested.
• What is their role in the business processes?
• Which functions and characteristics are really important when they are used
for business purposes? Where can compromises be made?
• What kinds of risks are there if systems do not work. What things could
cause interruption of business. What are information the security risks
(information, functions)?
• What kind of decisions are made about the system? What information is
needed for that? When is that information needed?
• What could be the problems, when the number of customers increases or
the volume of business grows?
• What kind of requirements are there about the systems. Does the law say
something? Are there product or process standards?
• Who knows more about things? What is the oracle of things or is there any?
• What kind of systems are usually used in the domain? How is their usual –
that is, expected – level (of quality)?
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Acting in the organisation
Agility in action
Can deal with different kinds of
people
Works effectively in the organisation
Gets results
Communication skills
Multicultural environment
Synergy of diverse people
Commitment
Global teams
Professional cultures
Bearing responsibility
Adapts immediately
Therefore
Therefore
Because Because
Reflections
• Many of the challenges of working in an organisation are similar than
for other occupational groups.
• Testers have a special role of bearing responsibility, because testing
must, in spite of everything, be a balancing force for various goals of
other parties.
• This is not a contradiction, but a necessary dialogical interaction for
common success.
• Ability to take responsibility is often thought to be a Finnish strength.
• In subcontracting – external or internal – the theme of dependable is
often raised. But the changes in the word change its nature:
• In subcontracting: Must do what has been promised.
• In a team: Must do what must be done.
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Acting in projects
Can work in various types of projects
Waterfall - agile
Various testing tools
Rapidly added value to each situation
More in action from beginning to end
Co-operates with everyone from developers to
business owners
Support for the whole
Requirements for agile development and testing grow
Responding to requirements
Can ideate with business and
process. Has a good view to things and
can share her views and experiences
Therefore
Reflections
• Who maintains organisational ”memory” when product managers and
developers change all the time?
• If the tester's role expands it is not only about testing at the end of
development, there will finally be a rationale for being in the process
during the whole lifecycle. And all the time one should not only test but
spar, remind, participate in designing, do risk analyses etc… helping
the project in many ways.
• The traditional tester's competence is not sufficient. Many new
competences are needed, plenty of which we will meet in this slide
set.
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Adaptation to contexts
Ability to adapt
Can easily learn new things
Ability to gives immediately added
value in new context
Hs ability to apply skills in any environment
according its needs
Ability to set into various kinds of tasks
Compare with the "gained benefits" of
small titles (XXX Manager / Master)
Projects with new techniques come in
rapid pace and tester is brought in Is speed
”Short jobs”
Reflections 1/2
• Contexts change even faster: customers' domain, product type,
project type, participants, way of organising.
• A tester must adapt to new situations immediately and be able to
change her own habits to ones that the context needs.
• For example, if risk analyses have not been done previously, one
must realise that one is now needed. Or change own style of
communicating to the ways of the new context.
• Needs for change in more general:
• Ways of action, roles, goals, methods, collaboration, communication,
priorities of testing methods, testing techniques, tools.
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Reflections 2/2
• Essential
• Ability to abstract competence so that it can be transferred to a new
context.
• Understanding about characteristics of systems, mental models of
technologies, needs, how people work, business.
• A flexible mind – no fixing to rigid practices.
• Instead of a process approach, a service attitude, a problem solving
approach – what is needed in each context and how that need is
filled.
• Small ego.
• A large personal mental "toolbox".
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Breath of work profile
environment Is dynamic, leaner
organisations
Work profile changes continuously
Rapidly in action in changing situations
Need to know "little of everything”, multi-
skilledness (2)
Continuous training and learning new
things
Work in teams
Work requires special skills (automating,
Information security)
Can do what others don't
Does anything that needs to be done
Always ready
Forces
Reflections
• If one must learn all the time, how does it happen in the everyday of
the working life?
• Note: one should learn for the next job, to be ready for it! The
current job will change to another when this one has been learned
properly...
• How to support learning from colleagues?
• On the other hand, how to support the learning of others?
• How to bring to the activities more the elements of shared learning?
• Reflecting, externalising, experimenting...
• Is there any value in a proactive collecting of certificates?
• How to apply mentoring? How to bring the national network of
colleagues / the community for support?
• How to bring elements of coaching to management?
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Competence palette
A versatile whole
Tester's mind-set
Coder's development skills
Communication skills Concentrates Is test automation, CI and
similar
Test analysis (testing need analysis)
Technical skills at good level
Improved test automation skills
Improved technical understanding about
manual testing Ability to do rich, good testing
Because
Reflections 1/2
• When a large generic competence and basic readiness to everything
is needed, but at the same time special skills are expected, the
formula of expectations can be impossible.
• A single person can not be everything.
• Several different tester's concepts, profiles:
• Business oriented type.
• Testing- and product technologically oriented type.
• Etc...
• At the core of all those are at least the tester's attitude and basic
skills.
• They are sometimes so obvious, that they are in danger of being
forgotten.
• Still, they are what differentiate testers from others.
• But even those need expansion...
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Reflections 2/2
• Too often in the discussion about the profiles people think as a basis a
"generic functionality tester".
• But there have for a long time been special experts on usability
testing, performance testing and information security testing.
• One challenge in testing is to get rid of the strong stereotype of testing
being functional testing and remembering that there already are many
kinds of testing and testers.
• New arrangements should perhaps be sought that all this expertise
can be provided for companies in flexible ways.
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Nature of testing competence
Core competence is the core of profession!
Broad competence
Possibility to do qualified, value producing work
Even a "basic tester" knows the basics Is
all testing levels
Specialisation preferable
Danger of getting stuck in some special
field
Must develop continuously
Operating environment independent basics of
quality assurance
Understanding about own resources [what
all can she test]
Because
Must be able to do what
others don't
Reflections
• Danger of getting stuck in some focus area: One finds her own
speciality in a narrow area and closes her eyes for everything else.
• Need critical thinking about oneself.
• Continuous renewing.
• Part of professionalism is recognition of what one really is proficient in
and what all things one can do.
• Sometime for example usability testing is considered trivial, but that
is far from trivial and real competence is required for that.
• And how about information security testing?
• One must activate the company, team, to fill the holes in competence.
• Internally and by subcontracting.
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Competence of the ICT world
Has ICT competences
Processes, practices
Tools
Is efficient, can concentrate on
substance, works effectively in collaboration
Knows, what happens
in technology
Therefore
Can test technologies in various contexts
Reflections
• The ICT world as such is a competence area, because things in it
interleave with what is tested and the operating environment of
testing.
• Challenges are similar as for the modern software developer.
• General understanding about systems.
• There is a movement to more implicit requirements from thick
requirement lists. Therefore one must understand how computer
programs work in general and how they are used and what
expectations are attached to them.
• One must be able to read between the lines – what do the
requirements really mean. ICT cultural literacy!
• In teams, someone must be ICT knowledgeable.
• Testing is ICT intensive – communication tools, information
management, testing tools...
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Deeper understanding 1/2
• ”In the old times” testing was categorically divided into black box and white box
testing.
• It has been forgotten that a tester needs to have a mental model of what
happens below the bonnet, even when the source code is never seen.
• What generally happens in programs between input... output.
• What happens in operating systems, what things can go wrong.
• How do the networks work. How about virtual machines.
• File format, character sets.
• What do installation programs do.
• Etc...
• The reason for this forgetting is in the background: it has been assumed that
people have this understanding from education. But many don't have – short
prepping would help a lot.
• Also: Understanding about doing: how are computer programs made (in
projects).
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Deeper understanding 2/2
Attack models
Internal models of operation
Failure models
Realism about variation of the world
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Effectiveness and efficiency − choices
Speed, agility, cost-effectiveness
Knows, how avoid making unnecessary
tests
Uses to the same testing (with same
results) half of what currently
Intelligent automation
Choosing good test cases: give value,
produce information about quality
Understanding about business
Therefore
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Intelligent efficiency
Intelligent efficiency
Time used on product development gets
smaller
Time used testing gets smaller
Large part of testing must be based on
automation (2)
Number of tests grows
Complexity of systems
Intelligent automation
Tester's choices on tests
Intelligence: what to test (what previously,
effect of product changes)? Evaluation
of results?
Therefore
Therefore
Reflections 1/3
• Efficiency has traditionally been sought by aiming to do things faster.
Turn everything up to more speed during the work day, let's do rapid
test automation, even if it were a little worse...
• It is wiser to do right choices and to focus on important things.
• Concentration improves understanding about all of the product.
• When one concentrates, there is not such a hurry.
• Emphasise the quality of tests, not quantity.
• It depends, however, on the domain and situations, how much for
example optimising of test automation is emphasised in this regard.
• But making choices has risen up in all kinds of testing.
• The choices must not leave big holes in testing. Freedom of choice is
easy to misuse.
• Can anyone be given the freedom? Criteria?
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Reflections 2/3
• One element in making choices is saying "NO" to something.
• Ability to do so is assumed to be a central starting point in innovation
– when it is decided to do something, one does not do something
else.
• And innovativeness is important for our future.
• In testing one must of course be very careful.
• Focusing:
• Test big risks rather than small ones.
• Study the unknown more than the known.
• Focus on what is needed RIGHT NOW.
• Prefer good practices instead of bad ones.
• Do new tests rather than repeat old ones.
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Reflections 3/3
• Don't do:
• Too much anticipation.
• Avoid getting too exited.
• Don't go to unknown – get information.
• Don't shoot oneself in the foot.
• Don't be one-sided.
• Remembering:
• Testing is service.
• It is not a gate keeper, it does not decide.
• It doesn't have a big ego.
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Methods and isms
Number of isms grows
New methods are born, with varying life
span
Reflections
• There will always be isms and silver bullets.
• Mature professional must see through them.
• But sometimes they can provide real added value. But they are never
silver bullets.
• One must make choices in how to react.
• One must forget her own ego in all cases. The new ways of thinking
can provide lots to learn and when learning one has to leave
something old behind, even though that would seem to shrink her own
identity and history.
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Nature of systems that are tested
[Can be virtualised or is in cloud]
Interfaces and connections with
other system increase
Better than current integration between systems is required
Integration viewpoint increases in testing
Management of information is all
systems
”User tests” – reactive mode of
operation
Understanding about wholes
Reactive mode of operation
Reflections
• Our world is a world of connected systems.
• Few things to test are an island.
• When we test some programmatic entity, we also test its relation to
other entities – of which we may sometimes know only a little, and
that "everything else" can work in any possible way.
• One must understand technological whole, and even more
generally, relationships between things.
• The wholes are not only complex, but also dangerous. In testing,
one must invest in "assuring" robustness – with the assumption that
the other system elements can and will do whatever they like.
• Lacking: systems thinking, assessment of wholes, paranoia...
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Communication skills
Can communicate in the languages of the
operating environment
Finnish, English, orally and written
Views and fact are delivered
Can report about quality (vs. testing)
Reflections
• 1990's: Tester must be able to write clear test reports and bug reports.
• The beginning of 2000's: Tester must be able to communicate orally in
meetings and with the team.
• Next: Tester must be able to communicate with the language that the
business understands, about the things that are important to
business, based on self-found, convincing facts.
• ”Nobody is interested" in tests and test results, but the reality: what
kind of problems do we have? What is their influence? What risks are
there?
• Testing can't afford self-satisfied slang.
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Central things to test
Can test things that are important in the
future
Information security testing
Test types
Electric services
Targets of testing
Analysis of data masses
Use of tools Manufacturing,
preparation of tools
Cyber security
(Internet of things)
Reflections
• The world of quality characteristics expands continuously.
• The nature and characteristics of systems change.
• Traditionally, the acknowledgement of the new things in testing comes
much later.
• It would be better to be proactive in this.
• One example. Testing of human-like robots:
https://wiki.tut.fi/pub/RATA/PublicationsAndDownloads/testing_human-like_robots.pdf
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Computer aided testing
Test automation Some coding skills Hacking skills
Can give repetitive work to machines
Can find vulnerabilities (functionality,
information security)
Need training and practical doing
Reflections
• When we talk about test automation, we often only mention testers'
”coding skills”.
• But coding only helps in making small and simple scripts.
• A more challenging testing benefits from hacker's skills, using those
one can really see how the target behaves and what it tolerated.
• A healthy breaking mentality taken into the order of two.
• But it is pointless to expect that of everybody.
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Work environments
Work needs to be able to do from
anywhere
Comfort, freedom of choice, optimising of
environment
Not tied to a place
Reflections
• The generic future of work reflects in testing.
• Remote work has been "future" for a long time. And everyday too:
• Outsourcing is remote work.
• Distributed teams do remote work at team level.
• Agile work prefers presence with others.
• Team work is organic work with people.
• Tacit knowledge and rich communication do not work in electronic
communication.
• But if work is done with headphones on, people are not that much
present.
• Digital presence in virtual environments (verbal) has revived and will
revive things.
• Visual – 3D – presence?
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Test environments
Virtualised hardware platforms
Test environment always available
Not tied to a place of own devices
All services are in the cloud or similar
Get versatile
Connections with other environments and collaboration with different kinds of systems
increases
Become more complicated
Packaging in the cloud
Reflections
• In general, the world of test environments is changing positively.
• There are different things and they can be taken into use rapidly,
according to what is needed.
• Managing the new environment types requires competence.
• When the environments are in shape, people can concentrate on the
substance of testing.
• Will soon "everything” be in the cloud abstracted and virtual?
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Sources of competences
Readiness in the beginning of career
Has basic competences already
during studies (university of applied sciences, technical universities Aalto,
TUT...)
Therefore
Reflections
• It is a big thing that more people will get some level of test education
already in school.
• One challenge is the development of that education.
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Polarisation of jobs
Basic task Upper level senior
quality testing tasks
As micro tasks
Outsourced to those that are least
expensive or easiest to employ
Most challenging testing tasks,
automating, model based testing etc.
Pays to increase use of assistants and
trainees (students in hour work)
Reflections
• Besides the positioning of competence (for example in the dimension
of testing technology <> business), also the level or requirements for
testing varies and perhaps polarises.
• A historical problem has been that people think that they can manage
with one tester profile – either one – without thinking of the whole.
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Specificity of role and title
Roles blend
Will do everything in team that is needed
[for quality]
Does a good tester know that she works
as a ”tester”?
Will tester title disappear?
...Would it only be a role produced by
good team dynamics??...
Reflections 1/2
• A ”tester” is born by naming someone as such or by giving her such
tasks.
• When collective competence is mature, there will emerge testing
tasks from the team's activity and if the team is very dynamic, the
tasks can get divided for people in an optimal way.
• But ”when” is uncertain. The world Is often ”if”.
• A team's self-guiding characteristic is easily weak. As a result there
will be self-misguiding.
• Team dynamics can lead to a situation where the people's
competence and roles do not meet.
• To get the dynamism working requires time and iteration, during which
the team is supposed to get a couple of projects done....
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Reflections 2/2
• A special ”tester” is needed:
• The blindness of people about their work benefits from someone
who has been assigned to monitor that blindness.
• A counter force to business pressures – so as not to shoot oneself in
the foot.
• Speeding up of team dynamics.
• Explication of special skills.
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Changing of jobs
Robotics & analytics Test manager role
may disappear
Parameterising and configuring of test
robots
Coordinating of tasks between basic and
quality testers
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Testing services in companies
Focused development of internal testing competence
Buying of testing competence from
outsiders
Different ways
Continuous, in similar form repetitive
(medical industry)
Project based needs (acquiring of a new
system)
= Acceptance testing
(Regular) outsourcing
Often abroad
In homeland: monitoring, advising
and expert work
To think: overall cost (testing and systems)
Manages outsourced
Reflections
• Testing arrangements were not much mentioned in the survey
responses.
• It is a world, where there is traditionally some "stutter”. Sometimes
outsourcing is preferred, sometimes not.
• Small companies – and the new start-up culture – need in any case
light and rapid external service. Service models that have been build
to serve large clients, will not suffice in the future.
• Time will show, how the new global testing services change the
situation (uTest and similar).
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Testing service providers
Small expert companies
One domain is not enough – ready for
anything
Ready to work at any time
Flexible special competence
Official testing laboratories
Testing of key system – for example in the
name of cyber security
Some systems are so important...
Testing is needed everywhere, but who
wants invest in it? Motivation
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Nature of companies
Fully agile
Disciplined action, like Lean
Fragmented
Multi-vendor environment
Random mix of processes and
methods Breaks people
Reflections
• Generally, the quality of the work life has continuously improved and it
is easy to think that the trend will continue, even though there are
depressions and other disturbances every now and then.
• Agility as a trend seems to continue and is maturing to a more real
thing also at business level.
• ”Lean” is a very much misunderstood thing, but actually its core is the
approach to rethink things to reach goals, to find a unique way of
action and acting within it in a sensible, skilled and disciplined way –
and improving continuously. A hunt of little things is against Lean!
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Turning point of society
Will a turning point start, when only a
minority will work and the rest has just
occasional jobs and citizen salary?
Will robotics also replace managers
Will there be new games and
applications to devices every day
from same companies and the rate of consumption
accelerates?
Data processing is needed and there will be more applications,
from cars to refrigerators and
wearable technologies.
Testing would be needed everywhere and it is open who wants to invest in it and at what level.
Reflections
• The world changes. The whole society and its structures change.
• Things this big are a little outside the scope of this slide set.
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10 top things
1) Different competence profiles are and will be needed.
2) Understanding about business.
3) Flexibility – contexts, tasks.
4) Holism, multi-skilledness.
5) Professionalism, tester's ethics and mind-set.
6) Seeing of wholes in systems, integration thinking.
7) Core competence of testing.
8) Prioritisation, concentration, making choices.
9) The challenges of the changing world that are common for all
occupations.
10) In different domains and contexts the challenges will vary.
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For reading
Future always emerges from history through some developments. See a slide set of those.
Trajectories of testing – situation in 2014
http://www.mattivuori.net/julkaisuluettelo/liitteet/trajectories_in_testing_2014.pdf
Competence turns into actions when culture and the company's "system" are in shape but
people also have passion for work and the opportunity to free that into action. See an
article about that (in Finnish)
http://www.mattivuori.net/julkaisuluettelo/liitteet/intohimoa_testaukseen.pdf
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