Into the Blue: A Meandering Walk Through Twenty Years of Software Testing

In some ways, October of 2009 feels like just yesterday. In others, it feels like a lifetime ago. I liken this period of time to my stretch from May 11th, 2003 until February 25th, 2005. Back then I went back to school full time to complete a Bachelor’s Degree and set myself up to work full time, go to school full time and be a dad, husband, Scout leader and competitive snowboarder (well, OK, I used to compete… saying I was competitive might be a stretch ;) ). That period of time proved something to me. It proved that I had a capacity of doing a tremendous amount of work without it killing me. My going back to school was treated like a “youthful obsession” and its level of commitment was almost, well, obsessive.


A funny thing happens when you embrace your obsessions. You give a little, and you get feedback, and it excites you, and then you want to know more and do more and get more involved and practice more and get more involved until you are literally buzzing with the intensity. That “buzzing” was how I knew that I was channeling an obsessive energy and that I was “getting into something”. The blessing of being ADHD and knowing when these “fixations” are coming to the fore helped me then. I decided to try that experiment again, and see if I could “obsessify” myself as I used to in the days of my youth, and make software testing the target of my focus.


For those not familiar with ADHD, this is often not something you can pull off. Most people find that they are obsessing on something, and then they figure out if they can channel it. It’s the old joke that it’s ironic that the rain falls after you wash your car, but the reverse doesn’t work. You typically don’t wash your car in the hope that it’s going to rain. But that’s exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to immerse myself into software testing and see if I could cause an obsession to develop. Thus, I had to find a way to carry it with me all the time. Did that mean a stack of books? Well, I had one testing book, and that was “Testing Computer Software”. I went back to reread it and while I found it helpful, it also felt very dated. It reminded me of my days at Cisco, and while I used many of the ideas back then, there were many things that I never read because they were not relevant to what I was doing (or so I thought at the time).


Lugging around TCS everywhere though felt cumbersome, and it made me ask a fateful question… are there any audio books related to software testing? I searched, and while, no, there weren’t at the time, there were some software testing podcasts that had been recorded a couple of years earlier. I downloaded all of them on to my MP3 player and they became my permanent companion in my spare time. Thus, I need to give credit to Randy Rice and his Software Quality Podcast for being the “tinder” that helped me start to set up what would become a roaring fire. Naturally, after listening to Randy and the various people he interviewed, as well as discussing test tools and actual effective ways of using them, I started to see a different way of thinking about testing. I also saw that what I thought I knew was actually fairly superficial, and that there were many more perspectives.


About this time, I saw that my library had a Safari Books Online Subscription, and through that, I had the ability to explore a number of different books. Some of them were specific to given code challenges I was looking at the time, but some were general testing related, as I read through them, I saw that there was a lot of information specific to the ISTQB and getting certified as a tester. While I looked through a few of these books, I didn’t see anything that specifically jumped out to me as a better way of doing testing, or should I say, there didn’t seem to be anything that went beyond what Randy had already discussed in many of his podcasts. As I was exploring a bit, I came across a book from a name I had seen in the magazines and recognized. Actually, it was the fact that it was not a testing book that first caught my attention. It was James Bach's “Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar”, and the title alone made me fascinated to want to learn more. I bought the book, read through it, and found so much to relate to in my own experiences and my own “obsession based learning”. I always thought it was weird and strange and not at all a disciplined way to learn something. It felt great to see that there was someone else saying “your brain is a unique organism, an what works for me may not work for you, and that’s OK. What matters is finding what does work for you and them pimping the living daylights out of it” (OK, so James didn’t really say that, but that’s what I took from it).


So we had Randy to give me a daily drip of testing inspiration, and James to re-examine ways to inspire my actual learning and methods of learning. The next “person” to fall into the sphere of motivating me (and that’s appropriate because it was the aspects of motivation that I was looking for), went to Merlin Mann and his 43 Folders podcasts. I was initially going to try to implement 43 Folders as a Get Things Done methodology, but I actually never did. Instead, I became much more interested in the ways that Merlin encouraged time and attention, and understanding why you do things and why you don’t. Additionally, I valued something Merlin said on one of his podcasts early on (I’m paraphrasing here) “I don’t do these things because I’m good at them. I do these things because I’m actually pretty lousy at them.” So now we have Randy providing tinder, James providing the kindling, and Merlin giving me some big wood blocks to burn. Now all I needed was the match… and Seth Godin would prove to be that match.


As I was looking to understanding what and why I was trying to do what I could to learn more and get better at software testing, I heard repeated references to a new book that was being released. The book was called “Linchpin”, and its author was the aforementioned Seth Godin. Since I’d been getting much of my inspiration from the world of podcasting, I decided that getting the audio book version of Linchpin would be interesting. As many of you who have followed my blog now, I credit Seth with being the ultimate catalyst to getting TESTHEAD started. It’s more than that, though. Linchpin was the match that lit up everything for me. By itself it may not have done that, but in combination with the materials I’d listened to, pondered and internalized from Randy, James and Merlin, Seth’s book was the piece that set it all alight and started my trajectory from being on the ground and getting ready to soar into the blue.


What I ultimately got out of all of this was that I was waiting for someone to show me the way, to tell me what to do, and when I got that key piece of information, then I’d be ready to be awesome. Truth be told, though, that’s not the way to become awesome. If someone can tell you how to be awesome, then you aren’t going to be. It sounds counter-intuitive, but work with me here. People who make break-throughs don’t follow the road map. They question it. They ask different questions. They approach it from another angle, or several other angles. They don’t do what they are told, but rather, they forge their own way to their understanding.


Back when I was a musician, I had influences that spanned many different musical genres. Yes, I was a fan of Kiss, but I was also a fan of Earth, Wind and Fire, of David Bowie, of The Jam, of Prince, of Metallica, of Oingo Boingo, of the Cure and of Bauhaus, of the Sisters of Mercy and The Mission. I auditioned for a lot of bands that were looking to fit a particular mold. They wanted someone who sounded like Bon Scott of AC/DC, or they wanted someone who sounded like Seven Tyler of Aerosmith. They were looking for someone who fit the blueprint of what they expected a rock singer to be. I came from a much different place, in that, while I loved singing hard rock, and it was a range that worked well for my voice, my personal influences came from a very different place. Thus, when I wrote or when I sang, I didn’t sound like the other singers. Superficially, I did, of course. I had the gravelly style with the ability to sing high and cover a broad range, but my voice didn’t sound like Steven Tyler or like Bon Scott. Nor did I want it to. I wanted it to sound like me. Interestingly, years later, when someone did do an analysis of my voice, they said I sounded like what would happen if Jon Bon Jovi, Paul Stanley and Adam Ant were fused together. I thought that was kind of cool, in a way, that different styles from my own experience blended to make a somewhat unique voice. That was my success, not that I followed someone else’s blueprint, but that I started to forge my own from all of my influences, and then made a brand around it.


This brings me to March of 2010, and the start of TESTHEAD. As I looked back at the initial posts, they are all written in that tentative, just getting started, trying to say the right things to get noticed and be taken seriously way. In short, it mirrored my initial attempts to start a band. I mimicked a number of other people at first, until I started to have unique and interesting experiences of my own. From there, I could see my own style developing, including injecting my own humanity into the process. Just like when a musician writes songs that are abstract and more or less copies of other people’s songs, they may get a nod of appreciation, but they don’t really connect with an audience. That connection gets made a lot easier when the songwriter puts their own world into their songs and puts themselves into the songs. Likewise, I saw that I was doing the same thing with TESTHEAD. Sharing my thoughts, my insecurities, my successes and my failures made the ideas I was exploring much more real. Now it wasn’t just a matter of talking about a test technique, it was putting myself in the middle of it and working through what I understood and, often more telling, what I didn’t.


Actions cause reactions, an when you are in a band, you learn about other bands, and you oftentimes look forward to playing on the same bill with them. Doing so gives you a fun experience, but it also gives you a little desire to “show the other bands up”. Done correctly, with a spirit of fun and entertainment, there is nothing at all wrong with that. Playing to an audience should be entertaining, and you should want to put on the best show possible. Ripping off another band’s act to do so is not cool, but honing your own show to be the best it can be is totally OK. Testing is much the same way. We interact with many different people, and we rub shoulders with them and learn from them. While I don’t particularly look to “steal” someone elses’s ideas and present them as my own, there is no question that I spend a lot of time trying to understand how various people approach a problem, and learn what I can from them, and incorporate what makes sense to me into what I do. To that level, a lot of what many other testers have done has made their way into my testing approach.


What was interesting to me was that, when all was said and done, I’d managed to do something I didn’t think was possible. I threw myself into a process and a goal with the hope of sparking an obsession, and in a way, that’s exactly what happened. I also modeled my experience on my time as a musician, and I took lessons I learned from that time to help me do this. When I compare being a music Rock Star to endeavoring to be a testing Rock Star, I do it because there are definite parallels. When a musician promotes and markets themselves, they can develop a following and demonstrate expertise to where others will take interest and share that knowledge with others. The same goes with our testing experiences. When we can communicate something that resonates with others, we can help them do better in what they do as well, and in turn, that helps build word of mouth of our own brand.


Since there was a great deal of influence on me from the world of podcasting, and since I saw how that medium had a tremendous effect on me personally, I was really excited when Matt Heusser put out a call to help him with a new podcast initiative he was working on. As most readers already know, the TWiST podcast has been an active part of my testing journey over the past year and a half, and getting the chance to listen to and shape the shows each week, I have had the chance to learn from many different sources and really explore their thoughts and ideas. For every half an hour show that we produce. I would often spend four hours or more going over every word of the show to edit it to the right length, and that gave me a lot of time to let the ideas sink in and percolate. Each of these ideas gave me a chance to try out the ideas for myself, see if they worked, and give me something to write about.


A blog is, in a way, institutional memory. So much of what I’ve written has covered a lot of ground, and has allowed me to formulate my own style and ideas. That writing has allowed me to branch out into other areas such as conference presentations, guest blog postings, and even writing a chapter for a book. Like so many other things, action gets a reaction, and enthusiasm for doing something encourages others to engage because most people just consume (that’s not a dig, it’s just a fact). Most of us in so many things will be happy to consume. We love to read, but far fewer of us will ever write a book. We love to listen to music, but again, far fewer of us will ever join a band and write songs for other people to listen to. We may love and appreciate art, but far fewer of us will actually put in the time to learn how to become exceptional artists. Yet if we actually do put ourselves out there and try to do these things, people will come and get involved with us. It’s a natural reaction. So it is with testing. If we put ourselves out and say “we want to explore this” there will be many to give us a hand. That’s been my experience, in any event.



All of this happened within the space of a year, and my friends and co-workers at Tracker definitely noticed the difference. They saw that my level of engagement and interest had grown tremendously, and hat I was once again excited, no, borderline obsessed with testing and learning about testing. Throw in the opportunities that developed with becoming part of the Miagi-do School of Software Testing, joining the Association for Software Testing, taking the Black Box Software Testing classes, teaching the Black Box Software Testing classes, getting involved with Weekend Testing, and all the while using tools like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to share the conversation with others, an discover others who wanted to share that conversation.


One of the benefits of being so open about sharing that information is that, when you are doing so, someone may be watching. Granted, most people may be amused, annoyed, or just plain confused about what you are doing, but someone else in another place may be paying attention, and when a question comes up, such as “hey, our team is looking for a software tester, so you know who might be a good fit?”, they may well say "as a matter of fact, yes!" I mention this because that is exactly what happened in October of 2010. And old friend and co-worker contacted me and said “hey, I can’t help but noticed how involved you are with software testing. We’re in the process of looking for software testers, and while I doubt you’d be interested, we’d love to talk with you about what we should look for”. That conversation branched into several others, and at the end, resulted in me being asked if I would consider taking on a new role as a senior tester at SideReel. Not only did I consider it, I accepted it. When I told my friends at Tracker about the opportunity, they encouraged me to do it. They would be sad to see me go, but also understood that it was a great opportunity and that I had worked really hard to be ready to take it on. Thus, after six years of a tight knit family, I would leave and go forth and explore another opportunity with another small group. Of course, their time as a “small group” would be short lived, so to speak, but that’s part of the next and final installment :).


So what came out of all this?


- Inspiration comes from many places. I cannot pinpoint just one person or say “it was THIS that changed everything”, actually, it was a lot of small incremental things that came together that made for the change to take place. We may sometimes have the ability to do something extraordinary in one fell swoop, but usually it’s more like a snowball hat we pack a little snow on and roll down a hill. As it collects more snow it gets bigger and bigger, and very quickly, but it still starts from small actions.


- Every person is a brand in one way or another. We are always marketing ourselves, even if we don’t realize it. TESTHEAD is my brand, and it’s the way that I show the world what I do and what I believe about what I do. It doesn’t tell the whole story, but it definitely gives you enough of an idea who I am and what I do to make some conclusions. Some people may want to know more about me because of this blog, maybe even hire me some day. Some may have made up their mind that they will NEVER hire me after reading this blog (LOL!)… and that’s totally OK. At least this way they know what they are getting, or not getting.


- A blog is an open portal. People are free to come here and take my ideas and call them their own. I have a copyright and a statement that I would appreciate links back and attribution, but I realize that people the world over may well “steal” my ideas or copy my stuff for themselves and present them as their own. I don’t have a problem with that because I’m not my blog. It’s a repository of my memories and experiences, but it’s not me. I’m the ideas behind the blog, and I’d like to believe that I have a whole lot more where that came from. Time will tell if that is true.


- People pay attention to what you post, even when you think no one is. I have found it interesting to hear people talk about things I wrote a years ago and I’d say to myself “wow, I didn’t think anyone had read that!” Just because people don’t comment, doesn’t mean they aren’t reading. Also, don’t be at all surprised if your next interview or job offer comes from someone who has read what you have written. They have also seen that your blog is not you, but the ideas that make it. They want to know more about those ideas.


- Put yourself into you material. Regurgitating facts and figures is boring and many other sites already do that. Your experiences and your understanding of the experiences are what makes the information valuable… at least if my own reader stats and comments are any indication.


- We are not born with ideas, we all “stand on the shoulders of giants”. I often lament that I have not developed some “great idea” or introduced the “next big thing” in software testing, but really, who has? For the most part, we are dealing with variations on themes that have existed since the time of Socrates. There is little “new” under the sun, but there are lots of new ways to see the world we are already familiar with, and those discoveries are almost always personal. Those break through and “a-ha moments only come when we put our time and attention to the problems we have here an now.


- The only way to become a master at something is to do it, a lot, with great focus and energy. The Malcolm Gladwell Outliers formula of 10,000 hours to become an expert at something is legitimate and valid. If you spend an hour a day, you’ll be come an expert in 27 years. If you do it 24 hours a day, you could become an “expert” in a little over a year, but no one does anything except breathing for 24 hours a day, and suffice it to say you are already an expert at that. Expertise takes time, it takes practice, and it takes dedication. The more time you spend, the more expertise you develop… and no one is born an expert at anything… well, except for that breathing thing, and even then, we still had to learn it at our births.