-Dr. Seuss, Happy Birthday to You!
What's this all about? This issue's feature article will make it all clear. So come on in and stay a spell.
If you're reading the email version of this newsletter, you can find the html version and past issues on the Tejas Software Consulting web page - http://tejasconsulting.com/#news. In that same section you'll find a form that you can use to enter a new subscription or to unsubscribe.
-Danny Faught
faught@tejasconsulting.com
http://tejasconsulting.com/
My tutorial for the Spring 2002 Software Test Automation Conference is in the can and the brochures are printed. The title is "Using Script Languages to Automate Everyday Testing Tasks," and I'm eager to spend a day talking about scripting. The conference is March 25-28, 2002 in San Jose, California.
I am sitting on a panel for the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce Small Business Council Breakfast, February 13, 2002, 7:15-9:30am, Fort Worth, Texas. The topic is "Technology and Your Business."
I am speaking at the Annual Workshop of the Association for Software Engineering Excellence, February 23, 2002, 12:00- 5:30pm, Plano, Texas. The topic is "A Bug Tracking Story." I'm also sitting on a panel session titled "Overcoming Resistance."
I have a feature article about script programming in the next issue
of STQE. Stay tuned!
You did a great job of tying in Brownsea Double-Two into the information your were trying to give to your readers. Nice to know that the BSA does teach some good leadership skills and it looks like you absorbed your share of them. Nice going!Thanks, Frank!
Yogita Sahoo wrote:
I thoroughly enjoyed your featured article. And yeah, you missed out on an important resource.....BRAIN POWER. It's a common resource available to all, everytime, everywhere, free of cost. And to make sure that you use other resources well, you have to first ensure that this important resource is used in the right direction.Jerry Weinberg said, about PSL and resources:Regards -- Yogita
I'm still basking in the wonder of how we pulled it off with flu and missing glasses. I guess we had other resources - you folks.The training went quite well, despite a few challenges. And that makes me think of the most important people resource, ourselves! Sometimes we have to dig deep within ourselves to meet a challenge, whether it's sickness, blurred vision, or finishing a project back in the office.
Richard de Graaf keeps the thread alive that was started way back in September:
Even though Glenford Myers' statement "Testing is the process of ... with the intent of finding errors" is generally accepted, I´ve been using "Testing is the process of .. with the intent of assessing the acceptability of the current application for production" (since I work in the Netherlands this is usually stated in Dutch, so this isn't an exact translation) I prefer my statement for a number of reasons:I just had to find out what the quote in Richard's first paragraph looks like in Dutch - "Het doel van testen is het aantonen in hoeverre de geleverde applcatie beantwoord aan de eisen en verwachtingen van de acceptanten," more literally translated to English, "The purpose of testing is to show to what extent the application as delivered meets the accepting parties' requirements and expectations."But I do agree with your statement: "Regardless of which direction we approach the task from, it's all about mitigating risk."
- it's a positive goal w.r.t. finding errors
- it includes the business aspects (are the issues found by testing acceptable in terms of risk and usability)
- what if (theoretical) you don't find any errors, has your process failed?
BTW, I liked your boy scout story, especially the point (for the past year I´ve been pairing business and technical analysts; as an unexpected fringe benefit it's starting to change perception of testing from a "necessary evil" to strategic advantage).
Kevin Jones also comments on testing definitions, as well as thinking outside the boxes we put ourselves in:
Concerning the definition of testing, it seems like the issue is entirely overbroad. Software testing, integration testing, regression testing, label A testing, label B testing... Different facets of testing have different objectives, and one summary definition without some circular reference (e.g. testing : to test something) just wouldn't cover the many aspects of testing.Chuck Helma wrote:Campfire stories and creativity : I don't know if you get cable or not, but the issue at hand is whether you've seen The Learning Channel's show Trading Spaces. The concept is simple -- get two sets of friends to redecorate a room in each other's house under a minimal budget. The groups are "advised" by design consultants and carpenters so nothing gets totally screwed up. Since they had a marathon of the show over Christmas, I watched parts of many episodes and discovered this: creativity and out-of-the-box thinking is a specialized field that not many people can do. Instead, the majority of people, workers and thinkers alike, simply follow their own in-process steps and substitute true out-of-the-box thinking for what I'd call the "stencil" approach -- someone else had the idea and did the hard part of materializing creative thought, all you have to do is the drudge work. The TV show illustrates that even more, with the "brilliant" ideas coming from the design consultants instead of the people working on the houses.
In other words, we're mostly followers in creative thinking. That's why there's a wide myriad of training courses and seminars to show people someone else's creative ideas and thoughts. What should be valued is original ideas and thoughts, plus the ability to translate them into usable form (we can dream, like Thoreau said, of castles in the sky, but who's the builder?). So go back and reevaluate the campfire stories with that and try to find the singular moment of true creativity. You may be surprised by the discoveries.
Great picture of you and your kids!Thanks, Chuck. I was going to harass everyone about that picture until someone acknowledged that they looked at it. :-) Note that I also had a picture in the January 11, 2002 issue of the Fort Worth Business Press, taken at the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce Technology Council. That's probably something only a mother could appreciate, but I mention it because my mother is now a subscriber. Hi, Mom!
Readers, please send your feedback to faught@tejasconsulting.com,
that's what I thrive on!
The business was founded the day after I parted company with my previous employer, when I revived a personal web site and declared to the world that I was an independent consultant. A potential client pressed me for a business name, and I said "DRF Consulting" for lack of a better name. It wasn't until almost a month later that I made a final decision on a name for the business. My wife (Chairman of the Board) and I brainstormed a long list of candidates - "Tumbleweed Consulting" was her favorite. Shortly thereafter, the name "Tejas" presented itself to me, which wasn't on the brainstorming list at all. Tejas Software Consulting was born.
Tejas is a transliteration of a Caddo Indian word meaning "friend" or "ally" - I would be my clients' ally. And by a wonderful coincidence, it turns out that Tejas means something like "shine" or "radiance" in Sanskrit.
I signed up my first client in short order - Software Quality Engineering's StickyMinds.com. When I went to visit them, the first person I talked to in Jacksonville, Florida was a clerk at an airport gift shop, and I vividly remember how nice she was. This trend continued as I made the rounds at SQE's headquarters in Orange Park - a bunch of great people. I'm very thankful for the opportunities they have given me. I'm just as thankful for the occasions when they said "no" - wise decisions indeed, and I hope I've absorbed some of that wisdom. And how could I forget the "Mercy Guest" award they presented to me? They sponsored the Quality Plus e-Talk radio show which happened to air the day I was in Orange Park, and the guest didn't show up. So I called the host, Carol Dekkers, explained that no, I wasn't Kent Beck, but I'd be glad to discuss the ins and outs of Extreme Programming for a while. I'm no expert, but I'll talk about just about anything if given the chance. :-)
What kinds of solicitations do you get when you start a business? Between registering the business name and joining the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, I ended up on lots of marketing databases. The most common for the first three months was probably credit card merchant account providers. In this economy, believe me, I explored every angle, but I still haven't gone into retail (maybe souvenir T-shirts for the swtest-discuss mailing list?). Second place was janitorial services. Hmmm, it's a really small office, but thanks for asking. And next was numerous offers from offshore test labs wanting me to funnel business in their direction. Maybe after I've figured out the ins and outs of my own business.
When I set up http://tejasconsulting.com, I also created http://testingfaqs.org to house the three FAQs that I inherited from Brian Marick. What a way to feel popular. These FAQs created the largest amount of traffic by far of all the items on the rather substantial site that used to house them, and now they completely dwarf all the traffic on my .com. Mostly due to testingfaqs.org, I had web visitors from 94 countries, including some really interesting places like Iceland, Aruba, and Kyrgyzstan. Five gigabytes transferred and 200,000 page views. The Testing FAQ News mailing list I set up to distribute announcements about changes on the site has now drawn almost 1000 subscribers. Eventually I'll set up an advisory board to make some decisions about testingfaqs.org. Let me know if you're interested in participating.
I gave my first two public training courses and was delighted to find out that I could keep people awake for two days. I had the wonderful opportunity of team teaching a course earlier, with Elisabeth Hendrickson as the lead instructor. I volunteered to do the all-pairs test design exercise, but completely choked on what the algorithm was. Elisabeth gracefully bailed me out. When I went solo, I sailed through a similar exercise just fine (whew!). Probably the most memorable event was the fire drill during the course down in Houston (false alarm as usual).
The fire in Santa Fe, however, was no drill. I finally got to go to the Problem Solving Leadership workshop (PSL) - hurrah! At the welcome reception, I went back for seconds at the buffet, and pointed out to someone else standing there that the tablecloth was on fire and gee, maybe we should do something about it. I went to the hallway and tried to convince a passing employee that his hotel was on fire (he never believed me) while my quicker-thinking colleague simply grabbed a fire extinguisher and put it to use. Only then did we realize that an even quicker thinker had already made good use of the water pitcher before we got there, and had doused both the tablecloth and the Sterno can that caused the trouble. At least I managed to save the dessert tray before the rest of dinner was extinguished. :-)
One other item from PSL that utterly fascinated me was the "dead guy" in one of our simulations. PSL classmate Jeff Winchell was shot by the simulated sheriff after a simulated bank robbery. I was quite amused to follow the ghost's adventures after that, including a failed attempt at resurrection, but perhaps that's a story for another day.
I've been spending a lot of time at Texas Instruments lately. All roads seemed to lead to TI. I first heard of the project from Bret Pettichord. I was later talking to Jerry Weinberg about a project of his, and that led to the same organization. And yet a third lead I dug up myself also pointed to the very same place.
What was your most interesting moment this past year? Let me know, and I'll publish the top few stories.
Copyright 2002, Danny R. Faught
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