Testing the Waterhouse

The other night I was bathing my 2 kids, and they wanted me to read them a story. My daughter chose a book on time and clocks (I can't remember the name of the book right now), so I sat down and began to read it to them as they had a bath. It was full of interesting stuff (to them at least), it would explain what can happen in different time-frames. One of the examples it gave was for 1 minute. It said: In 1 minute a Cheetah can run around a race track 4 times This is pretty cool, highlighting how quick a Cheetah actually is. Now the tester in me, instantly thought "well depends how long the race track is, I'm pretty sure it's talking about a 400m race track - but still it should be clear"... Then my son, as if he is reading my mind says "It depends how long a race track is"... I looked at him and said "You're right! It does depend on how long the race track is!" Why am I talking about this? How does it relate to Testing? Well ...

Gareth Southgate has impressed me massively over the past few weeks. The empathy and compassion he has shown to other players, the way he has made this tournament about the team and not about any individual is amazing. I was reading the #GarethSouthgateWould hashtags on Twitter and there were some classics in there. I'll let you read them for yourselves, but I thought it would be cool to make it themed towards testing, here are some I came up with off the top of my head... Though I am sure there are more. #GarethSouthgateWould - Ensure that automated checks clean up after themselves #GarethSouthgateWould - Share with other testers blogs and articles they have read that they enjoyed #GarethSouthgateWould - go through and remove any Thread.Sleeps from any automated checks #GarethSouthgateWould - Take time out to help another tester who is struggling with something, even when he doesn't know the solution. It made me realise that these are all things that a carin...

As of last Friday, another Tech Develops day is in the books! It was an absolutely epic day, in true ASOS fashion (no pun intended) they just keep getting better and better! I had my special Tech Develops T-Shirt on and was ready to go! I started off with hosting some 99 Second Talks, where we had ADMs, QAs and Developers talking for (you guessed it!) 99 seconds about topic(s) that they are passionate about! It didnt' even have to be Tech Related, we had one person talking about their love of Pugs, and what made this extraordinary was he joined the company just 3 days ago as a Princes Trust graduate! I don't think I would have had the confidence to have done something similar, so massive respect for that! We had a talk about Conversational E-Commerce and what the future holds in that space, I spoke about Checking & Testing in a nice little poem that I'd created the night before (I felt massive pressure following the "success" of The Stickman Teste...

As some of you may have seen, a little while ago I performed a 99 second talk on the Stickman Tester for the Ministry of Testing. Owing to the fact that it had to be 99 seconds, this unfortunately meant that a verse was left out in order to keep it within the time frame! It's only now that I have found the time to put the deleted verse/scene back in, and re-record it and upload it! (It's now a 120 second talk!) It talks about a testers journey in an Agile team, about how not everybody has it as good as others, and basically talks about not giving up, keep searching, or trying to change your role to make it what you want it to be. Anyway, here it is, in all it's glory. Hope you enjoy it!

I was at a football coaching session the other night, and some other coaches put on a training session for us, so that we could learn and critique it. This is not an easy thing to do, to put something on for your peers and open yourself up to criticism is a difficult thing to do. One of the comments from the president of the club was that in order to develop yourself you need to push yourself and step outside of your comfort zone which it was evident that these coaches were doing. I took this to heart in many ways, a few weeks ago I signed up to do a presentation at a meetup that was only a couple of meetups old, The QE Roundabout . I was in contact with Zoe Canning (the event organiser) and I knew it was something I wanted to do, but it's like anything, saying you want to do something and then putting yourself in a position to do it are sometimes two very different things. Anyway, I volunteered to do one, the theme was Automation & Architecture, and we were free to ta...

Working in Tech, it can be difficult to find the time to further improve yourself, you're focused a lot on delivery, and it can be hard to drag yourself away from it and spend time on delivering an improved you. This is why some companies are starting to have time dedicated to your personal development, where people drop tools and do a personal project or watch some tutorials. Luckily working at ASOS we get the last Friday of every month to focus on this! Last Friday we held what we call a "Tech Develops" day, where as an employee of ASOS and working in Technology, In the week running up to it we decided it would be a good idea to have a platform where people could stand up and perform a 99 Second Talk about anything they please. We had 12 people sign up to it, and we had talks ranging from the technical (Git-Bisect) to a Conference review (UKStar). The first talk was an informative talk about Git Bisect and how it's used and why because of it, it's import...

I've seen many blog posts about people posting about what they learnt by going to TestBash. It made me think about what I have learnt by NOT going to TestBash this year.... Firstly, I attended TestBash Brighton last year. I loved it, I learnt so much and came back passionate and engaged with the Testing Community. Over the course of the year however, my work changed significantly and I wasn't doing as much testing as I was before. When TestBash came around this year, I had 3 QAs who asked about going. I said to them "Definitely go", we got the funding and got them tickets and off they went. I don't think they realised why I was so passionate about them going, and about how I was "gutted" that I wasn't going! So with 3 of the QAs who I work with being there, I was in constant communication with them, checking in on how it was going, what cool things have they learnt... They even brought me back an MoT Calendar and some TestSphere Cards! But th...

Being positive is becoming increasingly difficult, in a world where negativity is all around us in the form of News reports, just looking at a popular news feed a large portion of the articles are of a negative nature or in a negative tone, then there's the fact that people love to moan or gossip about someone not doing what they are supposed to do and similarly people are far more likely to leave a negative review for a product or service than they are a positive one! So how can I be more positive and why does it matter? All I do is test? Firstly, never ever say or think "All I do is test" , you do so much more, and we all do so much more, it's about showing everyone just how awesome we can be and how great we are! Secondly, why does it matter? Well a Tester can have every attribute that is needed to be a Tester, but if they have a negative attitude it can all be for nothing. I've found that by merely having  a positive attidue it can take an Okay Tester and ...

I've blogged elsewhere about what I look for when hiring QA Engineers, and it's full of useful things that I think are important in being a good QA Engineer/Tester. One thing that is often overlooked and probably not really spoken off much, especially when hiring or looking for a new job, is something that is potentially extremely important when it comes to being a successful Engineer, and that is the ability to find out information. For most people this is being able to "Google" for something, or use Stack Overflow to find out a solution to a problem. You could argue (and rightly so) that the ability to Problem Solve is what we are talking about, and you'd be right, but this is specifically really about being able to use Google effectively to find the answer you are looking for. Why is being able to Google important? There are a number of reasons for this: 1- Being able to structure your search query appropriately is important and can save time sifti...

So it's been a tad difficult to do the challenges over the weekend (had school fete, kids parties etc!), so I've changed things up slightly and am going to do challenge 2, 3 and 4 today... So, first things first, a photo of work... Whilst this wasn't today, the premise is still the same, this was of a QA++ training session, where we were going through YAGNI and DRY principles (You Aint Gonna Need It and Don't Repeat Yourself) with regards to Software Development, however these principles can easily be applied to Testing, if you don't need to Test for something then don't do it and if you communicate effectively then there's no need to repeat yourself, so it's an art for sure! For the listening to the Testing Podcast, I'm going to listen to the latest Testing in The Pub Episode  on my way home from work, so will no doubt include that in my next update! And finally, to share a Testing Blog with a Non Testing Person... I've chosen th...

I've decided to attempt to do the Ministry Of Testings 30 Days of Testing Challenges over the month of July, which will be erm... challenging! (duh!) For those that don't know what it is, you can read about it here  and the challenges are below: The first challenge is to read a Testing Book, the book I've chosen is " Dear Evil Tester " by the one and only Alan Richardson. So I will start reading that on Friday and then take it from there! I'll try and write some posts that will update, but if you're reading this, and it sounds interesting to you, then my advice to you is to do it! It's only 30 days, you'll learn loads of stuff and it's fun! Remember, a quote from Empire Records, "I do not regret the things I have done, but those I did not do"

I thought it might be interesting to some people to start doing some posts about my day to day job as a QA Lead! I often get asked what it is that I do, how do I do it, what skills are important and just what is difficult about the job, so what better way than to just start a diary documenting all of this!? In writing this, I've figured it would be a good idea to get others to do the same across the different levels and teams, as we very often get asked in interviews "What will my day to day role be?" So hopefully this will serve as a useful piece of information. So lets begin (on a Friday as this idea came to me on a Friday!) Friday June 17 : 8AM : It's Friday, and it's Summer, so you know what that means (or maybe you don't, but you will now)... It's Summer hours here! So a 3PM finish today! I got in early today to make up for the England game yesterday where no work was completed for obvious reasons (what a result!), I have to catch up on emails...

Apologies for the lack of blog posts, but for those that don't know me, not only am I a struggling Tester, but also a struggling Parent! I have 2 kids, a 2 year old and a (soon to be) 5 year old! They are my world, and they're also the inspiration for some blog posts that I tend to write, this latest one is no different... My 2 year old daughter has begun to question a lot of what I say to her. "Please don't climb up the slide" "Why?" "Because the slide is slippery and you might hurt yourself" "Why?" "Because it rained last night" Ad infinitum! My 5 year old said to me and Jess the other day "We mustn't ask "Why?" must we because that is answering back" I thought to myself, I don't want him to stop asking Why? to stop asking "What If?" This is a massive skill and something we as Testers should definitely have and encouraged. So I had to explain to him that it's ...

Who doesn't love a Super Hero? Talk to my son, and he'll tell you how much he loves them, talk to many adults and they'll say the same! Deep down, we all love to be the Super Hero, we all want to save the day! However, I want to talk about the flip side of Super Heroes, the Super Villains... I often play Imaginext with my son, and I (unfortunately?) am nearly always the Super Villain! Be it Lex Luthor, Joker, Two Face, Mr Freeze or The Riddler! These are all great characters and great Super Villains, but why would I want to write about Super Villains? A while ago where I worked, we had a few Super Heroes, people who would be able to come in and "fix" things that had broken and help deliver projects on time. We then shifted, we decided to do away with the Super Hero culture and try and prevent from being in that position in the first place, whilst we didn't go as far as wanting to hire Super Villains, it's definitely a story that has stuck with me and t...

All through our lives we get told by people you get out of anything that you undertake what you put in. How can it apply to me as a Tester or as an Engineer? Well lets start with a rather less than subtle drawing, the above shows that if you put poop (in case my 4 year old son reads this one day) into something you will most probably get poop out. It doesn't matter what that task is, it directly effects the outcome. How does this apply to me as a Tester? Lets look at a PBI with no COAs? If we took that into a sprint, chances are we will end up with a rubbish outcome, it most probably won't be what the Product Owner wanted and it probably would be littered with bugs, and the time taken to even develop and test that thing would have been far greater than it perhaps should have! Lets flip it, what if we had a Product Backlog Item (PBI) with well defined, testable and understood Conditions Of Acceptance (COAs) the chances are that what would come out at the end of a spr...

Many of the teams I work with sometimes struggle to understand why working together as a team is important. There have been comments like "You're not technical enough to be involved this early" etc. from a dev to a QA, and I strive to get everyone involved as early as possible, reasons being: Helps people understand things from the start - if a decision is made early on, then at least they know why it was made Everyone is on the same footing, you're not just throwing something over the fence when it's been developed or even when it's been groomed to the QAs to understand how to test something. By having them involved early they can start thinking just how they are going to test something. It helps people bring value from the start- especially from a testing background, if a tester can start testing things early, even requirements, then value is coming straight away, and it's far easier to change a requirement than it is to fix a bug in code ...

Recently I was watching Zoolander (it's an amazing film, and one I can highly recommend), and Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) plays a dumb male model in it, but it's hilarious. One scene however got me thinking, and it's this scene here: "Did you think I'd be too stupid to know what a eugoogly is?" It shows Derek not knowing something and being too afraid to ask for fear of looking stupid. It's something that unfortunately I still see, and one of the reasons why I believe that Testers need to understand what they are testing, but all too often, I see Testers scared to ask questions. If a Tester is scared to ask questions, then that raises alarm bells on multiple fronts: - Firstly, is the team a safe environment for the Tester to ask any questions? Do they feel confident and comfortable in front of their fellow team mates. - Secondly, if the Tester doesn't truly understand something, then how do they know how to test it? What test cases to w...

A few weeks ago I went to DisneyLand Paris with the family, and it's the first time I've been to a theme park and really took advantage of the Fast Pass system they have! I have to say it's really great! Especially with kids! For those that don't know the fast pass enables you to "book" a time to come back to a ride and go on it, it's invaluable with kids especially as it meant we'd spend less time queueing, and as good as my kids are at queueing (we are British after all!) it's not the best way to spend a holiday! Luckily for us it wasn't too busy and the longest time we queued was probably around 30 minutes. It got me thinking and wondering how it went, which is generally a Testers mindset, asking How is this even possible? Why is this happening? How does it work? Anyway, I did a bit of googling, and sure enough someone else had asked on Stack Overflow of all places how it works, and it's a way of scheduling rides for people...

I was talking to a good friend of mine and she was discussing how she's started the year and a new year resolution was for her to not say "No" to things, much like the "Yes Man" movie, unless she physically can't do something, she is trying to say "Yes" to everything that is asked of her. Whilst this may lead to a busy and stressful time, I also think it's a very positive and good outlook to take. I have to steal a line from one of my favourite movies, Empire Records, being this: For those that haven't seen it  I can strongly recommend watching it, it's an easy to watch film and has an amazing soundtrack! However, I digress, there are always a million reasons not to do something, so it's very easy to say "No" to something. Yet, if we all take a "Yes" attitude, so much more would be done. Where is this leading? Well I had a "Yes" moment a few months ago, when I volunteered to speak in front ...

Apologies for the lack of posts recently, I spent last week in Disneyland Paris having a truly awesome time. I am going to be writing another blog post about that at a later date... however as a stop gap... I was rewatching The US Office for the umpteenth time yesterday and was watching this episode which made me laugh, as I've met some people in Testing/QA (not getting into that debate right now), who this would be perfectly applicable to! They've come into testing just to get paid and are lacking some of the fundamental skills, and do the bare minimum to get by.... And whilst this video in particular is not related to Technology, but I still thought it was funny! I must admit it is becoming less and less as times move on, maybe it's because I know what I am looking for when hiring good QAs so I tend to cross paths with these people less and less, or maybe (and perhaps far more likely :) ) there is a shift in recognizing QA/Testing as a valuable Career Path so...