The Ethics of Quality with Gwen Iarussi (a PNSQC Live Blog)

I'm back. I spent the morning moderating the Management, Leadership & People track, so I wasn't able to do that and live blog like I normaly do but let's suffice it to say that Sophia McKeever (Quality With Hearts Aligned - Bolstering Your Quality with Emotional Intelligence), Heather Wilcox (Is the 'Iron Triangle' Dead?) and Kristine O'Connor (Quality Intelligence: Embedding Customer Voice to Drive Agile Excellence) all did great jobs and if you get a chance to see their talks, do so :).

For the first session this afternoon, I get to see long time friend (and actual hirer of my consulting services during my stint in the wilderness) Gwen Iarussi discuss The Ethics of Quality

PNSQChronicles: The Ethics of Quality & Quality as a Living System with Gwen Iarussi

A great quote to start out this conversation is, "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." (Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park).  You may well remember this line and it is just as valid a warning about unchecked innovation. It's not enough to ensure a product "works". Additionally, we have a continued need to advocate for not just that something works, but that it works appropriately. We don't have the luxury of testing blindly and ignoring the possible impacts of our work and efforts. 

I remember back in the days of my Cisco Systems work life that the NetFlow protocol tracking software was developed. I was on the team that was ultimately codifying the "call record" or any and all internet data. I remember part of me was a little leery about what we were doing but I recall being told by one of the developers that, "if we don't develop this with our approach and methodology and ethics, then our competition will create it, and we will have no control over the ethics that they choose (or do not choose) to use."We can argue whether or not that was a good idea (we do of course have end to end tracking of all network data but we also have the ability to encrypt that data as well, so yin/yang, I guess ;) ).

My point with that last example may be seen as trivial today but part of me genuinely wondered if our efforts were being done in the appropriate place. At that time, I was young and unsure of my voice, so I just rolled with it. Today me would be less likely to do that, I'd want to ask a number of questions. Granted, I may not have been able to have modified or altered any of the outcomes, but I certainly would have been more direct and focused with my interactions and questions. I would have advocated for positions I felt we should represent.

Our tech environment today is getting even more fragmented and over the top. Speed of execution is taking precedence over the quality and ethics of what we are creating. We have all sorts of areas where the haves are taking advantage of the have nots through these systems, and it's very much by design. Let's not forget the fact that this age of AI and fast, ubiquitous tech is consuming land, fuel and water resources at an alarming rate. Much of the tech advances and buildout to host and serve it is not sustainable in the long term. At least not if we want to make sure that people have access to water, fuel, and food a few years from now.

Much of this comes down to accountability. How do we develop accountability and stand for what we want to see happen in our environments? How do we make our ethics more than just platitudes? By us building a culture of accountability, we are able to foster a culture of ethics and making considerations that go beyond merely speed and efficiency.

Ultimately, this all comes down to a quote that is attributed to Sitting Bull, "Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children". Ultimately, every good or bad decision we make may have an effect on us, but they will surely and certainly effect future generations. With this isn mind, I would absolutely say it would be in our best interests, including business interests, to be able to leave to our children a world and systems that have effective safeguards to prevent our actively destroying our environment, whatever and wherever those may be.

PNSQC 2020 Live Blog: Testing Floating-Point Applications with Alan Jorgensen

OK, now I'm getting mildly anxious (LOL!). Hearing about floating-point errors being disastrous always makes me nervous because I frequently look at calculations and think to myself self "how precise do we need to actually be?"Also, wanted to give credit to this talk being presented by Connie Masters.

I've always operated on the goal that anything beyond tens of thousands is not that critical (heck as a little kid I learned Pi as 3.1416 because anything more precise was just not relevant (thanks, Grandpa ;) ). However, I know of course that in certain applications (chemistry and astronomy) there are of course considerably more points of accuracy with significant digits.  having to rethink this now, as I feel with digital systems and with huge sample sizes, rounding errors that are insignificant on their own can stack up and be a real issue. Also, at what point do we go from insignificant to catastrophic?

This is the first time I've heard the phrase "logarithms are the way to ad apples and oranges" and I'm not 100% sure I get the implication but it's a definitely memorable phrase. the only thing I am feeling for sure is the fact that I feel like what I've understood as discrete mathematics all these years is lacking... also, I don't quite know how I feel about that.                              The net result of all of this is that I need to get comfortable with bounded floating-point and get some practice with it.

PNSQC 2020 Live Blog: Communication Is Key: Lessons Learned From Testing In Healthcare Technology with Rachael Lovallo

As we consider communication challenges, what would we do if those challenges didn't just end up being an issue of finding or missing bugs but potentially being an issue that could spell the difference between life or death? Did that get your attention? Yeah, it got mine, too.

Rachael Lovallo focuses her quality initiatives on the emergency healthcare industry. As she clearly stated at the beginning "we can’t afford bugs, as they could endanger real humans". 

Make bugs as bullet-proof and reproducible as possible. 

This may seem obvious but I would guess that missing anything or being vague would be something that would cause anxiety in this particular environment. By making sure that we identify all of the aspects that point to the bug, a reliable reproduction strategy, and an expected behavior or output to compare with is critical.

Talk to people writing the code you test

Again, seems evident but how many of us really communicate about the code that we are testing? How much of it do we really know inside and out?  How confident would we be to be able to go through and read the code and know exactly what it is doing? I know for myself that I wouldn't be able to do that all on my own,

Ask for a second set of eyes on your work

Oh, I can so relate to this! As someone who basically deals with data transformations at the moment and the methods involved in that covers so many tools and points of contact that it just isn't possible for me to know where everything is and what I should be looking at. Fortunately, the development team I work with are great about showing me the areas I need to hit and to also recognize where I find areas of friction or that are less than optimal for being able to complete tasks. By getting them to walk the workflows and steps with me I am able to uncover with them ways to make the overall flow work better.

PNSQC 2020 Live Blog: Capacity To Execute with John Cvetko

The first talk of the afternoon is being given by John Cvetko. The main point of John's talk is to look at the desire of an organization to change from a Waterfall development methodology to an Agile development methodology. for many of us, it may seem slightly odd that there are still Waterfall SDLC's out there but rest assured there certainly are, lots more than we might like to think. John focused on the considerations needed to make the changes necessary to make the move from Waterfall to agile.

The example organization had multiple release trains (36 release trains in total) and part of the initial process was to create a hybrid release train. They didn't go all in or replace every single release train. Rather, they took on the Agile transformation within a few release trains. They took an isolated and low risk approach so that no more than 20% of the projects would be affected. the Agile transition even with this focus and need was still going to be a challenge and that the implementation of Agile was going to require an entirely different way of thinking.   




This gets us to the title of the talk. The “capacity to execute” is the most important aspect, in short,"Plan your work and work your plan". More to the point, there's more need for planning to make a transition effect. Whether the approach is to make a huge sea change, or smaller waves or bubble up changes, there has to be the ability to plan and execute effectively. 

There are a variety of metrics that are looked at (an example is ISO 25010 Software Quality Standard) and which quality characteristics were chosen to determine the level of focus of the transition. 

By focusing on Scope, Schedule, Budget, and Quality, we as an organization can make a real determination as to what the transition will be able to focus on and to what extent. Just because we want to make the change doesn't mean we will be able to automatically get there just because we want to. Often the business context, the company culture, and the revenue and cash on hand will help influence those paths. 

There is often a Culture Clash that may occur when each team works to try to make these transitions. thus the intentions and plans to execute are doubly important at this time. 

Make no mistake, these are tricky and challenging transitions. It may very well prove to be worth it but it just as likely will not be easy.