What does it take to do SmartQA? Thoughtful pause, multidimensional thinking, sensitivity and awareness and designing for robustness/testability. A short crisp article continuing from the prior article outlining five more thoughts on what it takes to do SmartQA. Doing SmartQA is about visualising the act in one’s mind and taking steps to being robust and enabling rapid easy validation, outlined in this crisp article FIVE *more* thoughts on ‘Doing SmartQA’ in the expandMind section.
In this edition of SmartBites, listen to two great pieces of advice from Vivek and Shivaji on ‘reinvent yourself’ and ‘staying in sync’ in today’s rapid dev as “Smart Advice #2“. In the nanoLearning section Jawahar Sabapathy helps us understand containerisation & microservices and its role in today’s architecture.
What does it take to do SmartQA? Thoughtful pause, multidimensional thinking, sensitivity and awareness and designing for robustness & testability. A short crisp article continuing from the prior article outlining FIVE MORE thoughts, on what it takes to do SmartQA.
What does it take to do SmartQA? How can I do less and accomplish more? What parts of this are human-powered & machine-assisted? A short crisp article outlining some thoughts, five for now on what it takes to do SmartQA.
It takes a brilliant mindset, intelligent exploration, diligent evaluation, keen observational skills, tech savviness and continual adjustment. It is about being logical yet be creative, it is about being disciplined yet be random, it is about exploring the breadth and depth, it is about understanding deeply and also finding blind spots about being bundled by time but be unlimited/unbounded with the possibilities. Doing SmartQA is about doing mindfully, in a state of brilliant balance.
#1 What does it take to do SmartQA?
A deductive ability of a mathematician, creativity of an artist, mind of an engineer, value perception of a businessman, technical savviness, empathy, doggedness and nimbleness, all finely honed to do less and accomplish more.
#2 Humans & Machines : Doctors & diagnosis
In today’s medicine, we know that machines play a huge part in diagnostics and treatment. They help us see internals more clearly, enable us to get to the hard-reach parts, perform rapid tests to analyse problems , monitor tirelessly to help us correct our actions. So is the doctor’s role redundant? Ouch no! The skill of the doctor in diagnosis and treatment be it via medicine or surgery is far more required now in the complex world of disease, business and law. To assist in this ever increasing complexity, machines are becoming integral for the job.
Much like this is software testing, the act of diagnosing of software for issues. Tools/automation are integral to testing that a skilled test/QA/SW engineer uses. It is about “doing SmartQA” which is a brilliant combination of “human powered and machine assisted” . The WHAT to-do is human while HOW-to-do is when’re machine helps.
Doing SmartQA is about intelligent/smart WHAT-to-test/WHAT-to-test-for/WHERE-to-test-on with smart enablement of HOW-to-test using machine/tools. It ain’t automated testing or manual testing and getting rid of the latter or machines find issues on itself.
#3 On Minimalism
I have always practiced minimalism, of doing least work with superior outcomes. Have never been a fan of more tests and therefore needing to tools to accomplish these in the context of software. Of course I exploit tools to brilliant work. Let us apply this to ‘doing SmartQA’.
We talk about left shifting, of TDD, of wanting to find issues earlier. We emphasise units tests and automating these. Are we shifting the objective to doing more unit tests? The purpose was to produce ‘cleaner units’, implying heightened sensitivity to issues via TDD and writing good code in the first place, of adopting cheaper static means to uncover these may be missed before resorting costlier automated unit tests.
Doing SmartQA is really about ’not doing’, well doing minimally really. It is not doing more and therefore needing to adopt tools. So heighten your sensitivity, build good code habits, use mental aids like smart checklist and of course exploit software tools to do the heavy lifting of tests. After all, don’t we all want to adopt wellness rather than expend effort to diagnose potential illness? And I bet you want an doctor to check out before they ‘outsource’ the finding to machines.
#4 Brilliant engineering
Is testing a mere act of uncovering bugs? I think not. It is really a mindset to clarify a thought. When we develop something, in this case code, a smart testing mindset enables us to step outside of being the producer into
the shoes of end users, empathise, see their point of view, appreciate what their environment looks like and understand what all can go wrong so that we produce clean code. At the worst case, put hooks inside code to give us more information as to how code is being buffeted, so that we may examine later and refine the code.
Doing SmartQA is not just about finding bugs but getting into the mindset of ‘Brilliant engineering’.
#5 See better, cover more, test less
A good ‘world view’ enables us to ensure great coverage in testing. Is coverage limited to execution only or does it allow us to see better?
Coverage is about enabling us to see better from all angles. It is not about merely ascertaining if test(s) could-be/are effective. Enabling a viewpoint from USERS, ATTRIBUTES, ENVIRONMENT, CODE, ENTITIES allows us to see from multiple angles, sensitising us to deliver brilliant code with less testing/validation. Of course it does help us significantly judge the quality of test cases and testing also.
Viewpoints from USERS, ATTRIBUTES, ENVIRONMENT, CODE, ENTITIES
Doing SmartQA is more than just doing, it is about significant enablement to see better, heighten sensitivity and accomplish more.
You may find this article “50 Tips to SmartQA” interesting. Check it out!
What does it take to do SmartQA? How can I do less and accomplish more? What parts of this are human-powered & machine-assisted? It takes a brilliant mindset, intelligent exploration, diligent evaluation, keen observational skills, tech savviness and continual adjustment. It is about being logical yet be creative, it is about being disciplined yet be random, it is about exploring the breadth and depth, it is about understanding deeply and also finding blind spots about being bundled by time but be unlimited/unbounded with the possibilities. Doing SmartQA is about doing mindfully, in a state of brilliant balance, outlined in this crisp article five thoughts on ‘Doing SmartQA’ in the expandMind section.
“A typical accident takes seven consecutive errors” states Malcolm Gladwell, this notion is reflected in Mark Buchanan’s book “Ubiquity”too. The article in the beEnriched section “Seven consecutive errors = A Catastrophe” dwells upon ‘How do you ensure that potential critical failures lurking in systems that have matured can still be uncovered?’
What does it take to do SmartQA? How can I do less and accomplish more? What parts of this are human-powered & machine-assisted? A short crisp article outlining some thoughts, SIX for now on what it takes to do SmartQA.
Unilever had a problem. They were manufacturing washing powder at their factory near Liverpool in the northwest of England in the same usual way – forcing boiling hot chemicals through a nozzle at super high levels of pressure. The problem was that the nozzles didn’t work smoothly, they kept clogging up. A crack team of mathematicians, dug deep into problems of phase transition, derived complex equations and after a long time came up with a new design. But it was inefficient. Then the company turned to its biologists, who had no clue of phase transition or fluid dynamics, but they solved it!
The biologists took tens copies of nozzle, applied small changes in each and subjected them to failure by testing them. After 449 failures they succeeded. Progress had been delivered not through a beautifully constructed master plan but by rapid interaction with the world. A single outstanding nozzle was discovered as a consequence of testing and discarding 449 failures. Check out the book “Black box thinking” in the expandMind section.
“A typical accident takes seven consecutive errors” states Malcolm Gladwell, this notion is reflected in Mark Buchanan’s book “Ubiquity”too. The article in the beEnriched section “Seven consecutive errors = A Catastrophe” dwells upon ‘How do you ensure that potential critical failures lurking in systems that have matured can still be uncovered?’
In this edition of SmartBites, listen to “A mosaic of testing” from NINE practitioners around the world on failures, tools, unit test, clean code, Agile, TDD, feeling & relationship.
In the nanoLearning section Raja Nagendra Kumar outlines the role of refactoring, unit testing in producing clean code. He states this very interestingly as “Technical debt is fat, clean code is liposuction” and crisply explains the act of producing clean code.
“A typical accident takes seven consecutive errors” states Malcolm Gladwell this notion is reflected in the Mark Buchanan’s book “Ubiquity”. This article dwells upon ‘How do you ensure that potential critical failures lurking in systems that have matured can still be uncovered?’
TEN tips for a developer to enable delivery of brilliant code and TWELVE tips to become a modern smart tester is what this article is about. Curated from two earlier articles that I wrote.
What are my TEN tips for dev to deliver brilliant code? Here it is visualised as mind map!
Minmap of TEN tips for a dev to deliver brilliant code
In this edition of SmartBites, listen to four snippets of brilliant advice from Sudhir, Zulfikar, Girish & Jawahar on ownership mindset, big picture, building with quality and understanding internals to validate well in the video “Smart Advice #1“
In the ‘beEnriched’ section are 22 tips to smart dev & test, TEN tips for a developer to enable delivery of brilliant code and TWELVE tips to become a modern smart tester is what this article is about.
In the nanoLearning section Tathagat Varma beautifully expounds as to what Agility is. He says agility is actually the ability of an organization, in some sense taking a biological definition, somebody or a unit which has an ability to respond to the external stimuli and ensure that their own survival is assured. In the video “Agility – A beautiful explanation“
“It is easy to make perfect decisions with perfect information. Medicine asks you make perfect decisions with imperfect information” says Siddhartha Mukherjee in the book “The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes from an Uncertain Science”. Check out what this wonderful book is about HERE!
TEN tips for a developer to enable delivery of brilliant code and TWELVE tips to become a modern smart tester is what this article is about. Curated from two earlier articles that I wrote.
In the world abuzz with AI, researchers expect AI to outsmart humans at all tasks and jobs within decades, enabling a future where we’re restricted only by the laws of physics, not the limits of our intelligence. MIT physicist and AI researcher Max Tegmark separates the real opportunities and threats from the myths, describing the concrete steps we should take today to ensure that AI ends up being the best — rather than worst — thing to ever happen to humanity in this video “How to get empowered, no overpowered by AI“
In the ‘beEnriched’ section I have curated a nice article “A short primer on AI” from six interesting articles, starting with a glossary on AI, delving into tacit knowledge as codified via ML going onto understanding the difference between ML & AI. A quick peek into deep learning and challenges of explaining the patterns ending with an interesting piece on AI written by an AI program.
“It is easy to make perfect decisions with perfect information. Medicine asks you make perfect decisions with imperfect information” says Siddhartha Mukherjee in the book “The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes from an Uncertain Science”. Check out what this wonderful book is about HERE!
This article is curated from SIX articles as a quick primer on AI. Starting with glossary on AI, it delves into tacit knowledge as codified via ML going onto to understanding the difference between ML & AI. A quick peek into deep learning and challenges of explaining the patterns ending with a interesting piece AI written by an AI program
In today’s world of heightened expectations, what does an organisation and end users expect of IT application team? Zulfikar Deen says end users expect application to work 100%, nothing less, and has a contrarian opinion on DevOps. He also says that management expects to showcase business benefits and hence it is necessary to bake-in metrics of adoption, usage & usability into the application… and much more in the SmartBites video Expectations of end users & management from IT team.
(1) Be disciplined, but stay creative (2) Ask questions, find answers (3) Observe well, see things that are hidden and many more.
“It is easy to make perfect decisions with perfect information. Medicine asks you make perfect decisions with imperfect information” says Siddhartha Mukherjee in the book “The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes from an Uncertain Science”. Check out what this wonderful book is about HERE!
In today’s world of continuous testing, test automation plays a vital part in ensuring the health of released code. It is no more about testing, it is about automating the whole lifecycle of build-test-deploy in the world of Agile/DevOps.
Shivaji Raju outlines the shifts in automation in Agile development and what it takes to accomplish in this week’s SmartBites Video “Automation in Agile Dev“.
The article 15 categories of tooling for digital test automation in the ‘beEnriched’ section outlines an interesting visual on automation and tooling and outlines FIFTEEN broad categories that make up the modern digital testing landscape.
Have you used Sketchnote to take notes that is more effective and fun? Checkout the nanoLearning section where Anuj Magazine talks about visual thinking and Sketchnotes. And oh, in the “stayInspired” section is THE book on Sketchnote by Mike Rohde. An amazing book that is written by hand using Sketchnotes!
In this article I have tried picture(ise) the landscape of the plethora of tools for testing software which has moved away from just testing to build-test-deploy in a continuous manner. Keeping the interesting visual I have listed the FIFTEEN broad categories of tools that make up the modern digital testing landscape.
Sketchnotes are purposeful doodling while listening to something interesting. Sketchnotes don’t require high drawing skills, but do require a skill to visually synthesize and summarize via shapes, connectors, and text. Sketchnotes are as much a method of note taking as they are a form of creative expression.
