Testing Tour Stop #11 : Pair exploring on Test Strategy with Toyer

My testing tour continues with more interesting sessions and I was already on  my 11th session. I was really looking forward to pair with Toyer. Previously I got an opportunity to join Toyer and his power learning group in one of the session.

Had another awesome session on my #TestingTour with @tottiLFC discussing all about Test Strategy.
Thank you so much Toyer for sharing all your ideas and learnings 😊🙏#TestingTour #FeelingAwesome #Motivated #Inspired pic.twitter.com/4gPuG8GcEU

— Parveen (@Parveen_Khan10) March 8, 2020

Before even deciding the topic or booking a session with Toyer , I had been having conversations with Toyer around Test Process and Test Strategy. When I booked the session , I suggested Test Strategy as a topic for our session and Toyer was happy to do it. I was really keen on this topic as I have always struggled on this and having those previous conversations with Toyer where he shared  his innovative ideas helped me a lot. 

Session :

The topic was decided but I was not really sure if we could just use any sample application to use for our session to define the test strategy. So I just thought we could decide this during our session. 

We started off by discussing Toyer's approach of sketching out the Testing Strategy from the scratch. He mentioned that we should always think of different testing activities all the way from the start to  implementation. 

We should always plan and start sketching out test strategy based on what process the team is following. For ex: If the team follows kanban then we should be keeping that in mind while planning our test strategy or if the team follows scrum that the planning goes different. 

Then step towards thinking about what are the tasks that needs to be performed by the testers. The interesting part was how Toyer used 3 different buckets while defining test strategy. 

• People
• Process 
• Tech

When you get a huge blank canvas to define the test strategy from the scratch, its too overwhelming to decide where to start from and how. But these three buckets would help in those situations to start organising and defining the activities and keep adding them to the relevant buckets. This was so awesome to learn as I had always struggled with the starting point and this gives an organised view to start with. Toyer mentioned that he uses mindmap tool to create the test strategy and its one of my favourite tool as well. 

Our discussion was getting more and more interesting . When defining test strategy it always going to depend on 

• What is my application?
• What is my process(agile/scrum/kanban)?
• What tools are we using?

Toyer mentioned that these are the main factors and we should always ask "Where" , "How" and "What" while defining test strategy. We did not have enough time to use an application and build a test strategy for that. But hopefully we might have a follow up session to try this. 

Learnings 

• People, process and tech buckets , this was a great way to start organising the test strategy.
• We need to consider all the activities by testers from start till the implementation while planning the strategy.
• Test strategy should be aligned to the process being used(scrum/kanban).
• A reminder that we have to always remember that we are masters of testing.
• The biggest takeaway for me was how to start when you have been given a complete blank canvas.

It was amazing session and finally I'm glad I got chance to pair with Toyer. I'm really very thankful for all the ideas he shared with me during the session.

Testing Tour Stop #9 : Pairing up on Sketchnoting with Marianne Duijst

My ninth stop on my #TestingTour was with Marianne Duijst to learn about Sketchnoting which I have been trying to learn since I came across some of Marianne's and Lisi Hocke's sketchnotes. I had briefly met Marianne at TestBash Brighton 2019 while we were in the queue for 99 secs talk.
I was really super excited for this session. I am a note taking person whether I'm in a meeting, while in conference or even when I'm watching any recorded talks. I even take notes when I'm reading a blog to make note of some interesting points. I usually use my notebook, pen and highlighter while taking notes. I was really interested to learn about sketchnoting to make my notes even more interesting while I'm reflecting back on those notes.

I had another session on my #TestingTour with @marianneduijst to learn about sketchnoting and here's my first sketchnote on my #TestingTour which we did together remotely.I cannot believe still that I did this sketchnote.Thank you so much for this @Mariane 😊🙏 pic.twitter.com/INQJOmHQMH

— Parveen (@Parveen_Khan10) January 30, 2020

Session

I briefly shared about my Testing Tour with Marianne when we started our session. I was very quick to mention that I don't have very good creative skills to draw something really good. The entire session was hands-on and interactive. We ended up having our session for almost 2 hours and 30 mins.

When we scheduled our session Marianne gave me the list of materials that were required for this session. Marianne joined the zoom call from two of her devices, one to screenshare while sketching using procreate app and other screen was used as our video call for us to talk.

First thing Marianne mentioned to me was that, sketchnoting is not about creative drawing. She also mentioned that a lot of people has this perception of relating sketchnoting to creative drawing. While scheduling our session Marianne asked me to pick a topic which we could use it for our sketchnoting. I picked up my Testing Tour as my topic to be used while I'm learning to sketchnote.

The first step we started off by drawing a banner and the title. I followed step by step instructions and I was also able to watch and follow while Marianne drawing it. Then next Marianne asked me to mentally divide the entire empty space into blocks and then draw shapes into each of those blocks. Shapes which I draw in those blocks were square, circle, triangle, oval and spiral oval.  I had no clue that these shapes are going to be converted into people. Next Marianne started adding a circle on each of those shapes to make it head. Next step to add legs and different types of hands to each of those shapes. I was already in awe to see those people all over my paper. She mentioned a point here about  sketchnoting which I totally agree with.

• Visually appealing
• Fun to do 
• Easy to share
• Easy to read

Then we continued to draw speech bubbles next to each person and added the names with whom I paired during my Testing Tour sessions as my stops. Next, we added another speech bubble to add the keylearning next to each person. I was already very excited to see the sketchnote to visualise my Testing Tour. And here's the outcome of this session which I feel so proud to share.

By Parveen Khan

By Marianne Duijst

Learnings

• I'm making this sketchnote for me and for future me. 
• Sketchnote is like a summary which triggers the reflection.
• The core of sketchnoting is its notes and its content. 
• Go slow to go fast.
• Constrain yourself to free yourself. And the way to do this is by sharing before you think you are ready. Until we share the anticipation is not gone and we have the feeling of adding some more details to the sketchnote.
• If we don't know how to do it, it's hard. If we know how to do it, it's simple.

I'm so grateful to Marianne for teaching me about sketchnoting and for her time. It was yet another amazing session of my Testing Tour to learn something unique. And a huge thanks to Marianne for inspiring me and motivating me throughout the session. 

Testing Tour Stop #8 : Pair exploring about exploratory testing with Simon Tomes

I was on my eight stop with Simon Tomes to discuss all about exploratory testing. When I was very new to exploratory testing, where i was trying to figure out how I can structure my exploratory sessions and show value to my team, I came accross Simon's #PQIP - Problem , Question, Ideas, Praise and here's the blog for more details.  I started using this approach along with various different approaches to document and share it with my team. It was so great to pair with Simon and learn more about exploratory testing.

All about exploratory testing with @simon_tomes. I had my eight session on my #TestingTour discussing all about exploratory testing, not just that but exploring the product I work on. Thank you soo much for so amazing session @simon_tomes ☺️🙏 pic.twitter.com/P68l3SG2Pq

— Parveen (@Parveen_Khan10) January 24, 2020

When I reached out Simon about doing this session, he was so kind that he just gave me his available date straightaway and we booked in 2 weeks time.

It’s incredibly kind of you to ask, I’d love to pair up on a testing tour session with you. It’s not something I’ve done before and I’m super curious to learn from the experience and from you.

Session

We started off our session with lot of energy and excitement and the first thing we discussed about was about testing community. Then I asked Simon, how and when does he integrates exploratory sessions and how does he plan for it. And I shared that I sometimes use mindmap as well to take notes during each session and then add all this information to the ticket. The reason why I add information to the ticket is not as a proof or something, but to help us reflect/revisit our testing approach. Simon translated this very well - 

“We don't document our discoveries to cover our backs. We document our discoveries to give back to the product.”

Then Simon ran ran through an example of exploratory testing notes for an exploratory session : "Explore Lean Coffee Table, cross-browser, to learn about sharing a board".

Then Simon mentioned that we always need to think first about what value does the product need to provide to the users, what are the potential risks that might come up, what questions do we have to come up with to identify those risks and then taking those questions and turning them into tests. This for me was #VRQ - Value, Risks, Questions.

Then after a long interesting discussion we decided to explore the product I'm working on. Zoom was great to share the screen and then I started to give some context about my product. Simon asked me how did I approached to understand this product when I was new to this. Initially it was difficult to go through the documentation and then explore the product because I was completely new to this domain. Our product is called Mia platform  which is a cloud platform that automates the accounts receivable life cycle which delivers greater efficiency, accuracy, visibility and cost savings for companies.

Then I shared with Simon that , I started to pair with project managers/product owners who were very close to the product and the users/clients to understand how it used.  I then reflected back on what Simon mentioned about asking questions to understand risks on one of the functionality of our product.

• When the user logs in, the user can see a diary panel that gives the information about what kind of tasks needs to be done and for which customers and lot of other information. Its just like a simple diary or journal with notes of what needs to done today. 
• Once the user clicks on one of the item from the diary panel, it takes the user to the customer account to perform the task or action or can also create a task.
• If I'm exploring these two steps without asking any questions then its just a page with some call to action links which takes the user to customer account and we can click through to create or complete a task. It feels simple. 
• But, if we ask some questions like - 

1. How does the user use this diary panel?
2. What problem is the user trying to solve by using this diary panel?
3. What is the impact or risk of this diary panel not loading up with the items?
4. What is the impact or risk of this diary panel loading up with incorrect details?
5. What is the impact or risk if each item on the diary panel is not clickable?
6. Where does the information come from on this diary panel?

• By asking these questions(which are just few and there might be more questions that can be added) we can understand what value is this diary panel providing to the user, what are the different risks and then these could be in turn tests to check this. 

• Then we discussed what if we applied the same approach for creating tasks functionality to find out value and risks. 

It was really interesting to share and discuss different approaches while testing. Here is the video which Simon shared  about - Exploratory testing  - Risks and questions and a handy note taking template .

Learnings from the session

• A new approach of converting questions into tests and using those questions to find the value and risks. 
• Being a solo tester you always have that fear of being not sure if you doing it right, by having conversation during this session and sharing my approach and getting the validation gave me so much confidence. 
• We can always prioritise(by getting what is important from the team) which part or where to explore and come up with risks.
• Its not just about finding issues while exploring but also finding useful information.
• Technology can always give us troubles, even if you have back device as an option :D. We did face lot of unstable connection issues which is part of the remote pairing challenges but we overcame by switching to back up devices we both had. 

We could have really continued for another hour or so if we have not had this technical difficulties. Simon did mention that he would be happy to collaborate again which was awesome. Thanks to Simon for sharing all the valuable information and being part of my #TestingTour. 

Testing Tour Stop #7 : Pairing up on Restful-Booker-Platform with Niranjani

It was the time for my next #TestingTour stop number 7 with Niranjani where we paired up on restful booker app. There were few amazing things about my learning partner :

• I met my pairing partner at Hustesf Conference at Budapest in 2019
• We both are Angie Jones mentees 
• Niranjani as well is on her #TestingTour

Had another session on my #TestingTour with @RanjaniRambles and paired up on restful booker. I have been trying to set up since long but never got it running. Thank you so much for this session @RanjaniRambles 😊🙏 pic.twitter.com/lyW84bxLQl

— Parveen (@Parveen_Khan10) January 15, 2020

Session

We started off our session by cloning the restful-booker-platform from the github page and launched it in Eclipse IDE. 

Resftul-Booker-Platform cloned and opened in Eclipse IDE

Next steps was to check based on the requirements, if I have Maven, Node, NPM and JDK installed and which versions did I had.

So first we checked if I had NPM installed and if its already installed which version it was by running the command -- npm -version from command prompt. I had 6.12.0 version installed which was the required version for restful-booker-platform.

Next I had to check if I had maven installed by executing - mvn -version from command prompt again and I had Apache Maven 3.6.3 version and the requirement for restful-booker-platform was 3.6.2 so that was fine.

Then I checked if I had Node installed and the version if its installed by executing - node -v from command prompt. I had v12.13.0 which was as per the requirements. 

Now next step was to check Java and JDK , we faced lot of challenges here when we were trying to set this up as I had windows and Niranjani was used to Mac. It's weird that even the most common and simple thing gets challenging when we are trying really hard to complete something 😁

After all those challenges we were able to set up all the requirements Yay!! 

As I my laptop was running java version 8 we then went into pom.xml file of each service and changed the version for each of them to 8 and saved the changes to ensure the target version is 8.

Now next we were set to build the and check if its successfull so we executed the command build_locally.cmd . We had some failures here in fact it took quiet a lot of our time in trying to figure where the issue was and then trying to resolve it. Then we went back into each folder for each service and made sure the pom.xml had been changed to version 8 and all the changes had been saved. 

Then finally the build was successful and next we executed the command - run_locally.cmd. And this is what we were able to view on - http://localhost:8080/

We also tried to run end to end tests before the time was up for our session.

Learnings

• Being patient and going through each error at a time and try to resolve it. When I see loads of errors, I loose my patience and sometimes I try to give up on trying further. In this session Niranjani had so much patience to read each error and figure out what and where the problem was and then tried to resolve it.
• When you cannot find a solution for the error try various ways to find it on Google. Google is your solution finder if we try to frame our questions well and try to find the answers. Not just that but try to use different answers to find the solution.
• Niranjani was very well organised in following each step at a time and going through the readme file again and again if something wasnt clear while executing the commands.
• Initially I was bit embarrased that I used the entire session for only setting up restful-booker-platform and dint use it for api testing or anything else. I realised that sessions might go in a different direction and not always as planned. But either ways the end goal was to pair up, learn, share and most importantly enjoy the session which we both did. 

It was really to great to pair with Niranjani to do this session. As I mentioned earlier if anyone is interested to pair with me or Niranjani as she as well is on her #TestingTour please reach out on twitter.