My plane landed on Friday and I’m finally over the jet lag. The past month or so has been nothing but packing, packing, PACKING. I’m over it and ready do some testing.

In the brief survey of the OZ testing landscape I’ve been able make, I’m finding that Australia has a really great testing community.

Before I arrived, I’d been having some great fun conversing with testers and developers in OZ including @erik_petersen (Melbourne) ,@alisterscott (Brisbane), @jmajma (Sydney), @deancornish (Melbourne) and @sherifmansour (Sydney). They made me feel welcome before I even showed up for work.

When I wrote up my predictions for this year, one of them was that Weekend Testing would spread. It’s been my intention all year to participate in Weekend Testing as much as possible, and with my move out of the way, I’m ready to step up my commitment. Since I’m now located in Australia, I’d like to see what the testers here, including myself, can put together.

So what is weekend testing? It’s a bottom-up way of bettering yourself as a tester. A weekend testing session lasts for 2 hours. The first hour is spent testing something, sometime in pairs. The second hour is spent discussing what you learned while you were testing. Yes, it really is that simple.

Why do I love this concept so much? This is an empowering way to learn. So much time in testing is spent in justifying our choices and double-checking that what we have found really is broken. If we don’t find something, we’ve got customers to whom we must answer. The weekend testing approach removes these high stakes, in essence, unburdening the tester and placing an emphasis on just trying to break stuff. I know that I need to learn more of this. I suspect that there are other testers in Australia who feel the same way I do.

The first goal I’ve set for myself here in Sydney is to work on my own testing skills through Weekend Testing and to see what I can do about getting others here interested.

Here is the WT web-site. I encourage testers in Australia or elsewhere who are unfamiliar with WT to do some exploring and look over some of the experience reports to get an idea of what happens. This is not about hubris, it’s about having a safe space to try stuff in testing without fear of reprimand or backstabbing.

If you’re in Australia, and you would like to participate in either a European or Indian weekend testing session, Europe testing sessions occur on Saturdays from 3-5 pm…in Europe. For Sydneysiders, this means Sundays from 2:00 am to 4:00 am. Indian testing sessions are a bit more realistic. If you are in Australia these happen from approximately 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm.

I plan to be in touch with the Weekend Testers over the next few weeks to see what we can get together for Australia. Please check out the web-site and see what you think.

Btw…the US is seriously lagging behind in the adoption of WT. What up with that??

[Hat Tip: Chris McMahon for pointing out this awesome video.]

The response I’ve gotten from the tiny bit of work I’ve done with software testing and visualization has changed the direction of my life and shown me that I am not the only visual thinker in software/software testing.  We don’t want to look at tables any more…we want pictures!  We want line and color!  We don’t want to be limited by text in our exploration and creation of software.

So where’s our visual jet-pack?  I mean, I might do crazy viz stuff at home, but at work, I’m still analyzing tables, bug counts and raw data every day.  What gives?

Unfortunately, the only answer I have to this question is another question.  Where is your data?  How do you access information about your tests?  In my experience, most of the data I’ve seen has been in a spreadsheet or on a screen, as in, “Hey you!  You want a piece of me, girlie, you gotta copy and paste!”

In his recent interview on the blog, Indirect Collaboration, Shawn Allen of Stamen Design was asked about the challenges of working with data.  His response rang so true, that it’s the main point of this blog post.  For Mr. Allen, “just getting the data in the first place is the most difficult part of the process, regardless of the source.”

Amen!  Hosannah!  Bravo! and Thx, dude!!!

Every visualization I’ve worked on has included significant challenge in just the beginning step of gathering the data.  If you are working with one table or with tables that play nice, u r lucky. More often than not, the interesting stories are teased from disparate sources in disparate formats.  In general, there is nothing pretty at all about the raw data used in some of the most intriguing visualizations.

Mr. Allen goes on to say that in the case of Stamen’s Crimespotting project, this challenge was overcome by being provided with a KML feed.  The keyword here is feed.

Do you have a feed for your defects?  I know I didn’t have one at my last job, and wouldn’t have known what to do if one had hit me on the head.  This is, however, the world we live in.  When I gave my talk on “Visualizing Software Quality” at Microsoft, one of the comments I got was that my work did not include any type of real-time feed.  It was a wake-up call for me and a challenge I’m working on.

Part of this challenge lies in learning to work with standard formats for data.  Allen mentions KML.  There is also XML and JSON.  I have heard testers bemoaning the “pointy things” of XML, and I hope that we’re past the kvetching.  I’ll admit that I’ve mostly used tab or comma delimited data for my work, but I’m REALLY over them.  Just because I know enough about regular expressions to wear the XKCD t-shirt doesn’t mean I want to spend my life parsing data with them.

If we are ever to be successful at visualizing software quality, we must have feeds from our tests, defects and even the code we are testing.  I don’t want to spend my time figuring out how to get my testing meta-data to play nice.  I would much rather spend my time figuring out which data belongs together and understanding the story it tells.  After all, that is the real value in visualization, no matter what type of picture we create at the end.

Today was my last day at my job.  I have de-badged. When I showed up yesterday, I found that some friends of mine decided to send me off in grand style.  Green and yellow are Australia’s team colors.  In addition to the lovely draperies, my cube was filled with green & yellow balloons.  My boss took me to lunch and gave me some survival items for Australia, among them was a snake bite kit (Thanks Mark!)

I planned for my last day to be Thursday because Friday is the start of Pycon!  As Adam Goucher said to me on twitter, Pycon is THE Python conference.  I see this as the opportunity I’ve been looking for to spend some quality time with this language, break away from Java for a bit and take advantage of this transition-heavy period in my life.  There are some great talks scheduled, and I’ll have a few tough choices to make.

Here are some of the sessions I’m considering attending:
The Mighty Dictionary
VisTrails
Creating Restful Web Services with restish
Deconstruction of an Object
Powerful Pythonic Patterns

There are many more because this schedule is stacked with interesting sessions. If you are planning on attending Pycon, drop me a note or a tweet and enjoy

For the past 5 years I have worked at a company that is over 100 years old.  My business group has been ordered to use the waterfall software development process.  Although my current boss along with everyone else in my group impresses the hell out of me on a daily basis, I’ve known for a while that I would be looking for a job when I finished my masters degree.  (A note to CEO’s everywhere:  asking great employees, especially the geeky ones, to innovate with tools from 1995 is a WASTE of everyone’s time.)

In the time that I’ve worked for my current employer, my husband and I have developed an ongoing love affair with America’s Pacific Northwest.  We’ve traveled there many times for business and for fun.  One of the reasons why I submitted my presentation to PNSQC was its locality.  My primary goal was to make as many contacts as possible for the job search I was planning to begin this January.  I had plans to quit my job once New Years arrived, and move to Seattle so I could look for a job.

So I’ve graduated.  This was supposed to be my need-a-tester? post.  Last year, I made a short list of a few places whose employment prospects really made me drool.  Here are the requirements I had:

1. location must be Portland, Oregon or Seattle, Washington metro areas
2. MUST be agile
3. must have a pro-testing culture
4. product must have web 2.0 or semantic web features
5. I must love the product I test so much that I giggle with delight when I use it.
6. testing must include a pragmatic approach to manual testing and test automation
7. company must be a place where I can make a significant contribution

The reason why this was supposed to be my need-a-tester post is because I already found a job.  Yes…it IS possible to get a job in this economy.  Not only is it possible, but the job I found fits almost every requirement I had.

The interview process was incredibly rigorous and there were more than a few times when I thought to myself, “there is NO WAY I will get this job.”  I’m not just saying this because I know my new boss reads my blog (Hiiiiii!!)  I’m going from testing a command-line interface to a full-on, Web 2.0, check-this-api-byatch application of epic proportions.  Let’s just say I know a lot more about TestNG and Selenium than I did before my interview.  For those of you on twitter who remember me talking about my “bugs on a plane” testing session, that was part of my job interview.  Not only was I finding bugs on the plane ride home from PNSQC as the power faded on my Mac, but there was a screaming, pretzel-throwing 3-year-old in the seat next to me who did not stop screaming for a full 4.5 hours.

Which requirement in my list was not met?  Unfortunately, I will not be moving to Portland or Seattle, although I still LOVE them both.  I will be moving to Sydney, Australia.

Say what?!

Yes.

That Sydney, Australia.

I’ve been hired by Atlassian Software.  Although I applied when they began their campaign to hire 32 engineers for their Sydney office, I was already planning to send them an application.  I did not feel the need to look further because they were already tops on my list, regardless of however much of a longshot I felt it was.

I discovered Atlassian in Spring 2008, during my independant study of Web 2.0/Semantic web concepts when I was studying code coverage tools.  Their tool, Clover, not only shows code coverage, but also creates visualizations based on your source code.  And so it was that yours truly was truly hooked and Atlassian became my top choice for employment.

If you look at Atlassian’s products (most of which are $10 for 10 users, except for Clover. tsk, tsk people.) and read through some of their blogposts, you will see that they meet all of my other requirements.  Atlassian has something special going on, and I’m not the only one to have noticed.  It starts with, of all things, their core values and shows up in the quality of the products they create and their almost fanatical user base.  They have the most holistic approach to software I think I have ever seen and, although I haven’t seen their numbers because they aren’t public, they seem to have some pretty good profit margins.  So far, they appear to be winning with integrity. I’m being a bit cheeky here because this is my blog, but if I were running a company, this is how I would approach it.

I’m taking my well-planned out map of a future in the Pacific Northwest and tossing it out for an opportunity to work at a company who’s software made me reconsider what I thought was even possible for software development and also for testing.  It’s a place where I feel the best of my many crazy ideas will be encouraged.

Over the next month, I’ll be selling my stuff, filling out more paperwork and tieing things up in the States.  Working for a company as great as Atlassian and living in a city where everyone, including my new boss, runs around in flip-flops will be challenging, but I will try to manage.  Not to say that this won’t be the most challenging job EVAR, and I won’t totally be working my toucas off in the coming year…but, excuse me while I go look for my 50+ sunscreen…

When you think of art that was produced in 1917, the heyday of Renoir and Monet, a men’s urinal is probably the last thing to come to mind. Yet, Marcel Duchamp submitted this “masterpiece” called “Fountain” as his statement about the quality of a certain art show. (Read more about him here and here.)

Is this great art?  Is it art at all?  What about it is or is not art?  Duchamp did not make this himself.  He bought it.  What I love about the whole episode is that it was so incendiary that people still argue about it.  People argue about this in much the same way the software testing community will be arguing about the meaning of quality until we’re all dead and the aliens are trying to decide if a McDonald’s hamburger wrapper should be catologued as that-which-the-strange-creatures-called-”art”.

This is why I love languages, writing, art and music.  They deepen the meaning of context.  They find the core of our humanity and our attempts to relate to one another.

There was a lively discussion on twitter today about art and quality:

@chris_mcmahon was asking if this is a high quality painting.  @lanettecream doesn’t think so.  @shrinik pointed out that quality is personal.  @michaelbolton thinks that it’s impossible to mention quality without also connecting the quality to someone specific (an idea of Jerry Weinberg’s in Intro to General Systems Thinking.  I guess I should read that.)  I said:  is that a trick question or what? That’s like asking someone to define art.

When I asked @lanettecream why she didn’t like the painting @chris_mcmahon linked to, she said it looked, “boring and too male.” It’s obviously not of high quality for her.

@chris_mcmahon followed up with:

it’s a painting by Franz Kline that sold for $5,122,500 in Nov 2008. does that change your mind?

Note that this is exactly the type of question and argument that goes on in any art history class.

So if quality is subjective and perception is reality, where does this leave Duchamp’s “Fountain.”  Duchamp obviously didn’t think it was of high quality.  In fact, he submitted it under the name “R.Mutt” because he didn’t want it permanently associated as his art (haha). While it was accepted for the art show, it was never displayed.  The art world is divided.  People pay millions for reproductions of it…what does that say?    How do we define quality at all?  How do we define art?

Although it is easy enough to say “context,” I question whether that is an oversimplification.  What happens when the context is shared by hundreds, thousands or millions of people over time?  My honest opinion of defining quality is that there is no one definition.  Even in defining quality and art, any levels that we give them such as high or low will eventually become superfluous much in the way that “with a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”

Here is a youTube of a performance by the performance art group, Survivial Research Labs.  They build robots and unleash them upon each other until everything is completely destroyed.  I find it oddly hypnotic and comforting. I think I’ll watch it again while I ponder the meaning of testing vs. checking.

Update: Michael Bolton left a really great comment.  Those of you using a reader might want to click through.

The headlines about Haiti have been sobering. Pictures of buildings in ruins and people who are frustrated, hurt and suffering are all over the news. I’ve already donated to charity, but I’m not finished. I hope that readers of this blog are not finished donating either.

Please have a brief look at this post I wrote on my original blog over 2 years ago.  I was in games class, where we had assignments that required us to play games and write about them every week.  The game I reviewed in this post was named Ayiti and is a game about Haiti.  If you take a minute or two to scan over this post, you will see why I am not finished donating to Haiti.  If you are unfamiliar with the issues being faced by people living in this island nation, playing this game will give you quite an education.  Before you decide that I’m being played like a fiddle by the game’s designer…I’m no idiot.  I realize that the people who designed the game had certain goals in mind, but, based on the few people I’ve met from Haiti, I’m guessing that there’s not much over-dramatization in this particular case.  If you watch the coverage on the news, it’s not hard to see how little many of the people in Haiti had before they lost more than even they thought possible in the earthquake. We’re talking about a country that no longer has a presidential residence, a parliamentary building or a tax office.

This link is for the Wall Street Journal’s map of the damage. It has 3 pages so be sure to click the arrow.

There is currently a lot of media coverage around how effective different charitable organizations are in getting aid to people who need it.  Today, as I was rooting around on American consumer advocate, Clark Howard’s web-site for purely selfish reasons, I discovered that Clark has posted a link to the American Institute of Philanthropy which shows ratings for different charities of how well they’ve gotten aid to people.  Please people, let’s put aside our bickering around metrics, and give a few more dollars.

Here are the charities that had an A+

International Rescue Committee

UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) (I might be atheist, but last time I checked, a bottle of water was still non-demoninational.)

International Medical Corp.

Note: Red Cross got an A- but I’m linking to them anyway.

Many of us are now communicating through twitter which means that arguments, conversation and even software testing itself is evolving in real time. Real time is no longer a future possibility, but for most of us, the reality.

Personally, I have found this new real-time focus very challenging because, despite the collaborative possibilities, it’s too easy to say something careless and stupid that you can’t take back. Have you ever thought to yourself, “Gosh, that wombat joke was so funny at the time!” I know I have. Even if you can delete a tweet, that doesn’t mean nobody saw it. On a larger scale, this places all of the petty, back-channel political squabbling of our software testing eco-system in a front-and-center position like never before.

The communal win of real-time communication is that now, if we’re going to argue, there is more motivation to make it constructive instead of disparaging. For an example of this, see this article on Code Coverage by Alan Page and Matt Heusser. I was happy to write the introduction, but in all honesty, these two great men shepherded themselves through the writing of this article. The testing community is much better for it. Their original twitter conversation could have devolved into petty squabbling, but Alan and Matt were able to turn their conversation around. The resulting article is thought provoking, and shows what can be accomplished when testers who strongly disagree have an honest and respectful exchange about why they disagree. I want more of this.

Fellow von TesterBlogger, Lanette Creamer, has been writing, brilliantly, about respectful discourse. As of now, she has written these two posts: Post 1, Post 2. I love what she has said about diversity because it highlights how our communication is changing and the need for each of us to be open enough to change our own ways of communicating. I am having to re-learn how I discuss and debate with others because I’m being exposed to people who communicate in a very different ways to which I am not at all accustomed. I can only hope that others will allow for my differences in this ever-widening, two-way street of the real-time world.

I am an atheist, but have found valuable treasures within Christianity as I have in other world religions. I altered the passage below from the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi and try to follow it with every communication I make. If I’m in doubt about something I’m about to say or post, I look over this. It’s never steered me wrong. I make mistakes like everyone else does, but if I do, I come back to this. I read it over and try again.

I am an instrument of peace,
Where there is hatred, I will show love;
where there is injury, I will forgive;
where there is doubt, I will show faith;
where there is despair, I will hope;
where there is darkness, I will be light;
where there is sadness, I will be joy;

I will do my best to console more than I seek to be consoled;
I will do my best to understand more than I seek to be understood;
and I will do my best to love even more than I try to be loved.

For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we find forgiveness;
and it is in living gracefully that that we will find the eternal.

My husband and I used to watch the Eco-challenge adventure race. If we had to, we’d order the VHS tapes. We played them in a continuous loop. These races were memorable not just for the beautiful locales and different activities the participants were expected to complete, but for the many different competitors (Who can forget Team “USUK” or the yellow tights of Team Helti?). My favorite eco-challenge competitor was a lady from Australia named Jane Hall. She was a master at sea kayaking and very good at all of the other activities. The reason why she was my favorite was her attitude. “We’re just a bunch of guys and gals who want to have a go,” she said about her crack team of outdoor sports experts.

Jane’s words and her attitude have carried me through all kinds of personal challenges, sporting and otherwise. If you ever meet me, you will NOT remark on how athletic my build is. Despite a serious lack of co-ordination and my addiction to baked goods, I’ve never had a really bad fracture or injury. My special athletic ability is staying in an upright position for any length of time even if I’m tired and sore. I also enjoy myself no matter how slow my pace may be, and I will try almost anything. I’ve plumbed the depths of many caves and surveyed some of them. I’ve backpacked and camped out on a snow-filled Canadian mountainside. I’ve hiked for miles on cold, windy Irish Cliffs and through hail in New Mexico. My husband and I got married on one of the many remote beaches of Cumberland Island, Georgia.

This is the spirit I brought to software and to my half-marathon training program. I gave myself permission to really suck at programming and computers as long as I kept practicing and stayed interested. For the half-marathon training, I decided that speed and pace just couldn’t be factors for me. In examining the schedule I decided to follow, I realized that consistency for the shorter 30 minute runs was really the key. Whether I was walking, shuffling, limping or any combination of the three, getting my butt across the finish line was my solitary goal. Here I am at the finish line with my friend, Melissa.

My masters thesis is far from perfect. Read it, and you will find holes. I could make excuses for these, but I don’t see the need. I’m usually a very self-deprecating person, but in this instance, I am quite proud of myself. My thesis is the snapshot of a beautiful moment in time, and the picture includes many more people than just myself. Those of you who have left me comments, sent me emails, followed me on twitter, mentored me and talked with me have a part in my success as well. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Remember the scene in the movie Dead Poet’s Society where Robin Williams is showing his students the school’s trophy case? He tells them to look at it and think about the phrase, “carpe diem.” As they are staring, he begins to whisper in a raspy voice, “carpe…carpe diem. Seize the day, boys!” For the first time in my professional life, I know without a doubt that I didn’t just, “seize the day.” I rode that day clear across the contiguous 48 states and back. Here I am. I’m still upright, still breathing and, more importantly, still interested.

I did not finish everything I wanted to finish this past semester, but the semester is done and my degree program is over. This does not mean I will be putting anything down. In fact, this gives me the chance to re-evaluate some of what I was doing, and make some positive changes that weren’t possible in the context of school work. As I am in it for the long haul, your regularly scheduled blog will certainly continue.

When I think about all I’ve accomplished in the past year or two, this scene from the movie Vision Quest comes to mind. Many time, I have felt like Loudon Swain working his up the wall with two pegs. I can hear all of you cheering me on, and I love it! Thanks, again!

p.s. I have to work through some red tape to get my thesis posted online, but I’ll post when it is up.