Intelligent Testing Skills Needed in a Digital World

Editor's Notes

• #3: Let’s give a minute to one of the greatest software testing luminaries clinching quote – “If you are not learning something new each day, you are not Testing”. Going by the quote by Mr. Weinberg, I definitely feel that I am a tester most of my life. I am certain that is applicable to all of us attending the conference today here.
• #4: How many of you have been to Florence, Italy and seen the brilliant statue (touted to be the best marble statue ever to have been made in history)? David is a masterpiece by Michelangelo. This is a 17 feet (which is nearly 3 times a human) that was commissioned in 1504. This was at built from a marble that was up at about 80mt from the ground.  A Young, energetic and inquisitive, 25 year old Michelangelo was asked by the consuls of the Board to complete an unfinished project begun in 1464 by Agostino di Duccio and later carried on by Antonio Rossellino in 1475. Two masters and well experienced artists backed out from sculpting this large piece of marble rock into a statue. Both sculptors had in the end rejected an enormous block of marble due to the presence of too many “taroli”, or imperfections, which may have threatened the stability of such a huge statue. This block of marble of exceptional dimensions remained therefore neglected for 25 years, lying within the courtyard of the Opera del Duomo (Vestry Board). Michelangelo came onboard, and took this work and finished the master piece in 3 years. When asked about how he completed the masterpiece, he replied “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free from imperfections(taroli)”. He went on to build further masterpieces of Renaissance that is seen in the Sistine Chapel, St.Peter’s basilica and the Duomo of Florence. A lot of stories of similar kind can be said. A tester’s key craftsmanship is to remove imperfections of a product or a software and make it a high quality one.
• #5: To Summarize – A great quote by Michelangelo – Trifles make perfection, and Perfection is no trifle.
• #6: Moving on – What are we trying to achieve today.... A bit of selfish reflection “What’s in it for Me?” We are intelligent anyways – Why should we really bother? What is changing? How do we address these questions? ===== “How can we be Relevant Technologically?” What are the Skills we need to focus on in a rapidly changing eco-system? What are hypes and fads vs real must-have skills? Given the rapid advances in technology, what is that we need to do to stay relevant? Is testing dead by any chance, is another question we can ask ourselves. ====== Finally – What are the “Soft Skills Needed to Succeed” What will make us more intelligent – business and customer centric? Why are these the most important skills/traits to master? A Tester is only as good as the skills he/she possesses. What are the essential soft skills needed by the tester?
• #7: A perfectionist of sorts, Steve Jobs quoted - “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected” Without a focus on quality, simplicity and efficiency, APPLE wouldn’t have become the most valuable company on earth, a brilliant turn around from a company that was almost dead before Jobs 2.0 began.
• #8: Carrying on Quality - Some statistics or a tip of the ice-berg Over 4.4 billion people got affected by a software fail – which is greater than 50% of Human Population. It is almost a number similar to the people not having access to a Toilet – But less than the number of mobile phones in use in the world!. More than a $Trillion worth of assets affected and a cumulative impact of 315 years. A leading airlines lost 3% market cap due t a botched software upgrade infested with bugs
• #10: Source: CA Workshop on Modern Software Factory Source: Gartner, Inc. Top Strategic Predictions for 2017 and Beyond: Surviving the Storm Winds of Digital Disruption, 14-Oct-2016 While the defects and bugs are making a dramatic impact, the world is leaping ahead. Business is expecting agility in business delivery... Take these for some stats  Google – which supposedly has a single code repository, refactors code by upwards of 50% each month. They have ~2 Billion LOC (and counting). Even taking a 75-95% test coverage taken up by empowered teams (as claimed by some of the engineers in published artefacts), this is a humongous testing effort. If you have a backlog of code to be verified, it could be a disaster exceeding the size of a titanic by all means. When the Cyclomatic complexity of testing is so huge, how can you test the entire code base and application flawlessly? This is a brilliant example of how one can run an efficient test strategy. Take NetFlix that currently has over 5 Billion API Calls per day (up from Billion+ a few years ago). How would you do effective Load, Stress, Performance Testing and ensure Availability , Redundancy and Reliability of service is not impacted? A lot of firms are moving towards a bi-modal IT (doing a transformation while running the legacy apps running) and doing continuous delivery and Testing all the time, leveraging all the fancy words such as Agile, DevOps DevQAOps etc. etc. Additionally, nearly 41% of Global corporate workload is shifting to cloud, to ease out on Capital Expense and controlled Operational Expense strategies. By some means, Augmented Reality, Gestural Computing, IoT is expected to take the world by storm. How are we going to test all these permutations?
• #11: Source: http://www.slideshare.net/BrynleyScully/getting-ready-for-tomorrows-testing Source: Tricentis Webinar on Future of Testing Taking the prior discussion forward, if you look at how businesses are getting innovative, it is largely due to rapidity in delivering code faster, with high velocity, high quality deliveries. There are two schools of though – In Systems of Engagement or Innovation, you need to rapidly deliver. You will not have time to test all permutations. As Testing is typically a linear process, with the increasing complexity, the testing process becomes exponential but the capacity is linear in terms of number of resources and hours you have. You need to do testing in an intelligent manner. This is where creativity plays a major role. Can you do more with less? Can you do effective automation? Can you deliver a release in 11.2 seconds like Amazon does and roll-back in case of issue, with a production testing? Can you do testing for 1 billion lines of code every month? At the same time Can you take risk of compliance and regulatory norms in systems of records that have very strict rules to abide by? In these cases where scrutiny is very critical, you cannot do what an Amazon or a Netflix or an Etsy or a Google does. You need to do thorough validation. How can you achieve this? How can you reduce the cycles from 4 releases a year to 12 releases a year? How can you test optimally? How can you increase the quality while velocity increases?
• #12: If you take the Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies for 2017 – You see a pattern. Some are in the slope of enlightenment but majority in the curve of inflated expectations and disillusionment. For the technologies emerging stronger, we need to have some solid test approach / strategy to deliver high quality outcomes Artificial Intelligence Internet of Things (or Everything) Machine Learning / Deep Learning AR/VR & Wearables BlockChain Drones & Vehicles Gestural Computing Connected Devices Human Augmentation Robotics Algorithms Smart Assistants Are we ready for these?
• #13: Broadly speaking – New Age Test Innovation focuses on the following needs with Intelligent Testing Rapid High Quality and Innovative Test Delivery Test Suite Creation and Optimization (Risk Coverage ) Useful Automation – Test Smart, Self-Healing, Script less, Purposeful Predictive and Cognitive Testing – Foresee issues reduce reactive time, resolve rapidly Rapid Impactful Defect Finding - Intelligent Defect Detection, Pattern Analysis, Predictive Modeling Intelligent Environment Provisioning Management with Intelligent Metrics and Dashboard Are we capable of building intelligent automated frameworks and leverage cognitive models to optimize our test strategy and test suites to do proactive application health analytics via rapid defect finding and scale up rapidly to do niche and special areas of testing? That remains the key
• #14: Coming forward, given testing is an exponential function and not a linear function any more due to rapid explosion of technology? The key is to have a pragmatic view of testing that is applicable to the industry, firm or department you are in. Leading firms have unique test approach for SoE (Systems of Engagement) SoI (Systems of Innovation) SoR (Systems of Records) There is no One Size Fits all approach for testing and Intelligent Approach needs to be adopted as per needs Currently, majority of the organizations focus majorly on Business testing (a heavy investment) which is time consuming An inverted pyramid of more testing in earlier phases will deliver better value to the organization How can a testing organization catch-up to exponential growth by inverting the testing pyramid to do more testing upfront so that actual test effort is reduced closer to deployment time? This is exactly what the leading organizations are doing to propel their technological hegemony.
• #16: A 5 step ladder to excellence for a tester includes Getting Stronger in fundamentals Building the needed techno functional skills Building an excellent Soft Skills – as Testers will deal with a lot of distinct stakeholders and need to navigate different layers Specialization in a particular area to build a strong I in a T shaped expertise Have a vision and thought leadership to become one of the best in the industry
• #17: How would you drive towards a life of self-actualization? There is a saying that goes like – “If you do work that you love doing (or a profession), then you will not work but love doing your work”. Ikigai is a Japenese Concept meaning “A Reason for Being”. A concept that gives various perspectives on Satisfaction, Excitement, Passion, Delight, Recognition and eventually fulfilment. What would be Ikigai for a tester? How would you leverage your Passion, Vision, Skills and Expertise to derive a sense of being -? How would you remove the demotivating acts such as feeling of uselessness, emptiness, uncertainty, lack of wealth while pursuing these higher objectives that are aided by getting paid for doing what the world needs by leveraging what you are good at and love doing? It needs a fine balance of things to derive utmost happiness and a sense of accomplishment.
• #20: As per a research done by software testing club a few years back, the top-3 skills a tester needs is primarily on the following 3 parameters Communication Strategy Analytical Skills
• #22: Key focus areas for testers include Testing (and Automation) Skills for AI, Machine Learning, Deep Learning Testing (and Automation) Skills for API and Micro Services Landscape Automation / Testing and Programming Skills to Test in an Agile / DevOps / Rapid Delivery Projects Industry Specific Skills to Test End-to-End Functional Flows – Rapidly and Accurately Skills to Test Big Data Analytics, Cognitive Computing, Behavior Driven, Test Driven Design Skills Do no mistake – Good manual testing is still a niche heavily pursued by many organizations – just like mainframe skills were a couple of decades back. However, it needs to be augmented for a future centric need. This is a shift a career manual tester may need to make to stay relevant in the industry.
• #23: Coming to Top-5 Soft Skills for an Intelligent Tester – needs from my perspective I call it - 5 Cs of Continuous Success relates to 5 most important Soft Skills needed by an Intelligent Tester. They will be valuable regardless of the time. This is similar to the new Bugatti Chiron – a $2.6 Million car made by Bugatti. They decided not to have any infotainment system in such an expensive car. They wanted the car to be timeless car – like their 1957 model. Likewise these soft skills for a testers are timeless. Communication Critical Thinking Creativity Curiosity Collaboration Without a doubt they are the most important
• #25: Are you able to handle Communication from others POV – Regardless of How Good, bad or ugly testing is going... Do you Understanding the business Rules Do you realize What is the problem –If there is a Problem Are you able to communicate well with the product/project managers, Developers, Architects, Designers, Business Analysts, CIOs and even CEOs about what you do and found? Do you have skills to communicate to different layers like the intensity and content for different layer of onions differ?
• #26: As a tester are you able to think quality by focusing on how a thing can be broken, what all could go wrong? With a belief in XYZ we trust but everything else needs to be proven and thinking critically on what the problem is, how it can be communicated, why is it failing, when and how is it failing and where? Who could fix it or face an issue? The questions are in numerous. Think critically is important for everyone but for a tester is absolutely important.
• #27: Do not mistake creative testing to creative accounting that led Enron, Worldcom and Satyam to trouble. Creativity is definitely important to propel the testing world to keep pace, innovate and reduce the cycle time. Creativity is useful across the lifecycle and is not confined to one area. In Design and Execution In Analysis Problem Solving Tooling and Automation
• #28: Just like the Cursiosity Rover in the picture, take the brilliant quote by Walt Disney - We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. If we have curiosity to know the end at the beginning – by understanding the vision, mission and objectives of what the customers want, what the business wants and try to propel the cause, we can certainly deliver a better outcome.
• #29: A typical challenge in a testing team’s life is the challenges and being at cross-fire of multiple teams. You are always at the frontline, faced with multiple difficult questions. But like the famous Omega Sector tag-line, you are the Last Line of Defense at all times. You need to Know when to fight a battle. Always have integrity to stand-up and speak with courage Always collaborate to achieve the common objectives
• #30: What are the key takeaways Remember Michelangelo, become a solid craftsman Be Learning Learn , apply and propel your knowledge Be Testing If you are not learning something new each day, you are not TESTING - Weinberg Happy Learning and Happy Testing