Aedificamus: Book Review: The Science of Yoga

When I made a commitment to lose weight, get back into shape, and take control of my aging process, I had to come to grips with the fact that years of weight lifting had left some parts of my body in less than optimal condition (yes, elbows, I’m looking at you). Finding exercise I could do that would be effective, help develop strength, flexibility, & endurance, and overall not exacerbate issues I already have, friends encouraged me to look into yoga.

I’d long eschewed yoga because of the tendency of people to put a lot of “woo” into it. As a software tester, I’m a professional skeptic. The pronouncements around yoga had long been high on spiritual and cosmic wonders, touted as a cure all for everything from depression to cancer. Also, I’m comically non-flexible, so I figured this was just not for me. Over time, though, I decided to try it, and in the course of a few months, I saw some marked improvements in my physique and strength, but also in my overall mood. In short, I felt great, and yoga practice had a hand in that. But still, come on, all these goofy claims… isn’t there someone out there willing to take on the topic and do a MythBusters on the “woo” of yoga?

Turns out that, yes,  there is.

William J. Broad is a lead Science writer for the New York Times, so he has the skeptical science part down. He’s also a long time yoga practitioner, starting his practice back in 1970. He, too, was curious about many of the claims, and decided it was time to examine the history and scientific research. The Science of Yoga delivers on its title, in that is investigates, objectively, the benefits and the detrimental aspects of yoga.

Yoga is a fascinating culture. It’s both ancient and totally modern, deeply tied to ancient Indus Valley history and practiced for millennia, and it is the hip go-to cultural balm for our busy times today. It’s steeped in Hindu tradition, and actively used by those with no understanding whatsoever of its long history or spiritual connection. It ties together isometric physical training, breathing, meditation, focus and body manipulation into a fully systemic training approach. It’s adherents can approach the subject with a reverence bordering on hagiography. Broad does his best to be objective, skeptical, and play by the book, but at times even he admits that what science has studies and objectively reported on doesn’t entirely add up with the combined experience of its adherents, including himself.

The book is broken up into several sections, addressing the history of yoga, and really only covering a small slice of the yoga experience. Each section takes on a bit of the history surrounding claims, including anecdotes and historical references to writings and studies done in India, Europe and the U.S. & Canada. He then shows where scientific studies have been performed (or not), the limitations of said studies and shortcomings, as well as where findings are contradicted or confounded by everyday practice. While Broad makes the point early on that science does not have all the answers, it corroborates more than it refutes.

Several broad chapters look at specific areas like overall health & fitness, weight loss & metabolism, mood & psychological health, risk of injury & healing properties, sexual health & performance, and creativity. The short answer is that there is some hard science behind many of these aspects, and in many cases, the science backs up many of yogas claims. It also debunks a fair number of them, but not without accompanying controversy. Yoga is touted as a way to get yourself slim and toned because it boosts your metabolism. Science shows that the opposite is true, it actually slows metabolism, but in that slowing, it also helps the body recover and heal in ways that would be unlikely in the absence of yoga. This seems to be the cadence of the book. There are claims, science either supports or refutes the claim, but in the process, something about the refutation supports another aspect as to why that benefit occurs. Many questions are answered, but just as many fresh questions arise.

One of the chapters in the book deals with injuries, and for a discipline that prides itself on being very safe, yes, you can certainly hurt yourself doing yoga. Having said that, the number of injuries compared to other activities, including being sedentary, pales in comparison to the overall benefits. Plus, most injuries can heal, and an alteration of one’s routine are all that is needed to avoid such injuries in the future.

Added to the chapters is a list of who’s who in the history of yoga, a chronology of developments, discoveries and explorations, and a lengthy bibliography and end notes that adds close to a hundred pages to the core text.

Bottom Line:

"The Science of Yoga" answers a number of questions, and raises many more. Broad makes clear that science is a discipline that observes data and outcomes, and reports on the results. In many cases, claims do not hold up, but while debunking one myth, a discovery shows where yoga is getting it right, and opens up avenues to new ideas and new studies. This book scratched both my skeptical itch and my exploratory yearning itch at the same time. It made me feel more aware of the realities, but just as excited about the possibilities. If the idea of getting under the mystical layers of yoga intrigue you, and you like the idea of putting claims to the test and seeing where those tests lead, or may lead, then “The Science of Yoga” is an enjoyable read.

Aedificamus: "What's Your Secret?" is Really "How Did *You* Do It?"

It all started with a picture. Specifically, this one:

It's a picture of me, hunched over on the couch, holding an at the time tiny kitten. I can make excuses all I want (bad angle, bad posture, etc.), but this picture was the moment when I finally said "Enough!!!"

I have a mental image of myself. This size, and these dimensions, are not it. I made a commitment I would turn this around on August 14, 2015. We were at a celebratory dinner for my son's 19th birthday. When we came home, I weighed myself and about screamed when I saw I was 260 pounds!

Four months and a few days later, my daughter took another picture. Specifically, this one:

This picture was taken Saturday, December 19, 2015, after a day strolling around the Dickens Faire. Having bought new clothes a couple days earlier, and having tipped the scale at 205 pounds that morning, I felt a little celebratory, and wanted to record the moment. Along with other pictures, I posted this one as a way to say "here's what I've done so far, and I still have quite a ways to go."

 I received a number of comments, and a few people asking "what's your secret?". 

As I've pointed out many times, there is no secret other than "do more and eat less", but I want to thank my friend Adam Yuret for, amusingly, pointing something out to me. He said that, as a consultant, he is often asked by clients to share "secrets of success". Were he to answer them with "there are no secrets, just hard work and execution",  the result would be he would have angry clients. They want to have something to grab on to, something that will help them know that, this time, they will succeed. You may know different, you may know there's no magic bullets, but they aren't asking you for a talisman... they are asking "How did you get from Point A to Point B?"

Another friend sent me a message asking a similar question, i.e. "what's your secret", but they made it clear in the message that what they really wanted to know was "what is your system?" They could see I'm doing something that is working, but could I give them some more details about what I chose to do, and why, so they could see it in a broader context? That is absolutely a fair question, and yes, by going back and reviewing the past four months data I have accumulated, I realized I do have a "system". It's not elegant or clean, but I can offer some thoughts on what I have been able to do and learn over the past four months. 

Some of this is going to seem very elementary, and some of this might sound a bit... odd. Nevertheless, after going back and reviewing what I've actually done, here's the system that has brought me to this point in time, with the caveat that what has worked in the past may not work in the future, and it may not work as well for anyone else.

Pick an Activity Goal That is Easy to Remember and Accomplish

I made a commitment to "Walk 10,000 Steps Each Day". Regardless of any other activity I may do, that's the one I treat as a mantra.

For those curious, this goal is cumulative, and you can do a surprising amount of walking just in your every day activities. 10,000 steps is roughly five miles, and an hour and forty minutes of total walking. Since I commute by train, I've worked into my daily commute most of those steps. When you make your exercise part of your daily routine and integrate it into things like your commute, that helps keep it consistent.

I should also add that I allow myself one break day each week, usually Sunday. I'm LDS, and as such, I try to not do certain things on the Sabbath. It's a personal decision, and one that I have found I get great benefit from when I follow it. If I am out for a day with my family after church, and I happen to cover 10,000 steps, I don't get too bent out of shape over it. In general, though, I let myself have that day where I don't specifically train. That chance to rest, I feel, is critical to keep focused the other six days to let me go full force. Often, I will go a little further, say 12,000 steps, on the six days so that I still have an every day average of 10,000 or more.

Focus on Variety in Your Activity, Do What Works and is Engaging, Drop What Isn't or Hurts

I think it's important to have a variety of stimulus to get moving and keep moving. Over the course of four months, I have done weight training, calisthenics, body weight exercises, used resistance devices, played a variety of sports, pulled my Dance Dance Revolution games and dance pads out of the closet, and taken up yoga. Some of these activities have had to be curtailed or modified because of joint pains or prior injuries that I am still recovering from. If something hurts, or I am genuinely just not into it, I will find something else to do. What I do is not as important as the fact that I do something, and do it each training day. This is in addition to the 10,000 steps, although I do sometimes combine my 10,000 steps when I play DDR. When I do that, I split the difference calorie wise, which brings me to...

Get a Good Gauge on The Exercise Calories You Expend, In All Categories

This is not as straightforward as many people think, as calorie expenditures for exercises, and the use of trackers like FitBit, etc. are often normalized over the course of a day. Some activities that seem fairly straightforward and mellow have huge calorie counts, and those where we feel we are putting a lot into don't register very much. Yes, exercise burns calories, but not near as much as we think it does. We also eat more calories than we give ourselves credit for, so counting calories honestly and dependably is important, and needs to be done daily. Check this calculator out to get an idea as to how much certain activities measure up in total calories burned.

A Key Value: BMR + 200

Learn your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), and understand that it will change as you lose weight. Your BMR is what you would burn in calories even if you were to stay in bed all day and do absolutely nothing. Your heart, lungs, brain, kidneys, stomach, muscles, bones, and every cell in your body needs to be nourished, oxygenated and replenished. That process is energy demanding. Based on your height, weight, age and gender, you can determine what your BMR is at any given time. Here's a calculator you can use to get started.

When I started this process, my BMR was 2,304 calories each day. Today, at 205, my BMR is 1,961 calories each day. Yep, down by 343 calories. The key here is regularly keep checking in on your BMR. Eat up to the level of your CURRENT BMR, plus maybe 200 additional calories for good measure. Check in weekly to determine where your BMR is, and adjust your caloric intake appropriately. Trust me, you will still lose weight because...

Subtract Your Activity Calories from Your Daily Calorie Budget

Your additional activities above and beyond BMR are subtracted from your daily needs. Put simply, "DO NOT EAT BACK YOUR EXERCISE CALORIES". If you have a BMR of 2,000 calories a day, eat 2,200 calories for good measure. Then exercise, work out, go for a walk, do yoga, clean the house, do yard work, play baseball, be a jungle gym for your kids, whatever. Figure out the caloric expenditure of these activities (a FitBit may be helpful here, or some other device, or use the calculator above or an app that has calorie tracking, but again, it will still be an approximation). Subtract those expended calories from your daily BMR+200. If you find yourself going into a fully negative deficit, meaning you exercised more than you actually ate that day, then by all means eat more, but generally determine to not eat back exercise calories. Remember that 3500 calories is the equivalent of one pound of fat, so you need to be running that level of a deficit to actually burn that fat away. 7000 calories is roughly two pounds of fat, and that is a good goal to target each week because...

Pick a Target You Can Commit To, Such as Two Pounds a Week

In the mid 1980's, I was taught that two pounds a week was a good max number because anything beyond that would start catabolizing muscle. I now know a bit more, and understand that no matter what you do, you will burn some muscle in the process of burning bodyfat, just as you will build more muscle if you are willing to accept some extra bodyfat deposits in the process. Also, there's a fair amount of fluctuation with water weight that can cause you to go up or down by several pounds.

The key thing to remember is that your body is very aware of what is happening to it. The human body doesn't care about fashion, vanity or self expression. It cares about survival. It is optimized for that express purpose. We have to work with it so that we don't convince it that we are in a famine, or that we are facing severe trauma. For me, that has meant trying to not be too severe with my weight loss. Additionally, two pounds a week is a good target simply because of mathematics; losing more than that is just plain hard in terms of calorie restriction and time to exercise. Two pounds a week is doable for me. Your mileage may vary.  See this article for a good explanation for the number, why some can do more and why it's not an absolute value.

Be Prepared to Change What and How You Eat, Perhaps Drastically

As part of my process, I developed an approach of "eat it whole, eat it raw, eat it unprocessed, as much as possible". This has meant, generally, that most processed foods I have enjoyed eating (chips, cereals, pasta, packaged bread products, crackers, cookies, soda, juices, condiments, etc.) are no longer a regular part of my diet. That doesn't mean I never eat them, but they are an exception, whereas before it was more the rule. In their place, I tend to eat fresh fruit (raw or from frozen); raw or simply cooked vegetables (again, typically fresh or from frozen); smaller amounts and greater varieties of meats, including eggs; high quality oils, typically in the form of either pressed oils or from nuts; milk products, typically in soft cheeses, yogurt and kefir. I also purchase a protein supplement to help make sure I'm getting enough protein each day. The fiber in fresh fruits and vegetables fills me up to the point that I don't feel the need to eat all the time. I include grains like wheat, rice or oats, but I eat them preferably as unprocessed as possible. I like getting the full berries (red wheat, bulgur, teff, barley, groats, quinoa, amaranth, etc.) and cooking them in a rice cooker (yes, it works the same way, although it needs more water and takes a little longer). Key here is I do not eschew any particular food items, but I try my best to keep them balanced and consume them in a way that my body can reap the most nutritional benefit.

No matter what, though, I find that I have an occasional craving for something sweet and a need to chew something, and vegetables ain't gonna cut it. In these moments, I do have a secret weapon, and that's sugarless chewing gum. Seriously, I chew a lot of gum! I also tend to drink about two liters of water a day.

One thing to point out is that eating clean (meaning focusing on fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, oils, etc.) can be pricy. On average, I spend $50 a week on food. That does not include meat or other miscellaneous food items. With that in mind, sometimes I have to make economic choices with what I choose to eat. My optimal choice may not always be practical. Fresh is best. Frozen is a good second option, with the benefit that there are no "aspirational frozen vegetables" (they can keep for several weeks in the freezer, and they are often considerably less expensive than buying fresh). Dried would be next (think beans, rice, minimally processed fruits, etc.). I will eat canned food if I absolutely must, but only after a good rinsing because...

Wild Fluctuations With Weight? Hello Sodium, My Frenemy!

Sodium is part of the canning and pickling process, and sodium can be awful to the process of losing weight, especially if you are one to check your weight every day (which, I should mention, I do). It is not uncommon to reach a new low, then spike three pounds, drop two pounds, jump up two pounds again, drop four pounds and then settle at a new low. What is going on?! Days when I see these wild spikes and dips, I can almost guarantee it was because I ate at a restaurant or otherwise didn't have the option to prepare my own food, and excess salt was part of that meal.

Sodium is insidious, it's in just about everything. Don't get me wrong, sodium is important. We'd die without it, but most of us get way too much of it, and definitely more than the potassium we should be consuming to help balance it out. Within 48 hours, most of that weight is gone, usually because I consume enough water to dilute it out, or I increase the concentration of potassium in my system to do the same (bananas are my friend... no, seriously, I love bananas specifically for this purpose). Either way, if you notice that you have suddenly put on a bunch of weight in a day, and you are struggling to figure out why, some of it could be fat deposition, some of it is additional mass in the digestive tract (totally normal and expected), but a good amount of it is water binding due to sodium being a greedy element.

In most of my recipes I do not use salt because I typically don't need to; there's plenty there already. Using it as a flavor enhancer is fine, but be sure you are aware of how much you use and consume, and be prepared the next day when the scale spikes. It'll go away in a day or two.

Pick a Macronutrient Breakdown You Can Live With

Bring balance to what you eat, in the way that makes the most sense. My approach may make sense for you, or it may not. There's lots of mitigating circumstances you have to consider. Health conditions, moral choices, religious considerations, etc. may require you do do different things. Again, being LDS, I do have a couple of food restrictions I choose to follow. Food items and beverages derived from coffee beans and black/green/white tea are not part of my diet. I also do not drink anything with alcohol in it. Outside of those, I consider myself an overall omnivore, with a love for food from all over the world. I've often referred to myself as "utilitarian" when it comes to food. I respect those who choose to be various levels of vegetarian/vegan, and I experiment with recipes in that vein to see what I can do, and often go considerable stretches where I don't eat any meat at all, but I find it overall helpful to my diet and goals, so I keep it as a component, albeit considerably reduced from my prior eating habits before August.

I've experimented with several different nutrient profiles, and the one I like best and find most effective is based on the Zone Diet. I strive to get a gram of protein per lean pound of body weight each day. From there, I aim to get 30% of my calories from protein, 30% from fats, and 40% from carbs. Sometimes I switch the protein and carb percentages (40% protein, 30% carbs, 30% fats).

Regardless of the method, you need to consume less than you burn to create a deficit, and you need to create a long term deficit to have a major impact on fat burning. That is the same regardless of the breakdown you choose to use. Another way I like to help stack this is I use a challenge template that's run at LoseIt regarding fruits and vegetables. Every day, I aim to get 225 calories from fresh or frozen fruit. Additionally, I also aim to get 200 calories from fresh or frozen vegetables. The fruit calories are easy to meet. The vegetable calories, depending on what you choose, might take some doing. Added to that, I try to make a point of varying what I eat whenever possible, so as to get a broad cross section of fruits, vegetables, meats, oils, etc. and also get a broad spectrum of vitamins and minerals in the process. I also take a cheap daily multi-vitamin to cover my bases.

Get Help From an "Accountability Partner"

Find a support system to help you through the process of losing weight and training. Have an accountability partner, preferably one you are not married or otherwise related to. Our families love us, they really do. They can be our biggest cheerleaders, but they can also be our worst saboteurs, often at the same time and have no idea they are doing that. When you have a dispassionate accountability partner, those issues mostly go away. Your accountability partner can be electronic (apps, spreadsheets, training diaries, etc.) or they can be real people you interact with, in person or virtually. I have found a nice balance. I use electronic means, using apps like Pacer for step data, LoseIt for calories, and FitStar for workouts/training, plus I have a BlueTooth scale that integrates with LoseIt that tracks weight, BMI, body fat percentage and hydration levels (though the last two seem to be related in a strange counter symbiosis, and are not really reliable, but that's another topic ;) ).

Additionally, the Social community within LoseIt has been terrific for me. I take advantage of a variety of challenges that occur within LoseIt, and I am a greedy collector of "badges". It makes the quest fun, and it keeps me looking forward rather than behind. Challenges also give you a chance to cheer on others, and let them cheer you on as well. You can certainly train on your own, but having a support system can be tremendously helpful, especially if you check in regularly.


Having said all of that, this is work. It takes time, dedication, and commitment, and will require it for a long time, not just for the duration to lose the weight, but for the time that follows so that you stay diligent and keep the weight off.

I should also mention that this "system" as described was derived over the course of four months, with the idea that I would tweak some small thing each week. Taken in its entirety, were I to say I was going to do everything outlined here on day one, I would probably have given up. This represents a major paradigm shift in the way I ate and exercised, but I made small incremental changes along the way. Consider it "Agile Dieting and Conditioning", where very small changes made regularly brings you to a totally different place months down the road, but the individual changes were so small and so frequent that they were nearly imperceptible. I would suggest anyone looking to make major changes to their lifestyle do something similar. Don't try to reinvent yourself all in one go. Let yourself experiment with small changes, be open to learning what works for you and keeps you engaged, and make small tweaks on a regular basis. I think "a tweak a week" is a good pace.

Another important consideration is "your body is adaptable". What works at one point in time can stop working later. Plateaus happen. Reversals happen. You will get tired. You will get frustrated. You will get angry. You will get invited to events where you decide to chuck your willpower and self control. It happens. We're human. The best advice I've received, and the advice I frequently give myself and others when this happens, is courtesy my friend and accountability partner Pat over at LoseIt...

"Own It... Log It... and Move On!"

If there is any "secret" in all of this, that statement is it. That's the magic. It's the magic of mindfulness, the secret is owning this process and being wholly responsible for success. When we do well, celebrate. When we backslide, acknowledge and learn. When we discover something doesn't work any longer, adapt. Regardless of what it is, good or bad, euphoric or frustrating, enlightening or damning, "own it, log it, and move on".

I'm not perfect by any means, but I know how this feels, and that is often a big help to others. Start your journey, and let me know if I can be of any help along the way. Likewise, I still have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep ;).

Aedificamus: Product Review: LoseIt! Health-o-meter

I should've seen this coming. When I decided to check out the Lose It!! app, I figured I'd be content with just weighing myself, tracking calories, and seeing what happened. I wouldn't be seduced by other offers, or other technology… especially not some tricked-out Bluetooth data sharing scale. Not me. Oh no. Oh, who am I kidding?!

Yes, I am now the proud owner of a LoseIt! Health-o-meter. Well, the proud part I might have to work on, but I most certainly now own one ;). The intrigue factor overcame the slightly creeped out factor. Yes, I admit it, the thought that my smart phone can get all sorts of information from a scale, store it, analyze it and give me advice about it just seems a bit... odd, but the "oh wow, how cool is that?!" aspect ultimately won out in the end.


So how exactly does this work? The scale uses Bluetooth to interface with a smart phone (iPhone in this case), and specifically with the LoseIt! app. Part of me considers that a little bit of a letdown, because it is a dedicated device for a dedicated app. Still, the ability to gather data, crunch it, and do something interesting with it always brings a smile to my face.


What doesn't bring a smile to my face, however, is the level of precision that I can now be provided. Prior to today, I was content to have a scale that rounded in half pounds. Now I have a scale that is accurate to a 10th of a pound. But wait, there's more! I can now also get a reading (through the electrical impedance pads) of my overall hydration levels, my body fat percentage, and my body mass index (BMI). I used to take comfort in the fact that these were nebulous numbers; they just existed in the ether someplace and, oh, they might be derived through some inconsistent formula on a web site some place or another. Now, I know what they are… in vivid, gory detail.







Yep, there it is… I can't pretend it's something else any longer (LOL!).

Now, to be frank, there's a lot of ambiguity to these numbers even as they're presented. How precise are these values, really? They may be accurate, they may be off. However, for what I am planning to do, they're a good enough heuristic (i.e. rule of thumb) to be useful. I'm not really doing anything (competitive sports, bodybuilding, etc.) where they have to be super precise. They just need to do one thing… trend downward over time.

On a technical level, the set up is simple; go into the app, pair it with the health-o-meter, press a button on the underside of the scale to pair the devices, create a scale profile for yourself, step on (barefoot, of course), let it get your measurements, transfer data, and then it is there in the app, ready to be logged and sync'd with the app's other algorithms. Each day you weigh in, the pairing profile does the rest. The scale itself feels fairly sturdy. For a day-one comparison, it does the job well.


Bottom Line:


This product pairing fills me with equal parts dread and wonder. I'm weirded out by the level of detail it provides, and the fact that my phone can carry this and share it with a whole bunch of different apps. On the other hand, I'm super intrigued to see if this level of granularity and focus with the data will make me more efficient, or more aggressive, when it comes to weight loss, nutrition and exercise.

I guess you'll have to stay tuned for that latter part ;).

Aedificamus: I'm Ready to LoseIt

I shall apologize to anyone who doesn't really want to read about my quest to modify my shape from what resembles an abstract pear to one that I vaguely remember from my younger days. If you fit the description of one who doesn't really care or have the slightest interest in this type of stuff, you are welcome to stop reading here.

Still with me? Awesome!

It's the start of a new month, and I've been mentally toying with a few ideas related to trying to get back into shape. I'm a firm believer in the idea that you should tackle one goal at a time, or at least get familiar and comfortable enough with a goal that adding another one will not be disillusioning. My first set of goals were around scheduling in 10,000 steps per day, then doing them all at once, then upping the ante to 15,000 steps as a daily goal. 15,000 steps is roughly eight miles, and about two and a half hours of time commitment per day. So far, my routine has been as follows:

- walking from home to train station (1.5 miles, about 30 minutes)
- train station to work (0.5 to 1.8 miles or 10 to 35 minutes, depending on if I get off in Palo Alto or Menlo Park)
- fifteen minute walk in the morning as a break (roughly 0.5 to 0.75 miles)
- an hour walk at lunch (average of 2.5 miles)
- another fifteen minute walk in the afternoon as a break (again roughly 0.5 to 0.75 miles)
- walk from work to train station and finally train station to home
- work to train station (again, 0.5 to 1.8 miles or 10 to 35 minutes, depending on station)
- train station to home (1.5 miles, with a significant hill at the very end)

Added to this is another habit I've started. I bought a large SmartWater bottle (no particular reason for that brand, just that it is a large and easy to carry bottle that can hold 1.5 liters). I fill this bottle three times a day, and add a flavor packet just for some variety (drinking that much water each day can get *very* boring). By talking a sip every few minutes while walking, the water just disappears, I don't feel forced, and I genuinely feel way less hungry during the day.

The third habit I started was a daily weigh in. I'll do my best to not get TMI here, but for those who have wondered, if you want to do this, I wholly recommend doing it after you first wak up and go to the bath room. That's been my baseline the past few weeks, and there is something borderline primal about the excitement of "making weight". For those who ever participated in high school or college wrestling programs, you may well have taken part in some of the insanity to make sure you could compete in your desired weight class. Doing lots of active running, taking sauna baths, sweating as much as possible (and yes, I've even gone as far as using over the counter diuretics... I know, bad TESTHEAD), but the joy at standing on that scale and seeing that you "made weight" was pretty hard to beat. so it is here as well.

I know that my weight can fluctuate as much as seven pounds in any given day, so a daily weighing may see drops, may see plateaus, and may even see upward ticks in weight on some days. I try not to let it get to me, but hey, there's a natural euphoria when you see the scale trend down, and a tough of disappointment when you either can't move the needle or it trends upward again. The benefit of daily weigh-in allows me to mentally focus on what I need to do. If I trend down. Awesome. If I don't move, give it a little time. If I trend up, examine what I may have eaten that could have caused that reversal (usually, the scene is eating at a restaurant or outdoor place, and the primary culprit is sodium). nevertheless, when I see a downward trend week over week, that's what really matters, and so far, that's what is happening.

A recent addition to my arsenal, and one I happen to like quite a bit, is an app called LoseIt. LoseIt has a number of tools that help you to figure out your weight and exercise goals, your food intake, and lots of tools to help manage al of that. A personal favorite feature is the "scan app". Place your camera over a bar code on the food item (if it has one) and you have the full macronutrient breakdown for that product. It's awesome because it's so fast. It's demoralizing because it's so fast (LOL!). LoseIt also allows users to set up details about themselves (weight, height, gender, target weight, etc.) and from that it determines a likely Basal Metabolic Rate. Based on your activity level and your set goals, the app configures a daily caloric "budget". That budget is measured daily, but it also projects weekly as well. By logging the food you eat, and comparing to the budget, you can determine how close you are to meeting the limit or if you have room to spare. adding exercise to the equation (the steps measured by the device are store in the Health app and shared with LoseIt if you choose to). By calculating the BMR and the estimated expended calories, it makes deductions and also adds small bonuses if you meet a particular step or activity goal. The net result is a nice graphic that shows how many calories you have left in your budget (the greater the deficit, the larger the remaining calories count, and very 3500 is equivalent to a pound of bodyfat!).

One additional option that is available is the Bluetooth body density scale that is made to work with LoseIt. I haven't decided yet if this option is awesome or creepy. It uses insulating and conductive plates to send a small current through your body. The resulting resistance gives a figure to your bodyfat percentage (I don't consider these tools to be all that accurate, but for ball park numbers and personal goals, I think they work fine). By having these measurements, you can get closer to a real figure of your lean body weight, your bodyfat percentage, and a rough approximation of how much bodyfat you have (and more importantly, how much to lose). The scale can be set to automatically sync with your mobile device, no entry needed (this is where I vacillate if I should be impressed or horrified ;) ). NO i haven't purchased one, but I will confess, I am intrigued.

In any case, the information informs me of how close I am to my target budget, or how far away I am. Most of all, it gives me a reality check as to both the amount of calories my body can burn (a good amount, but nowhere near what I'd like to achieve in the time I'd like to invest) and the calories I consume (wait, a serving size is how big?!!). The tools themselves do not do the work, each of us does it. The tools, however, can give us some control and visibility, and make us aware of our choices and what we need to trade one way or another. Don't get me wrong, I love chocolate, really good soda pop, and a variety of foods that would best be described as "calorie laden", but when I am aware of the fact that I spent three hours moving and doing stuff to "afford" those items, I'm less likely to partake in them. that awareness, coupled with deliberate action, does the work. It's not magic... but it sure can feel like it at times :).

For those curious, 243.5lbs as of this morning. That's down 16.5lbs. from my weight when I started. Expecting the progress to start slowing any day now, and the real work to pick up in earnest. Onward!!!

Aedificamus: The Value of the Self "Check-In"

We all go through them in certain ways. That one-on-one meeting with your supervisor, the daily stand-up, the family meeting, the heart to heart talks, they all have a purpose. The goal is to make sure that we are "on track", whatever on track might mean at that given moment. On track often means different things to different people. I'm having a bit of that now with my son. He's 19, going to college, working a job, and developing a sense of who he is and what he chooses to do. For me, the check-in's are important. For him, they may be less thrilling, because his idea of "on track", at the moment, differs a little from mine. I need to remind myself of this from time to time; I remember having the same conversations with my dad when I was 19. If I'm not mistaken, many of the topics were very familiar ;).

Checking in with others is fairly easy. With another person, I have accountability. The more difficult process is the personal check-in, the act of interviewing myself and regularly asking the following questions:

• How are you doing? 
• Is everything OK?
• How's everything at home?
• Are you working on what you need to? 
• Do you need help with anything? 
• Are there things you probably should stop doing? 
• Are the things you are thinking about stopping doing actually the things you should stop doing, or are they the things you need to double down on?

I could greatly expand this list to talk about my family, friends, initiatives I'm involved with, etc., but for today, it's the Self Check-In I want to focus on.

I've been experiencing a rediscovery in regards to fitness and health. Today's technologies give us the ability to have these conversations. As I've said many times, RescueTime helps me know what I actually spend my time online doing. It's great when the feedback is positive. It's frustrating when I realize things I'm doing are, at best, a mild amusement or diversion. At worst, they are a total waste of time. Still, those insights are made with regular check-ins and asking myself "what could I be doing with this time?".

Sixteen days ago, I downloaded the "Pacer" app because I wanted to do something about my exercise (specifically, the lack thereof). Pacer gave me a very simple goal; "can I get 10,000 steps in every day?". At first, I started thinking about it spread out through the day. I determined the easiest way to do it was to park my car at home and walk to the train station (which is one and a half miles from my house). When I reach Palo Alto, I get off the train and walk to the office (another half mile), and then repeat the process backwards. This makes it part of my daily routine. If I were to just do that, I would be 80% of the way to my goal (and cover four miles each day). Just milling about at the office would takes care of the rest.

As I started making that 10,000 step goal each day, I shifting my thinking to "What about doing it at one shot?" Yeah, that is doable. I need to cover five miles, and take me about an hour and forty minutes (that's just walking at a regular pace, no jogging or running, or deliberately lengthening my stride artificially). Soon, I started considering the goal met when I could do it at one shot, or as early as possible. As I was doing this, I started noticing that there was a daily estimation to the calories I was burning (I don't consider this to be scientifically precise, but as a general rule of thumb, sure, I'll take it). As I was looking at the calories, I started asking myself "Hmmm, what if I were to limit my food intake to what I'd burned?" In other words, if I did a walk and I burned 700 calories (which for sake of reference takes me about two hours of walking or about 7 miles), then I am allowed to eat that amount of food. In other words, can I match the calories I eat to the calories I burn?

This approach works for immediate meals. I would not recommend doing this too aggressively, because it does not take into account my basal metabolic rate (which is imprecisely about 2,200 calories for my height and weight at zero activity level. If I were really to just eat what I had "burned", I'd have a daily deficit of 2,200 calories, which comes out to 15,400 calories a week. I'd lose 4.4 pounds each week at that rate, and at least half of that would be lean muscle mass, which would ultimately make my MBR lower. This is why I do not let myself go that low. Generally speaking, I become so irritable at that level of deficit that I have to eat, so at this point, it's not been something I can maintain in any meaningful way. Still, by doing this process, just by tracking the calories I "burn" with keeping track of the calories I consume, and being aware of how much of each I am doing, the net results after 15 full days is that I have dropped 12.5 pounds! Some of that is water weight, some of it is redistribution, some of it is lean muscle addition (and perhaps a little bit of muscle subtraction), but a fair chunk of it is also body fat, and that is something I'm happy to see go "bye bye").

My point with a lot of this is not to say that pacer is cool, or that calorie counting helps, or that evaluating my BMR on a regular basis is helpful (though all of those are). The act of a self check-in, to see what exactly I am doing, and being mindful of that check-in, helps me keep my motivation. It helps me to recognize if I am on track, or if I need to modify my plan. Additionally, it lets me consider if the time I am spending is the best use of my time, or if I can somehow modify what I am doing. Ultimately, what I choose to do with that time, (especially with walking) is important, because it is now literally time I cannot do something else. Actually, that's not entirely true, I'm using that time to listen to CodeNewbie podcasts (currently up to Episode #33), so there is a very limited level of multi-tasking I can do ;).

How about you? Are you giving yourself a regular check in?

How Many Words Do You Have Left In You?

This may seem like a borderline macabre post, but it was prompted by my recent deep dive into the CodeNewbie podcast. Episode #17 featured Scott Hanselman (a great episode about engaging with new programmers or anyone in tech) and one of the comments that he made was the idea that we all have a limited amount of keystrokes left in each of us.

Scott breaks it down like this. Think of how old you are now. Now consider a conservative life span. For me, to date, the direct line of males in my family have lived to 82 at the latest, though my Dad is looking great at 75 and shows no signs of slowing down yet, so that's a plus :). I'll take a mid figure and say 78. that means I have about thirty years of words left in me. Divide that by the number of hours I work in a given day, and then divide that by the minutes in those hours, and then divide that by the number of words I type, and there you have it.

The point to this is that we have a lot of things we can do, but often we end up doing things that are repetitive and can possibly be of benefit to others if we do them the right way. In other words, instead of answering emails with the same questions, writing blog posts and pointing people to them might prove to be of more benefit.

I was reminded of this a week or so ago as I realized that on any given week, a big portion of my traffic comes from the series of posts I wrote four years ago when I embarked on "Learn Ruby the Hard Way". My rationale was that I was already looking at this stuff, and experimenting with it. I wanted to take notes and see if I could explain what worked and what didn't. If it didn't, was it a problem with the material, or was it a problem with me? More times than not, I'd discover it was a problem with me, or my understanding of the material. By talking out the ideas in the blog posts, and rereading them back to myself, often I was able to uncover problems just by talking out the problem, as though someone else was there to listen. Four years later, those experiments, frustrations and discoveries are still bearing fruit.

To me this highlights the importance of us documenting our journeys. It's tempting to say that a blog post is just a blog post, and that in the grand scheme of things, doesn't amount to very much. I think the opposite. To borrow again from Scott, by putting a URL to our words, we have the potential of seeing our words outlive us. Granted, the specifics of our posts may ultimately prove to be outdated, but the general process of learning, discovery, and our individual journeys along the way have timeless truths that may well prove to be valuable to other travelers. In the ideals of Will Allen Dromgoole, "I'm building a bridge for them" or at least I hope to.

The tl;dr version of this is "find ways of sharing your discoveries, and do what you can to limit the repetition of what you say". If you truly say it once, say it in a chat or an email. If you find yourself referencing it more that that, blog it. You never know what piece of advice you may have hidden in a chat transcript or an email thread that may help hundreds or thousands of others.

Aedificamus: The Hidden Side to 10,000 Steps

This is an odd post, but then again, if you've been around my blog long enough, odd posts are probably more normal than not. In any event, this is a personal examination of motivation, behavior and the hidden side of metrics.

Like many people, I have become a touch enamored with my iPhone. For years, I had mobile devices to test with, and to that level, I typically had wifi access to do most of the functional testing, plus borrowing a friends device if needed to actually test on a carrier. Still, at the end of the day, I was content to put down the mobile device and get on with my life. That dynamic changed when I got my first Android phone a few years ago, and the change really accelerated when I bought an iPhone. I made the shift away from the idea of a mobile phone that can do a few things to a pocket computer that "has plenty to keep me interested, engaged and thoroughly distracted if I choose to be".

The apps that I have been interested of late have been "personal motivators", or those things that track goals in the way of using time, getting exercise and health in general. A neat little discovery on my part was the fact that even before I had installed a fitness app to track walking, running and bicycling, I had data for an entire week ready to display. How? The motion tracking feature is already on the iPhone and it's active, so all this data was ready to be picked up once I installed the app. Cool... and a little creepy at the same time.

One of the things that I notice about myself is that I personally love messing with gameification systems in devices or apps. I like trying to figure out ways I can leverage the apps to generate numbers and see how I can tweak them or apply them, and once I get my teeth sunk into a number, I tend to obsess over it. The number I'm currently obsessing over at the moment is "10,000", which is to say, the goal of getting in 10,000 steps a day. This is the number that is currently touted as being part of an Active Lifestyle. The app I use, Pacer, considers 10,000 steps and more as being "Highly Active". At this point, it's easy to conclude that getting in 10,000 steps will be the ticket to getting me in shape, getting that weight off, and putting me on a path to health and wellness... or is it?

Taken by itself, 10,000 steps has lots of supporting variables to consider. I'm 6'2" tall. My 10,000 steps will cover more ground that someone who is 5'2". Additionally, how are these 10,000 steps performed? In the area where I work, were I to get those 10,000 steps in at one time, it would be on flat ground. Were I to do it where I live, I'd have the option of choosing paths that are relatively flat or with some steep hills thrown in. I live at the top of a hill in my town. The street leading from the main cross road up to my house is steep enough for half a mile that I'm definitely huffing and puffing by the time it flattens out. The calorie counter reads the same amount regardless of which path I take. There are also paths I can take that will have me under tree cover and in the shade, and others will have me exposed to the sun and heat with little to no cover. The point to all this is, by throwing a bit of variety in, those 10,000 steps will vary in the level of effort, the level of sunlight and heat (which affects the amount of sweating I do), and the speed in which I can complete those steps.

For a few days, I experimented to see what it would take to get those 10,000 steps in all at once. The answer is, for me, that it requires five miles of walking, and usually is accomplished in an hour and forty minutes. By comparison, just walking around my neighborhood, walking from my car to the train, pacing on the platform, walking from the train station to work, wandering around the office, and reversing the trek gets me pretty close to 10,000 steps without even realizing it. The difference in effort and how I feel on days where I front load those 10,000 steps, versus days where I reach them literally at the end of the day, is phenomenal.

I've gotten interested in tracking weight loss with this app, and I've set up a few goals. I'll say that at the start of this experiment, I weighed 260 lbs. For the record, that's my all time heaviest. When I was more athletically involved (at my peak in around 1995 when I was training to become a competitive snowboarder), my leanest was about 190 lbs. and my bulkiest was around 225 lbs., both with aggressive training, eating like a horse, and being super active. When I broke my leg back in 2011, I chose to slow down some of the aggressive sports stuff to let the bones heal and get back to their former density. After four years, it's safe to say that my bones are as dense as they will get at this stage of my life, but my habits went significantly downhill, resulting in the weight gain I'm trying to reverse now. Over the days I've been doing this (i.e. less than ten) I've managed to pull five pounds from my frame. I'm currently at 255 lbs. I hope to lose more going forward. Did 10,000 steps have something to do with it? Yes, but perhaps not in the way you might think.

As I embarked on this approach, I wanted to see how I dealt with other things I did. Would getting in 10,000 steps make me more lazy? In truth, I'm finding it makes me motivated to move even more, and on certain days, I get well over the 10,000 steps threshold. Another thing I've noticed is how I eat and what I eat. Prior to doing this, I'd typically just eat whatever was available. Now, I find that I am being much more deliberate in the choice of food I eat, and when I eat it. Part of me thinks this might hearken back to what I've called "The Craddick Effect". When you are scared to do something, force yourself to walk back and attempt it again. Repeat this until you tire yourself out to get your mind and body ready to conquer that fear (and yes, it works :) ). I think my slightly fatigued body starts to shout down my lizard brain trying to find comfort in junk food. It's yelling "hey, I just walked five miles to burn off 600 calories, do NOT sabotage my efforts!" I'd figured it would be the other way around, where I'd say "hey, I've worked hard, I deserve this" but the opposite is proving to be true.

A TED Radio Hour Talk that I enjoyed greatly, titled "Amateur Hour" (of which I expect to talk about in later posts more in depth) had an interview with A.J Jacobs, the editor at large at Esquire who takes on some pretty extreme challenges and writes about them. In the process of talking about his "Year of Living Biblically", he took on the idea that "if we change our mind, we will change our behavior" but in reality, it's the other way around, i.e. "by changing our behavior, we change our minds". We can understand something, we can believe it, we can internalize it intellectually, but if we don't DO anything with that knowledge, we won't actually cause any change. Though early in the process, I can say, at least for now, that putting in 10,000 steps each day, especially if I aim to front load those steps, that my subsequent behaviors around food, activity, and rest change. When I hear of people saying they drop anywhere from twenty to fifty pounds in a year following this approach, the 10,000 steps is merely a catalyst. Sure it's a measurable number, but it's the underlying "infrastructure and behavioral changes" that go on, many of which are imperceptible, that really do the hard work of transformation. I'm looking forward to seeing if this holds three weeks from now, when I next report in on this (and yes, I give you permission to call me on it if you don't hear back from me :) ).

Do You Have To Be...

I'm sure you all thought you were through with hearing me post comments and thoughts from CAST, seeing as the conference finished last night, and all that's left today is to clean up the last bits and go home. while the conference is over, the reverberations from sessions should continue for some time to come. I woke up this morning and checked my Twitter and saw that I appeared in an interesting side discussion, and it's that side discussion, from a session I was not actually in, that prompted this particular post.

I've had the pleasure of getting together with and talking over dinner and at several other events with Jeff Morgan (@chzy) and Henrik Andersson (@henkeandersson) over the past few years. I have worked through Jeff's book "Cucumber and Cheese" and found it to be both great fun, and a great way to construct an automation framework. I have used Henrik's "Context-Driven Robots" module as a core component in teaching about context to new testers in the SummerQAmp curriculum. Both of these gentlemen took part in a spirited debate about whether or not software testers should code. Again, I could not attend this session because I was facilitating and co-presenting a session with Albert Gareev (@agareev) about how to design and how to test for Accessibility. Still, much was said and many tweets resulted from this discussion. I replied to some, retweeted others, and it was in this process and in light of one exchange that things got interesting :):

There's more to this conversation, and if you would like to see the rest,  I encourage looking at the other tweets, but the last message is what prompted this post today. I look forward to others who will post on the topic, too.

There are three aspects that I think are coming into play with this discussion:

1. Do we want to have a separate role and focus of energy within organizations for programmers and testers?

2. Do we want to see more testers become programmers in their own right?

3. Do we want to see programmers develop the skills to become better software testers?

Note: this may not be where the original conversation meant to go, and that's totally OK. This is my thoughts on this, and based on talks we had at CAST (I'm specifically thinking of Jessie Alford's talk about Pivotal and Cloud Foundry and how they code and test).

Let's start with the first. Several organizations are either considering, or have already decided, that there will not be a separate role for software testing that is distinct from programming (role as in dedicated teams or members of staff that do that particular job). Jessie Alford presented a model that Cloud Foundry uses where programmers rotate into a role for a time as explorers, and then they go back to programming. The focus and activities are the same. There is definitely software testing happening, and software testing as those of us who consider ourselves being testers would recognize as what we want to see testing be represented as. It is not, however, being performed by strictly manual testers. It is being performed by the programmers on the team. It's an interesting model, and from Jessie's talk, it's working quite well for them. Can a programmer be an excellent tester? If Jessie's experience is to be believed, the answer is "yes". This certainly indicates that the third point I mentioned above is not only possible, it is happening. 

There are arguments for and against a dedicated test team within an organization. My company has both roles and dedicated staff for them. We have dedicated programmers and dedicated explorers. We report to the same person, the VP of Engineering. At this time, the test team is integrated into the programming team, but we have a clear distinction between programmer and tester. That doesn't mean we don't program, especially in the area of automation. Each of us on the team has the skills and the experience to create and edit the automated tests that we use. I have the experience to be the release manager for the company, in addition to being a software tester. Thus, I certainly do feel that having programming skills can be a solid benefit to a tester. At the same time, I will not pretend that I have the same level of programming skill or experience as our production programmers do. I'm also not being asked to provide that. We have a dedicated person whose sole responsibility is to create automated tests. My teammates and I supplement their efforts, but generally, it's our efforts as explorers (to borrow from Jessie once again) that is desired most by our engineering team, at least at this time.

Michael Bolton makes a clear point in the exchange above and in other tweets that were part of the conversation. Do I have to be an expert photographer to edit National Geographic? Do I have to be an expert healer to be a pathologist? Do I have to be an expert mechanic to be a race car driver? Note, Michael didn't actually say that last one, I added it for the fun of it. The point is, we do not have to be any of those things to do the things that we excel at... but having a good knowledge of each area will certainly be helpful, as it will help us to understand better the domains we work in, and will help inform what we do. 

As testers, being able to understand code and what makes it work can give us a tremendous boost into ways we can test and ideas we can develop. At the same time, I've had experiences where the code I have written, and tested, has been enhanced by an external tester who can think of things I did not consider. I value that software tester's help and insights. I also realize that that software tester can be a programmer on my team. Exploration skills and mastery of testing approaches and ideas are important. If a team can do that with having programmers take on the role of explorers for a time, or reciprocate for one another in that capacity, it may prove to be a very workable solution. In other teams, it may make sense to have a dedicated testing group do that. 

As was made clear in the debate, the process of programming and testing are both vital. Both need to be done. There are many ways to accomplish those goals, and varying approaches will be used. Personally, I know enough programming to be dangerous, and enough testing to help mitigate danger. I'm not personally good enough at both to mitigate my own danger, but I'm working on it. My personal opinion as relates to the debate is that no, software testers do not have to be production level programmers in addition to being excellent software testers, but if you would like to get to know more about how systems work and what influences those systems to work, and if you have that base level curiosity that all good testers have (in my opinion), adding some programming to your personal portfolio would certainly not be a detriment. It's possible that you might learn something and decide that it's not for you. Again, that is OK, but don't be surprised if the effort to learn starts to give you new ways to think about the testing you are already doing, and presumably quite good at performing. In my opinion, that seems to be a good trade :).

The Art and Science of Questioning - Live at #$CAST2015

It's fun being a facilitator, in that you get to actively participate in the discussion, and it also gets you up and moving. today I'll be spending most of my time facilitating the webCAST room, so if you see a bald guy in a white AST polo running around, yep, that is me :).

Jess Ingrasselino (@jess_ingrass) works with Bit.ly and worked as a music teacher prior to her tech career. I think that having that background is probably awesome for her being involved in programming and testing. She explained how she went from being a music teacher to quality assurance engineer, and that the processes are actually very similar. When a violinist or violist wants to start playing the Brandenburg Concerto, they don't start with the full piece. They start with the first note, or the first theme, and then they grow from there. There is a focus on building the knowledge and experience with performance and practice. Software testing does much the same thing; we start small with basic concepts, and we practice and apply them.

Testers ask questions, but not just any questions. They need to be targeted and specific, such that they may better understand and learn the product, and focus on other aspects of the product. I'm fond of the definition of testing that I use, which is "Ask the product a question, and based on the answer you receive, ask additional and more interesting questions."


Jess makes a case that borrowing from social science, and understanding the methods used in "qualitative research" makes it possible for us to ask compelling questions The methods Jess will use for this come from Robert Stakes. One of the areas to focus on is "multiple interpretation". What happens when different people with different permissions logged into the system? What is shared? What is unique to certain permissions?

One of the things that is vexing about asking questions is that we can fall into the trap of asking questions that are self-serving. We can easily craft questions that will provide answers that support our own beliefs or biases. We need to be aware of the unintentional ways that we word things or couch questions. Instead of asking "what issues are you having with development?", ask "can you describe for me your interactions with the functional teams in the organization?". Yeah, that seems like a squishy way of asking questions, but it allows the person being questioned to provide an answer free of initial or expected negativity. Instead of asking them to tell us what is wrong, we ask them what they do. In the process, they may more freely describe what is going wrong.

Another compelling answer to questions is silence. Yep. I've seen this many times, and silence means many things. It can mean "I'm thinking" or it can mean "I'm waiting to see if you will walk back that answer before I open my mouth." gauge the silence and don't be afraid to meet the silence with silence. It can often be used as a negotiating tactics. The marks are usually people who cannot get through the quiet and will start saying something, anything, to break the silence. Often, people who negotiate find that they settle for far less than they would if they were more focused on maintaining the silence.

Testers are, or should be, fundamentally curious. Even with that, asking questions is a skill, and it's one that can be developed. I see that studying up on qualitative research is in my future :).

On Community, or "Building Your Perfect Beast"

This is going to come across as perhaps a bit scatter-shot, because it contains thoughts that address a lot of things that I am involved in. Each of these could be addressed in a number of different places, and in time will very likely be addressed there, but for right now, today, I am going to separate my various public personas and address this as just me, right now, In my own sphere. What you are reading right now has both nothing to do and everything to do with the Association for Software Testing, the Miagi-do School of Software Testing, Weekend Testing Americas, the Bay Area Software Testing Meetup group, and the freelance entity that is TESTHEAD. For right now, I am addressing this as me and only me. The remarks that follow are not necessarily representative of any of those other initiatives and the other people involved in them.

One of the key messages I received loud and clear about the world of software testing and those who are involved in it is that there is a bit of an identity crisis happening. The world of software development is changing. Long standing biases, beliefs and processes are being disrupted regularly. Things that worked for years are not working so well any longer. Business models are being upended. The rules of the game and the very game itself is being re-written, and many people are waiting to be shown the way.

One of the things I have witnessed time and time again is that there is no end of people happy to consume materials created. I'm very much one of those people, and I enjoy doing so. However, at some point, there comes to be a space where there is a limit to what can be consumed and a void as to what is there. Something is lacking, and a need that is not being fulfilled. It's very easy to ask that someone fill that need, and complain when that person or group does not do so. I remember very well being called to task about this very thing. Back in 2010, I lamented that no one had brought Weekend testing to the Americas, that I had to attend sessions hosted in India, Europe and Australia, often either late at night or early in the morning for me. Joe Strazzere set me straight very quickly when he said (I'm paraphrasing):

"Perhaps it's because no one in the USA values it enough to make it happen. YOU obviously don't value it enough either. If you did, you would have already made it happen!"

That was a slap, but it was an astute and accurate slap. I was lamenting the fact that something I wanted to consume wasn't readily available for me in a way that I wanted to have it. I was waiting for someone else to create it, so I could come along and feed at the counter. Instead, I realized someone had to prepare the food, and since I wanted to eat it, I might as well prepare it, too. The rest, as they say, is history, and to be continued.

I want to make a suggestion to those out there who see a need, an empty space, an unfulfilled yearning for something that you have identified... is there any reason why you are not doing something to bring it to life? Are you waiting for someone else to give you permission? Are you afraid your idea may be laughed at or criticized? If you are a software tester, are you suffering from the malady that you see a problem for every solution? If so, I want to assure you that I understand completely, as I have been there and find myself in that position frequently. Perhaps you feel that you are alone in your frustration, that you are the only one who finds it frustrating that something you care about is not being addressed. While I was at STP-CON, and during Kate Falanga's session, we discussed the three layers of engagement and change/influence. The first layer is ourselves, the second is our team or organization, and the third is the broader community. There's a very good chance that any void you are seeing, any initiative that you hope to see championed, has many who likewise want to see a champion emerge.

My advice to all out there is to stop waiting for someone else to Build the Perfect Beast, and instead, start building your own. Once you start, it's a good bet others will want to get involved as well. No one wanted to do Weekend Testing in the Americas until I was willing to throw my hat in the ring. In short order, others decided they wanted to get involved as well. Some have come and gone, but we are still here and many have helped us solidify what we do. Our Beast is not yet perfect, but it's getting there, and we've learned much along the way. Same goes for every other organization I am involved in. Major movements do not happen by timidly waiting for someone else to take the lead, and they don't come about by asking for permission to do them, either. If you see a need that is not being met, try to create something that will meet that need, even if you have to do it alone at first. My guess is, over time, others will see what you are doing and want to be part of it, too. Do be warned, though, the desire to create is addicting, and you could find yourself a bit over-extended. On the other hand, you may be having too much fun to care :).

Communications and Breakfast: An Amusing Cultural Moment

Last week, my family had the pleasure to host three girls from Narita, Japan, as part of our sister city cultural exchange program. We first took part in this exchange in 2013, when our older daughter was selected to be part of our city's delegation to go to Japan. Delegates families are encouraged to host the delegates coming from Japan, and we did that two years ago. We greatly enjoyed the experience, so when it came time for our youngest daughter to see if she could participate, we of course said yes, and thus, we welcomed three young women a long way from their homes into our home.

These girls did not know each other well prior to this trip. Unlike our city, which has one Intermediate school within its city limits, Narita has several schools represented, and the delegates chosen typically do not have hosting assignments with students from their school. Therefore, it was not just a learning experience for the girls to relate to us, but to each other.

On Friday, as I was getting ready to take my eldest daughter to her school, one of the girls came downstairs with some prepackaged single serving rice packets. She motioned to me in the English that she could that she wanted to cook the rice. I figured "OK, sure, I'd be happy to do that for you", and did so. After it was cooked, I opened the small container, put it in a bowl, and then asked her if she wanted a fork or chop sticks. She looked at me quizzically for a moment, and then she said "chop sticks". I handed her the chop sticks, and figured "OK, the girls want to have rice as part of their breakfast. No problem." I then lined up the other packets, explained to Christina how to cook them in the microwave (40 seconds seems fine with our power microwave), and then went to take my daughter to school. The rest of this story comes courtesy of texts and after the fact revelation ;).

While I was out and Christina was helping get the rest of the packets of rice prepared, she pulled out a few bowls and put the rice in the bowls, with a few more chop sticks and placed them on the table for the girls. The young lady who had come down to make the request then said "no, this is for you". Christina smiled, said thank you, and then started to eat the rice from one of the bowls. What she noticed after a few bits was that the girl was staring at her, frozen in place, and looking very concerned. At this point, Christina stopped, put down the bowl, and asked if everything was OK. Our Japanese exchange student tried to grasp for the words to explain what she wanted to say, and as this was happening, another of the exchange students, who was much more fluent in English, saw what was happening.

"Oh, this rice is for a breakfast dish we planned to make for you. Each of the packages has enough rice to make one Onigiri (which is to say, rice ball, a popular food item in Japan). At this, Christina realized what had happened, and texted me what she did. She felt mortified, but I assured her it was OK, and I'd happily split mine with her to make up for it. With that, we were able to work out the details of what they wanted and needed from us so that they could make the Onigiri for us (which they did, and which was delicious, I might add!).

I smiled a little bit at this because I have felt this situation a few times in my career, although it wasn't trying to communicate from English to Japanese and back. Instead, I've had moment like this where I've had to explain software testing concepts to programmers or others in the organization, and they have tried to explain their processes to me. It's very likely that I may have had more than a few moments of my own where I must have stood there, paralyzed and watching things happen, where I wanted to say "no, stop, don't do that, I need to explain more" but felt like the world was whizzing past me. As my wife explained the situation, i couldn't help but feel for both of them. Fortunately, in this case, all it meant was one fewer rice balls. In programming and testing, these mis-communications or mis-understandings are often where things can go ridiculously sideways, albeit usually not in an amusing way. The Larsen Onigiri Incident, I'm sure, will become a story of humor on both sides of the Pacific for the participants. It's a good reminder to make sure, up front, that I understand what others in my organization are thinking before we start doing.

The Case for "Just a Little More" Documentation

The following comment was posted to Twitter yesterday by Aaron Hodder, and I felt compelled not just to retweet it, but to write a follow up about it.

The tweet:

"People that conflate being anti wasteful documentation with anti documentation frustrate me."

I think this is an important area for us to talk about. This is where the pendulum, I believe has swing too far in both directions during my career. I remember very well the 1990s, and having to use ISO-9001 standards for writing test plans. For those not familiar with this approach, the idea was that you had a functional specification, and that functional specification had an accompanying test plan. In most cases, that test plan mapped exactly to that functional specification. We often referred to this as "the sideways spec”. That was a joking term we used to basically say "we took the spec, and we added words like confirm or verify to each statement." If you think I'm kidding, I assure you I'm not. It wasn't exactly that way, but it was very close. I remember all too well writing a number of detailed test plans, trying to be as specific as possible, only to have it turned back to me with "it's not detailed enough." When I finally figured out what they really meant was "just copy the spec”, I dutifully followed. It made my employers happy, but it did not result in better testing. In fact, I think it's safe to say it resulted in worse testing, because we rarely followed what we had written. Qe did what we felt we had to do with the time that we had, and the document existed to cover our butts.

Fast forward now a couple of decades, and we are in the midst of the "Agile age”. In this Agile world, we believe in not providing lots of "needless documentation”. In many environments, this translates to "no documentation" or "no spec” outside of what appears on the Kanban board or Scrum tracker. A lot is left to the imagination. As a tester, this can be a good thing. It allows me the ability to open up different aspects, and go in directions that are not specifically scripted. That's the good part.

The bad part is, because there's sparse documentation, we don't necessarily explore all the potential avenues because we just don’t know what they are. Often, I create my own checklists and add ideas of where I looked, and in the past I’ve received replies like “You're putting too much in here, you don't need to do that, this is overkill." I think it's important for us to differentiate between not overthinking and over planning, and making sure that we are giving enough information and providing enough details to be successful. It's never going to be perfect. The idea is that we communicate, we talk, we don't just throw documents at each other.  We have to make sure that we have communicated enough, and that we really do understand what needs to happen.

I'm a fan of the “Three Amigos” model. Early in the story, preferably at the very beginning, three people come together; the product owner, the programmer and the tester. That is where these details can be discussed and hammered out. I do not expect a full spec or implementation at this point, but it is important that everybody that comes to this meeting share their concerns, considerations and questions. There's a good chance we still might miss a number of things, because we didn't take the time here to talk out what could happen. Is it possible to overdo it? Perhaps, if we're getting bogged down in minutia and details, but I don't think it is a bad thing to press for real questions such as “Where is this product going to be used? What are the permutations that we need to consider? What subsystems might this also affect?" If we don't have the answer right then and there, we still have the ability to say “Oh, yeah that's important. Let's make sure that we document that.”

There's no question, I prefer this more nimble and agile method of developing software to yesteryear. I would really rather not go back to what I had to do in the 90s. However, even in our trying to be lean, and in our quest for a minimal viable products, let’s be sure we are also communicating effectively about what our products need to be doing. My guess is, the overall quality of what comes out the other end will be much better for the effort.

Taming Your E-Mail Dragon

Over on Uncharted Waters, I wrote a post about out of control E-mail titled "Is Your Killer App Killing You?" If that may be a bit too much hyperbole, there is no question that E-mail can be exhausting, demoralizing, and just really hard to manage.

One area that I think is really needed, and would make E-mail much more effective, is some way to extend messages to automatically start new processes. Some of this can be done at a fairly simple level. Most of the time, though, what ends up happening is that I get an email, or a string of emails, I copy the relevant details, and then I paste them somewhere else (calendar, a wiki, some document, Slack, a blog post, etc.). What is missing, and what I think would be extremely helpful, would be to have ways to register key applications with your email provider, whoever it may be, and then have key commands or right click options that would let you take that message, choose what you want to do with it, and then move to that next action.

Some examples... if you get a message and someone writes that they'd like to get together at 3:00 p.m., having the ability to right there schedule an appointment and lock the details of the message in place seems like it would be simple (note the choice of words, I said it seems it would be simple, I'm not saying it would be easy ;) ). If a message includes a dollar amount, it would be awesome to be able to right click or key command so that I could record the transaction in my financial software or create an invoice (either would be legitimate choices, I'd think).

Another option that I didn't mention in the original piece, but that I have found to be somewhat helpful, is to utilize tools that will allow you to aggregate messages that you can review later. For me, there are three levels of email detail that I find myself dealing with.

1. E-mail I genuinely could not care any less about, but doesn't rise to the level of outright SPAM.

I am unsentimental. Lots of stuff from sites I use regularly comes to my inbox and I genuinely do not want to see it. My general habit is to delete it without even opening it. If you find yourself doing this over and over again, just unsubscribe and be done with it. If the site in question doesn't give you a clear option for that, then make rules that will delete those messages so you don't have to. So far, I've yet to find myself saying "aww, man, I really wish I'd seen that offer that I missed, even though I deleted the previous two hundred that landed in my inbox. Cut them loose and free your mind. It's easy :).

2. Emails with a personal connection that matter enough for me to review and consider them, but I may well not actually do anything with them. Still much of the time, I probably will.

These are the messages I let drop into my inbox, usually to be subject to various filter rules and to get sorted into the buckets I want to deal with, but I want to see them and not let them sit around.

3. That stuff that falls between #1 and #2.

For these messages, I am currently using an app called Unroll.me. It's a pretty basic tool in that it creates a folder in my IMAP (called Unroll.Me), and any email that I have decided to "roll up" and look at later goes into this app, and this folder. There's some other features that the app offers, such as Unsubscribing (if the API of the service is set up to do that), include in the roll up, or leave in your Inbox. Each day, I get a message that tells me what has landed in my roll up, and I can review each of them at that point in time.

I will note that this is not a perfect solution. The Unsubscribe works quite well, and the push to Inbox also has no problems. It's the Roll up step that requires a slight change in thinking. If you have hundreds of messages each day landing into the roll up, IMO, you're doing it wrong. The problem with having the roll up collect too many messages is that it becomes easy to put off, or deal with another day, which causes the back log to grow ever larger, and in this case, out of sight definitely means out of mind. To get the best benefit, I'd suggest a daily read and a weekly manage, where you can decide which items should be unsubscribed, which should remain in the roll up, and which should just go straight to your inbox.

In any event, I know that E-mail can suck the joy out of a person, and frankly, that's just no way to live. If you find yourself buried in E-mail, check out the Uncharted Waters article, give Unroll.me a try, or better yet, sound off below with what you use to manage the beast that is out of control email. As I said in the original Uncharted Waters post, I am genuinely interested in ways to tame this monster, so let me know what you do.

All or Nothing, or Why Ask Then?

This is a bit of a rant, and I apologize for people who are going to read this and wonder what I am getting on about. Since I try to tie everything to software testing at some point and in some way, hopefully, this will be worth your time.

I have a drug/convenience store near my place of work. I go here semi-regularly to pick up things that I need or just plain want. I'm cyclical when it comes to certain things, but one of my regular purchases is chewing gum. It helps me blunt hunger, and it helps me get into flow when I write, code or test. I also tend to pick up little things here and there because the store is less than 100 steps from my desk. As is often the case, I get certain deals. I also get asked to take surveys on their site. I do these from time to time because, hey, why not? Maybe my suggestions will help them.

Today, as I was walking out the door, I was given my receipt and the cashier posted the following on it.

Really, I get why they do this. If they can't score a five, then it doesn't matter. You weren't happy, end of story. Still, I can't help but look at this as a form of emotional blackmail. It screams "we need to have you give us a five for everything, so please score us a five!" Hey, if I can do so, I will, but what if you were just shy of a five? What if I was in a hurry, and there was just a few too many people in the store? The experience was a true four, but hey, it was still pretty great. Now that experience is going to count for nothing. Does this encourage me to give more fives? No. What it does is tell me "I no longer have any interest in giving feedback", because unless it is something that says "Yay, we're great!" then it's considered worthless. It's a way to collect kudos, and it discounts all other experiences.

As a software tester, I have often faced this attitude. We tend to be taught that bugs are absolute. If something isn't working right, then you need to file a bug. My question always comes down to "what does 'not working right' actually mean?" There are situations where the way a program behaves is not "perfect", but it's plenty "good enough" for what I need to do. Does it delight me in every way possible? No. Would a little tweak here and there be nice? Sure. By the logic above, either everything has to be 100% flawless (good luck with that), or the experience is fundamentally broken and a bug that needs to be addressed. The problem arises when we realize that "anything less than a five is a bug", and that means the vast majority of interactions with systems are bugs... does that make sense? Even if at a ridiculously overburdened fundamental level it is true, that means that the number of "bugs" in the system are so overwhelming that they will never get fixed. Additionally, if anything less than a five counts as zero, what faith do I have that areas I actually consider to be a one or a two, or even a zero, will actually be considered or addressed? The long term tester and cynic in me knows the answer; they won't be looked at.

To stores out there looking for honest feedback, begging for fives isn't going to get it. You will either get people who will post fives because they want to be nice, or they will avoid the survey entirely. Something tells me this is not the outcome you are after, if quality of experience is really what you want. Again, the cynic in me thinks this is just a way to put numbers to how many people feel you are awesome, and give little to no attention to the other 80% of responses. I hope I'm wrong.

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ETA: Michael Bolton points out below that I made a faulty assumption with my closing remark. It was meant as a quip, and not to be taken literally, but he's absolutely right. I anchored on the five, and it made me mentally consider an even distribution of the other four numbers. There absolutely is nothing that says that is the case, it's an assumption I jumped to specifically to make a point. Thanks for the comment, Michael :).