PNSQC 2020 Live Blog: TestOps with Jason Arbon

 First, this event is unique this go-around. Joe Colantonio is helping to host this event. Some of you may be familiar with Joe via Test Guild. Since the conference is virtual this time, having Joe help with running the event is a definite plus.

One of the changes this year is that they are using Slido to ask questions during the sessions. This will allow the presenters to answer the questions on the screen. There will also be virtual events happening during lunch. I intend to take part in one of those so expect me to see me doing so then :). Tomorrow, we will be recording an episode of "The Testing Show" from the "show floor". 

Philip Lew is starting the event. He is reminding us of some of the questions that came up back in January. What would this conference look like? Suffice it to say, nothing like what it looks like today. Still, we are making the best of the situation. One of the benefits of the conference being virtual is that speakers can take part from anywhere. One of the keynote speakers is presenting from Australia. We do not have the poster papers this time but there are many technical briefs that are being presented. 

Jason Arbon is the first keynote speaker. He is speaking about TestOps. The idea behind TestOps is to shake up the way that testing is being performed. It also allows for a way to have testing be present. Jason focuses on testing on a large scale and is currently with test.ai.

TestOps is the idea of operationalizing testing. the goal is to automate as many things, make as reliable as possible, and scale as much as possible. Testing is a unique area in that automation is often difficult. Tests can be flaky. Often, decisions focus on shipping even if the testing is not complete. Unit testing can't answer everything. Many areas are resistant to running end to end tests. Jason used the example of a car purchasing application that was frustrating to use. Its functionality was not working well. Yet, this application shipped as is and considered usable. It's likely that this application passed all internal unit tests. Still, a product can pass all tests and still be unusable. 

 Tests should be short-lived. They should focus on the simple rather than the complex. They should be capable of running fast. Consider we have ten tests that we have to perform and one of those tests is signing in. What if signing in is actually difficult to do because of security implementations? How do you test in parallel with one sign in? The answer is you drop sign-in as a necessary test and focus on other areas that don't need sign-in. Heresy, you say?  There may be other ways to do the same thing. There may be direct calls that can run via API. There may be individual authentical calls. Again, think simple where possible.

Maintaining attributes and states can be difficult. Avoid framework tweaks that may seem to be effective in the short term but become unreliable later on. Additionally, try to avoid the need to create an elaborate dashboard to display results. It seems counterintuitive but instead focuses on sending notifications if a specific problem is found. alert the right people at the right time in real-time.

 

Maintaining attributes and states can be difficult. Avoid framework tweaks. They may seem to be effective in the short term but become unreliable later on. Try to avoid the need to create an elaborate dashboard to display results. Focus on sending notifications for a specific problem. Alert the right people at the right time.

The more frequent the updates, the less likely complete testing will happen. It's tempting to think that eliminating testers is an answer. Instead, there needs to be a focus on good, robust end-to-end tests. Also, those tests need review and consideration by real testers. It's not enough for developers alone to do the testing. That's not to say that they can't do it but they need to focus on that testing as its own discipline.

Jason is a proponent of AI, which comes as no surprise considering test.ai and their focus. Frameworks and test applications have limitations that force hard-coded tests and methods. In a TestOps world, if the tests are not reliable, they will not execute. Many testers get thrown into automation without previous development experience. Putting a new developer into the space of automated testing can be a recipe for frustration. Not to say that new developers can't write tests. They can, and should, but it shouldn't be their first programming assignment. These tests need to be robust, they need to have the ability to be abstract, and they need to be adaptable. That will take some experience that the average tester does not yet have.

TestOps is happening, it's real, and it's not just an abstract goal. Test what you can, as cheaply and reliably as you can. This isn't abstract, it's a reality here and now and we will benefit if we adopt it.

Live Blogging for #PNSQC2020: Back in the Saddle Again

It has been far too long since I've had a chance to get in and do a live blogging session of an event. Usually, that is one of the ways that I take notes and focus on the conferences that I attend. This year has been different. I haven't attended any conferences or online events beyond hour-long meetups. I've also felt less motivated this go around because 2020 has not been a very inspiring year. Not in ways that I have felt positive about. I realize there is no learning without getting out there. There is no growth or development without discomfort, determined focus. and discipline. Thus, I'm climbing back into a favored role.

This year, the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference is a virtual event. I'm in my home office waiting for a Zoom meeting to begin. I've helped develop the conference content as a reviewer of papers and presentations. This is a role I have participated in for many of the past ten years (my first time attending PNSQC was in 2010). Even when I couldn't attend the conference, I've still assisted in the paper review process. I have had more direct involvement with this conference than any other over the past decade. Much of the fun is direct interaction with other conference attendees and volunteers. There are many people I look forward to seeing at this conference. To not have that level of interaction is frustrating. I am certain I'm not the only one to feel that way.


Still, I plan to make the best of it and use this as a means to break the funk I've been feeling about blogging. If nothing else, this gives me a great reason to reflect. It also allows me to think, contemplate ideas in real-time, and capture them to look back on later.


If you've enjoyed these missives in previous years, I hope you will join me over the next couple of days.

Bring Some Color to Your bash Shell Output

I'm not sure if this is something anyone will find valuable but it's been a neat little addition to my scripting as of late.

For those who have used Cucumber in the past for BDD, one of the visible elements is of course there paradigm of green, yellow and red text that appears for a variety of things in your output on the screen. This division also helps me quickly monitor if something seems out of place or if a command I expect to run completes correctly or not. as I do a lot with shell scripts, I decided to do some research and see if I could add a bit of that green, yellow, red (and for some variety I even added blue to the mix). Here's how you can do that.

First, the echo command allows for ANSI escape codes to be called and change the color of text. To do this, you first call echo with the '-e' flag and then for the word or words you want to highlight with a different color. You can see a list of ANSI escape codes and colors here. For my purposes, here's an example of a set of codes I keep is a shared shell library:

RED="\033[31m"
GREEN="\033[32m"
YELLOW="\033[33m"
BLUE="\033[34m"
RESET="\033[0m"

In practice, any time you use an echo -e statement, you can determine if the output you see is normal/expected, if it's an error, if it's a possible warning that doesn't rise to the level of an error, or if you want to display some information that fits some other purpose. Also, once you set a color, that color will remain in place unless you reset back to the default color option.

In practice it looks like this:

if [ $# -lt 5 ] ; then
   echo -e "${RED}Usage: $0 [CUSTOMER] [DUNS] [VERSION] [TEST_TYPE] [filename] ${RESET}"
    exit 1
fi

if [[ "${TEST_TYPE}" = "ZIP" ]] ; then

echo -e "${GREEN}Creating an initial ZIP archive${RESET}"

/c/Program\ Files/7-Zip/7z.exe a -r ./archive-test.zip 001-EmptyFile.txt

fi

Note that the plain text is the output of the command itself, the green text is my own message text to alert me that everything is running as expected or to see if something isn't working how I want to.

For each echo statement or set of statements you want to print out, you can set the color with an escape code, and then you can have that text be formatted as you see fit, anywhere from a single word to an entire line. You do need to end your statement with a RESET code to go back to regular output.

In any event, it's something I've found useful, I figured some of you might, too :).

Coming to PNSQC in October: Add Some Accessibility to Your Day

 First off... Hello again, Hello!

Where have I been? Many places and no place whatsoever. that seems to be the story of 2020 for many. I wanted to be inspiring. I wanted to write. I wanted to do a lot of things. Ultimately, I kept hoping each day would get better and there would be something more for me to discuss or focus on. I have a podcast I produce regularly, and we are back to two episodes a month. I've focused on a change to a new workgroup and a new focus. My eldest daughter is doing cosmetology school online and we are "office mates" in the sense that she is doing her classes in the family room just outside my office. Other than those, every day is pretty similar. I wake up, I work, I doa few things, I stay close to home, I keep my interactions with others to a distant minimum. Rinse and repeat.

Regardless, one doesn't change something if they just sit still and tread water, so let's break this quiet period and get back into the swing of things. What better way to do that than some good old fashioned shameless self-promotion ;)?

I will be giving a workshop at the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference on October 14, 2020. This conference, due to the changes in gathering and groups in close proximity, is going to be virtual. I will confess, I'm a little anxious about this because I'm used to workshops having a give and take and me communicating with people directly. How much of this will we be able to do remains to be seen. Nevertheless, I am happy to take on the challenge.

My workshop will be titled "Add Some Accessibility to Your Day" and it is a beginner-friendly approach to looking at and focusing on real Accessibility testing that people can do every day with a handful of tools, a focus on looking at a variety of scenarios and a site that will allow us to look at Before and After examples of Accessibility features present and absent. Also, this year, the workshops are included in the price of the conference, ab=nd the conference is considerably less expensive due to the virtual format. 

The trailer for the workshop can be seen here:

Also, another thing to mention... I have launched the TESTHEAD YouTube channel. At the moment, this video is it but there will be more to come in the coming days and weeks. Please feel free to Like and Subscribe and all that :).

The Case for Juicing and Using Everything

This is going to seem like a left-field post. The reason? It is :).

For those who are not aware, I am fairly active on a site called Quora. Admittedly, I have a few software testing questions I have answered but most of my conversations tend to revolve around music, fitness, snow sports, and nutrition. Thus today, I had a chance to answer a question related to something I do on a regular basis, which is "juicing".

For context, here's the original question:

Do smoothies kill the nutrients of fruit and Veg because it’s blended?

My answer actually goes a bit outside of what was asked but in this time of economic uncertainty, shelter at home orders, fears of viral contagion, and a desire to get some nutritional and possible immune system boost (caveat: I make no such claims that what I will suggest will necessarily do that but I do use it as an overall "healthy" approach to eating) as well as a desire to minimize food waste, I figured it was worth elaborating a little.

Thus to expand on that, I thought I'd talk a bit more at length about the things I do, how you might be able to incorporate them into your daily routine, and why I think it's valuable and ultimately a better use of food items in the long run.

For starters, I have a masticating juicer. It works by pressing foods into a spinning set of prongs/teeth that shred up the food items into fine particles and through a fine mesh screen with centrifugal/centripetal forces applied separate out the liquid and finer particulate components into a juice. The remaining larger pieces of fruit/vegetable pulp are hurled back into a receptacle where it fills and needs to be emptied from time to time. Many people discard this pulp. My main part of this post is to encourage people to not do that. It is possible to use this pulp in a variety of ways.

Let's talk about the juices I most commonly make. I typically order, in normal times, large quantities of apples, pears, carrots, parsnips, radishes, spinach leaves, collard greens, kale leaves, cabbage leaves, and ginger. The availability of each varies by time of year but again, in normal times, I have been able to get most of these frequently in large enough batches to make one or two liters of each juice at any given time. I pour these juices into mason jar bottles and I grab one or two of these every day to snack on, typically unfiltered and some of that pulpy goodness awash in the juice (yum!).

What is often not addressed is what is left over after this process is done, which can be several pounds of the pulp of fruit and vegetables. Depending on what you are juicing, this pulp can be easy to use or it can be challenging to use. It depends a lot on the care you take to prep what you are going to juice. Carrot pulp is easily usable in other things. Shredded ginger is a little trickier but still usable. Apple and pair pulp are easily used to make jams, jellies, and fruit butter provided you've taken care to remove the seeds and woodier parts that appear from time to time.

Here are some easy examples of how I get some extra mileage out of foods that the typical juicer might discard.

* when you juice apples or pears, take the cores out first so that you capture the seeds in the core. take those cores and put them in water and boil them down. What you get is rich pectin you can mix into the cleaner pulp after juicing that is excellent for helping to set up jams, jellies, and fruit butter. The fruit pulp itself can also be boiled down and strained through a food mill to get the consistency you want for its intended destination. I like to use these as fillings for pancakes and crepes as well.

* carrot pulp is easy to use and mix into making things like carrot cake, carrot muffins, and as an additional binder for expanding ground beef in meatloaf if that's your thing. It also blends greatly with shredded onions and the pulp from celery juice to make a mirepoix that literally disappears into the dish but contains all of the flavors.

* greens of many stripes make for a finely shredded leaf after juicing. These leaves are great for mixing in with eggs to make both omelets and a Korean style of vegetable pancake base. They can also be cooked in water and blended up with an immersion blender to make for a flavorful soup base.

* sweet potatoes make for an interesting juice component that I often mix with other vegetable juices to cut their "earthy" taste. The leftover fiber makes for a great filling for dumplings and you can make a variation of latkes with the pulp as well.

* one of my favorite items to juice, also to help with cutting the strong earthy flavor of green juices, is ginger. Ginger is a challenge to peel and often you lose a lot of the ginger in the peeling process. To that end, what I do is I boil the ginger first to soften it, then I run it through the juicer to capture the first and strongest batch of juice. I filter that first pass of juice through cheesecloth and the leftover particulates I skim off and boil with lemon juice to make a high acid paste that I can then bottle and keep shelf-stable for up to 18 months. It makes for a great addition to Asian-style stir fry dishes :). The leftover pulp I then put into four cups of water and boil down again until I get a fairly viscous liquid. I put that into another layer of cheesecloth or a jelly bag and let the liquid strain. That remainder liquid makes for a  magnificent base to make ginger beer/ginger tonic if so inclined. The last of the fiber I then discard, though I'm totally open to ideas as to how to use it :).

Both sets of my grandparents lived through the Great Depression and I heard a lot about that time from them as I was growing up. It colored their everyday lives all the way up until their deaths and all four of them had a similar philosophy when it came to doing anything with any resource. Treat it with care, use it to its maximum extent, and be creative wherever possible. A little poem I heard all the time from my maternal grandmother was:

"Use it up, wear it out. 
Make it work or do without"

These ideas, I hope, might be interesting to others and may, perhaps, help us to stretch our food dollars as far as possible and, most important to me, not waste what we buy. If you have a favorite way to use your leftover pulp from juicing, please feel free to leave a comment and tell me what you do with it.

OK, I'm At Home, All the Time. Now What?

As I have had the past few weeks to be at home full time, there is a definite difference between "working from home" and "sheltering at home". Even when I was working from home, I had the freedom to go out and do other things. Grab food someplace, sit in a Starbucks and work, drive out to band practice for a few hours each week. With Shelter at home policies in place, most of these outlets are not available at present.

I am practicing social distancing to the best of my ability. I have a protocol I use where I use chlorine bleach and towels to help me as I touch surfaces. I carry two zip lock bags that have towels sprayed with chlorine bleach and a handful of N95 masks that I use at different times. I use these when I need to go to the store, which has been a handful of times.

Some people are going to say "no big deal, I'll just order online." Not a bad idea, if you can get the items you want on time and what you want in the quantity you want them. that's not been a foregone conclusion these past four weeks. Several orders that I have made are still in process and of the items I have received, many have been rationed to only a few items per order. This is totally understandable considering the situation but it's a new reality for a lot of us. We are not used to having to wait in line and then to have limited supplies on hand.

The items that are less available are amusing and frustrating. I have yet to see toilet paper in any store I have been to in the past month. I have had trouble finding long-grain white rice, plain flour and I have yet to find any yeast in any store. Fortunately, a friend of mine had a large quantity of yeast she willingly split in half to share with me. I was also able to return the favor by giving her apple butter and apple jelly that I had processed and canned back in December. It has been nice to have it as a bartering currency :).

So what are some positives? Well, there have been a few. I am definitely doing a lot more from-scratch cooking. that's been made a little frustrating by the fact that my oven gave up the ghost last week (it needs to be fixed but for the time being I have a large toaster oven and a range of dutch ovens that I can put on the range if needed so I'm not totally out of options ;). Up until I received the yeast I was making several batches of Irish soda bread. Very good and hearty, lasts a good while, and leftovers, if you make a lot of it, can be frozen for later.

I am taking advantage of a variety of techniques to make basic food items to have on hand such as paneer and labneh from milk, exploring a variety of colonial recipes including a terrific "bread soup" that is exactly as it sounds; water, stale bread, and a hunk of cheddar cheese are all that is needed to make a rich and filling soup that is literally pure comfort food :).

I'm fortunate in the fact that I have a pair of dogs that need to be walked a couple of times a day so I do take them out but I make sure I steer well clear of anyone and walk them down and up my hill. That's my daily "venture outside" exercise as well as a bit of time tending to my backyard each day. to be honest, I could probably spend a little more time on this. It needs it. Additionally on an exercise front, as I have reported in the past I have a mini-trampoline in my office and that mini-trampoline is the foundation of my standing desk. I jump up and down on it a fair amount of the day and that also keeps me moving, gets me tired, and makes me feel a bit more accomplished at the end of each day.

If I'm being frank, I've spent the past few weekends sleeping more than I normally would. I want to say that that is a reflection of not going anywhere or doing any events but truth be told, each week is just exhausting at this stage. By having my partner Christina home with me all day, as well as my two daughters (granted, they are both adults) that changes the home dynamic from when it is just me at home. there's been a need to separate my work life and my home life a little more during this experience and communicating with my team has also required more cycles mentally to keep in touch and keep things moving. That takes a toll on a person and yes, sleep is needed. I have not felt bad about the need for more sleep and I would suggest if you feel like you need it, take it.

One thing that I have taken some additional comfort in over the past several weeks has been to go back and organize my workspace and home. My office itself has been reorganized and refactored multiple times as I am spending much more time in here. Why would I require and reorganize a room I already spend every day in? At least for me, each day is a chance to see if there's a better way to do something as compared to the day before.

An oddity that I have been coming to grips with when it comes to my own attitudes is I really dislike visible cables. It's a strange thing to obsess over, I agree. If I am in the moment of working on something, I do not mind having a few cables visible or needing to wire/rewire various things. However, after a little bit, that desire to have things more carefully placed just comes to the fore and I get into the rewiring habit and break everything down to figure out the optimal clean layout, or as close to optimal as I can get.

As I have been going around the house and organizing/ cleaning, I have to say that I am noticing a lot more items that I find myself saying "if I'm ever going to use this, wouldn't now bring that to the fore?" I think I have gone through the house and deliberately made sure I am using something or can make a compelling case for everything I currently have. I of course have some blind spots in this regard, especially out in my garage, as I have projects I have been pledging to get involved in for years and they are still well hidden behind cabinet doors and in boxes of boxes. That may well be a task to take on in the coming weeks but for the most part, it's still a place I have yet to want to tackle.

 Each day and week brings something new and it also causes me to have to think and adapt to a reality that is unsettling and foreign. All I can do is approach each day as a unique opportunity, do the things I hope to accomplish, and give it my best. That "best" varies, to be honest, and I think it's important to realize that, for many of us, it is going to vary for some time. Some of our tried and true systems will work for us and several will be found lacking. We all have different ways to cope with how we are dealing with these times and in that sense, I'd suggest one additional item and that's to check in on your friends and family, perhaps a little more often than you might in normal times. We, of course, care about each other's health and welfare but this is more of a personal "hey, are you OK?" kind of check-in. Some people are good about saying how they feel and putting it out there. Others not so much. It may seem like a little thing, but a phone call, text, or email and saying "hey, I hope you are doing OK" can make a huge difference to someone.

So in conclusion, know that being home full time is weird for many and this climate is weird even for those of us who are home all the time. Everything has been upended and there's little outside of our own spheres that we can control at this point. All we can do is do our best with the situation we have at hand. I wish you all well and "stay safe out there".

Some Advice for My New Working From Home Compatriots

It's strange to think that I have been working as a remote employee for two and a half years now (or close enough, officially since the end of October 2017). In those two and a half years, I had to make a number of adjustments and I had some painful and frustrating realizations during that time.

With the spread of COVID-19 and numerous Shelter-In-Place orders, many of my friends and colleagues are discovering what it is like to work from home full time. In fact, this may well be the single greatest experiment of its kind. Telework has long been championed by many and it has just as vocal detractors. Still, for many of us, it is a way of life. 

My engineering team, due to the high costs of real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area and decisions of our head office back east (or what was our head office at the time; our head office is now in the UK ;) ), was converted to being a 100% distributed team. For Socialtext (my core team until literally today for the past 7 1/2 years), this distributed attitude was built into the DNA of our company. When we were acquired, our new parent company tried to have us be more of an in-place/in-office team, but it never really took. Thus, when the decision to go full remote for our team was made, we were well able to deal with it. Now, our colleagues who are very used to office life and all it entails, are having to work remotely and all that entails.

Recently, we had a chat about some of the things that those of us who were veterans of the remote work world would suggest to our colleagues. As part of that, I figured some of my readers who are now in the same space might find this interesting/valuable. 

Disclaimer: some of what I am going to suggest is context-specific. I'm fortunate in that my children are grown, albeit two of them are in the house with us at this time (my son is sheltering in place down in Los Angeles and so far as we have been told/he's told us, he's doing alright). My advice may or may not be appropriate for those with younger children or other situations but I still hope my suggestions may be helpful.

1. You Used to Commute. Preserve That Time

Consider your former habits and your time that you would take to get door to door to work. You may consider the fact that you no longer have a commute to be a time saver. It certainly can be and if you are sure you will not be commuting again in the future, feel free to ignore this advice. Otherwise, determine what your average daily commute is and what your habits are/were around that time. Consider doing a virtual commute.

What I mean is, think about those things you did. Did you walk to a train? Did you drive? If so, what did you do from the time you left your home to the time you sat at your desk. Seriously consider how you used that time and try to duplicate it. For me, I used that time to listen to e-books or podcasts, or to read/work on various projects. That time is still important to me. While I do not always preserve that time, I do try my best to allow myself a "commute hour" or so in the morning and in the afternoon so I can keep that time. I have also literally rolled out of bed and started working. Some days I've logged off work and rolled right into bed. It's a real danger and an easy trap to fall into. Thus, I encourage you to give yourself some literal transition time.

2. Get Dressed For Work, At Least a Little

OK, I confess, I vary on this. I do dress each day but a lot of time I dress in workout clothes and stay in them. Other times, I will actually get up and "suit up" as though I was going across the country for a corporate face-to-face. Again, this helps to fight the "roll out of bed and go to work" attitude. Believe me, I've done that, a lot, and on the whole, it tends to feel a little depressing.

Your mileage may vary on this but seriously, I find that my attitude and my demeanor jump up considerably when I suit up for work. Again, suit up can mean getting into workout clothes, wearing what I'd wear for a meeting, or to really have some fun, embrace the whole #ReverseCasualFriday and really get dressed up. That can be a lot of fun, a little silly and yes, it can definitely punch up your mood, especially in a team meeting. This past Friday, I literally wore a Victorian frock coat, vest high collar shirt, silk cravat, and a derby hat. Silly? Maybe. Did I feel great? Absolutely :).

3. Try to Keep to a Set Schedule, if You Can

The promise of telework is also its biggest danger. Remote work is often touted as "I can work anywhere at any time" and that is often true. Just as often, that can morph into "I will work everywhere, all the time". Have I done this? I most certainly have. That's why I'm strongly suggesting to keep it in check.

I get it, deadlines happen, there are crunch times, situations may call for being flexible. Still, it's easier to deal with those on a case by case basis than it is to get into a habit of being always on and then realizing you need to scale back. If you worked specific hours before, again, try to keep to them as much as possible. If the team as a whole decides to make some modifications, that's OK, but make sure you aren't all falling into the same time trap. Remember, for many of you, you will be returning back to an office at some point and it can be difficult to then have to pull back from an arrangement that just sort of happened due to circumstances. This goes double for if you have younger children that you have to take care of now for an extended period... and on that note...

4. Set Office Hours and Regularly Scheduled Breaks. Post Them for Your Family

Getting everyone on the same page is going to be a challenge, especially in this arrangement currently. It may not be realistic to work a full eight hour day and say to everyone, "Hey, imagine I'm not here." That doesn't work very well with young kids and shelter-in-place orders, especially if they are trying to do school work and have other needs. Your schedule will need to be flexible but to that end, if you can, try to establish key blocks where you can say "during these times, I need to be focused".

I find it best to schedule these in two-hour increments at the most. From there, it may be necessary to take an hour to handle family stuff, cook meals, a shift towards helping with school work, or any number of other necessary things that don't coincide with a full workday. Schedule those shift times, and then schedule those focus times as well. Again, my kids are all adults now, so this is easier now than it was a few years ago. Still, if you can do it, try it out. 

I've found that these tweaks can save your sanity and overall physical health as well. If you have the ability to take a short walk in a way that observes shelter-in-place guidelines, do so. Take some time to exercise, listen to music, go into an area outside if possible and breathe a little bit. Whether or not this is a temporary situation or perhaps a more permanent part of your reality, I encourage you to take some time and set parameters so that your work life and your personal life have some separation, even in this time where it all to easily can blur into one. In any event, this is coming from someone who has fallen short on all of the accounts above at one point or another, hence why I suggest these; I have failed so you don't have to ;).

New Title, Same Gig?

Well, today threw me for a bit of a loop.

Why, might you ask?

Today I received a new title. For the first time in my software testing career, it can be argued how much of my role as a tester is left. For the past almost thirty years my job titles have been some variation of the following (I'm going to say since 1994 as from 1991-1994, I was a Network Lab Administrator and an Engineering Tech):

Software Tester
Development Test Engineer
Quality Assurance Engineer
Applications Engineer (Basically a Customer Test Engineer)
Senior Quality Assurance Engineer

So what's different today? As part of my review I was asked if I would accept a new job title:

Senior Automation Engineer

I said "yes" but I will confess, a part of me is curious as to what that acceptance means going forward? Actually, I don't have to guess too much, I know, as I've been part of this conversation for a number of years leading up to this.

What this means is that I agree to be spending the lions share of my day inside of an IDE.
What this means is I agree to create code that will be reviewed and put into daily use.
What this means is I agree to step into a development role and all that that entails.
Additional to all of this, I also agreed to transition onto another team, outside of the one I have worked with for the past seven years.

Yep, I have a mixture of emotions today.

Am I ready for this? I'd like to say I think so.
Do I want to do this? As a matter of fact, yes.
Do I know enough to do this? That remains to be seen, probably not completely.
Am I comfortable with this change? Ah, now we get to the heart of the matter.

See, in large part, I'm not comfortable with this change. I'm having to put down a large part of my identity that I have fostered over the past decade. The titles and pronouns I've become so used to are at once still relevant and now totally irrelevant. A part of me is anxious, a little scared, a little concerned I may be biting off more than I can chew, especially with that Senior part. That means I'm supposed to mentor juniors. As a developer. I will confess that part feels really weird.

And yes, even though I am not necessarily comfortable, I'm excited to do this. The expectation has changed. The primary focus of my efforts has, too. In part, I was singled out as, "that person that always champions trying new avenues, looking at things in unorthodox ways, and not settling for how things have always been done." Really? They paid attention to that? I guess so. They also paid attention to my frequent frustrations that real-life testing needs often trumped my ability to make much headway in the automation space because other needs were prioritized first. They listened. They decided to let other people handle those aspects so I could better focus on coding effectively.

Have I mentioned I'm not even going to be doing this in a language and toolset I'm used to? Yeah, let me touch on that for a second. I've been a Mac focused tester and programmer for 10 years now. I've used Ruby, Java, Perl, and Python to an extent in those years. Today I'm sitting behind a relatively new Windows 10 laptop running .NET Core, Visual Studio and wrapping my head around C# patterns. Surprisingly, I'm not running for the hills. It's different but it's not fundamentally so. Sure, there's some tooling and practices I have to come to grips with, as the last time I spent any real-time with a .NET application of any kind was 2010. It's all so very weird, like I'm having to speak Dorian Greek... but at least I feel like I'm coming from Ionian Greek rather than from, say, Japanese (weird comparisons but hey, welcome to my brain today ;) ).

Long story short, I just signed up to have my world rocked and I am strangely OK with it.

Happy 10th Birthday, TESTHEAD

Granted, I realize that I have been a bit quiet here (I feel like I apologize for that more than I should but yes, I intend to do something about that :) ). Regardless, let's have a little bit of fun and reflect on a post I made 10 years ago today:

OK, why the need for a blog like this? Well, truth be told, I don’t know that there really is a “need” for this blog, but I’m doing this as a challenge to myself. I consider this an opportunity to “give back” to a community that has helped me over the course of many years, as I have been the beneficiary of many great insights and learned a lot from a number of people and sources over nearly two decades.

Wow, I really had no idea that, when I first took this process on, that I would be doing it still 10 years later. I am happy to still be doing it and I am happy for the opportunities it has provided me since I first started doing it.

First off, professionally, I am a Tester. It's been what I've done in one way, shape or form for most of my career. As such, I am strangely drawn to the fine art of "breaking things on purpose" and then trying to find ways to improve the process so that they do not break again.

Being a Tester requires a bit of many disciplines. Saying "I like to test things" really isn't enough. A good Tester needs to have some understanding of the Software Development Cycle. This means that, to really be good at what they do, they need to "embrace the code", and I'll be the first to say I've had my fair share of ups and downs with that. They also need to have some skills with troubleshooting systems and finding solutions to issues. They need to be able to communicate to a broad group of people as to what they are doing, and ultimately, they need to be a part of the solution to the issue whenever possible. It's in the spirit of those areas I hope to contribute something here.

Oh, that is soooo CUTE!!! this should be an indication of just how much I thought I knew then and really didn't. Software testing has changed a bit since these days and I can see in myself slightly false confidence and a bit of Imposter Syndrome. Still, I wanted to roll up my sleeves and contribute and to that end, my motives were indeed pure.

Most of all, this will be a site where I share my own experiences, both good and bad, and what I've learned from them. Expect there to be talk about tools, both proprietary and open source. Expect some talk about test case design (and how I so hate to do it at times). Expect to hear me vent about some frustrations at times, because like all people, I have my share of frustrations when things don't seem to work correctly or go the way that I planned them to. Expect me to share ideas on testing that don't divulge too much of what I do at my day job... much as I find what I do interesting, chances are there's not much anyone who is not in my particular niche market (software applications for the Legal industry) will be able to use outside of that area, but if I come across a cool concept or a neat way to do something, I'll definitely put a more generic example of it here. Most of all, expect to get a real person's perspective on these things and an attempt to communicate them in plain English, whenever I possibly can.

Well, to that end, I would say that, while a lot has changed, quite a bit has stayed the same as well. seriously, though, this blog was a jumping-off point for a lot of things. this blog first got me involved with the Miagi-do school of Software testing, which led me to get involved with the Association for software testing to take classes and then to teach them. I took my early blogging skills and was able to become one of the collaborators on a book called 'How to Reduce The Cost of Software Testing". In that process, I began editing, then commenting on, then co-hosting a variety of podcasts over the past decade. I was invited to attend my first testing conference in 2010 (the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference) in which I interviewed individuals for podcast segments). From there, I started speaking at Software testing and Software Development conferences, some of which have brought me as far from home as Malmo, Sweden, Dublin, Ireland, and Pottsdam, Germany. I was given the chance to serve on the Board of Directors for the Association for Software Testing, as well as serve as its president for a year. In my work life, I went from being "just a tester" to being a build manager and release manager as well as developing a focus and advocacy for accessibility and Inclusive Design. I also had the opportunity to help develop initiatives in Weekend Testing and in the Bay Area Software Testers meetup. 

As of late, I will confess the blog posts have been more sporadic, in part because, frankly, ten years is a lot of writing and there's an awful lot of articles on this site, so much that I can feel as though I am merely repeating myself. Still, I know very well that waiting for the next big amazing thing that nobody has ever heard of before rarely happens. Best I can do is really try to embrace that last sentence of that first post and know that, if I want to see this blog thrive into a second decade, I'm going to have to get back to doing what I may not necessarily do best. I vowed that this would be a site where I would learn in public. I was very eager and willing to do that a decade ago? I'm going to do my level best to keep that going forward. Here's hoping you all join me going into my awkward tween years and beyond :).

Closing out a Decade of TESTHEAD (Almost :) )

I realized as I started this post today that it has been a while since I've posted anything. Part of that is the fact that I have been spending the past several weeks involved in two things that are little related to testing.

The first is that my daughter came home from her mission in Sao Paulo, Brazil and I have been spending as much time as possible getting to hear from her and all that she experienced for the 18 months that she was there. It's a challenging thing to encourage your daughter to go halfway around the world for a year and a half, with limited communication, and to give of herself totally to acts of service. I frequently told her I would be interested in seeing the person she was when she came back. Fluent in Portuguese, yes, but much more fluent in many things, including empathy, steadfastness, courage, determination, and drive to do things that matter. This Dad is happy to have her back and happy to see who she has grown into. Still, his little girl and yet not at the same time.

These past two months have also seen me diving into something that has consumed my weekends completely and that is The Great Dickens Christmas Faire in San Francisco. This is an interesting event in that it is filled with shops, performers, and other aspects that encourage you to feel like you are in London in 1843 (the time setting for Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol"). This has been an event I've participated in as a patron for many years, have cosplayed for, and have longed to get in on the action. This year, I was able to do that thanks to the kind folks at "The Paddy West School of Seamanship" where we produce "The Best Seamen In London" ;). I was able to sing with them, work with the school, participate in setup and teardown, and a quality control process for character development and immersion that would be an excellent broader story for a testing blog. More on that another time but suffice it to say that it takes a lot out of a person when they have to give up weekends entirely for two months. Catch up time is non-existent. you have to do things in the here and now when they first strike you or they just don't get done. This blog, for instance :/.

On an oft-talked about areas of this blog that I didn't talk about this year was a decision I made at the beginning of the year. As I had to move to new health insurance and a new framework for it, I decided to try something I hadn't in a while. I decide to go off of Concerta. For those wondering, Concerta is a medication used to help with symptoms of ADHD. After several years of being on it (and actually, the longest continuous period of my life being on ADHD medication) I decided I wanted to try a year without it, just to see if the differences were as pronounced or if I was still in need of it. I'm not 100% convinced I need it to function but I'm also not 100% convinced I do not need to have it. As I had said in previous posts, Concerta doesn't fix ADHD, it just mellows out the pendulum swings. This year, I dealt with a few more pendulum swings but on the whole, I still felt pretty good. For the near term, I'm sticking with my decision to not be taking them, at least a little bit longer. As of right now, I am taking zero medications for anything and I really want to enjoy that.

Closing out the decade, I have been with Socialtext/PeopleFluent/LTG now for seven years. This makes Socialtext my second-longest tenured job in my working career (Cisco Systems still holds the top spot at ten years). It's been an interesting adjustment this year as I've given up my MacBookPro to go back to working on a PC. I'm also spending time learning about C# and .NET Core as well as Visual Studio and interacting with code in that environment after a decade away. It's been interesting, to say the least.

I've also enjoyed the experiences of writing about and working with a variety of publishers regarding various software testing topics. I also want to say thank you to TestBash for giving me the opportunity to attend the San Francisco conference and Live Blogging about it. I'm also thankful to STP-CON and PNSQC for asking me to participate with them again this year on topics related to automation accessibility, inclusive design, and testability.

A good chunk of time was spent editing podcasts for Qualitest and The Testing Show. I think we put out som good episodes this year and I have learned a fair amount about a variety of topics and areas I intend to put more time and attention to in 2020.

As in life, sometimes we have setbacks, too. My band Ensign Red is currently looking for a guitarist. Granted, this would need to be someone local to the Bay Area to participate so if you are, or know someone who is, feel free to give them my contact info. We are looking to get out and perform in 2020 and complete an EP we have been working on but we need to fill the guitar lot before we can do that, of course :).

So there it is. Another wild year, lots of learning, lots of seeing, lots of doing, and a capstone of this blog being an active thing for close to ten years (it's official ten year birthday will be March 10, 2020). For those who have been here from the beginning, I'm impressed you are still here and I hope I have been worth the time. For those who are new, I have a lot of past entries and I'm hoping something will be of interest. Also, as good a string as it has been, I really couldn't fit a fresh line of "Once in a Lifetime" to describe this year accurately, so I am officially going to end this tradition.  Hey, I did it for nine years, that's pretty good :). Wishing you all a happy and healthy new year, a new decade, and new opportunities for all. Be excellent to each other :)!!!