T Ashok @ash_thiru on Twitter

Summary
Over the years there are a few things that I do consistently to solve problems technical or business. The process is magical, to see the larva of an idea become a beautiful butterfly, the solution. This article outlines this as eight things I do as a collection of posters with crisp text.

Explore problem by puttering around, to understand it better,
to try out mini  experiments of potential solutions to germinate ideas.
The path to solving a problem is never straight line.
Focus, meander, move continuously,
observe to form a good mental picture.
After all, great clarity is key to brilliant problem solving.

As you explore, picturise the various facets of problem and
various solution bits as doodles, mind maps, or diagrams.
Be non-linear, use colours to enhance stimulation of thoughts.

Experiment with the problem,
see if you can spot similarities to prior problems,
connect to get a better handle to understand
and vigorously pursue possibilities.

As you explore,experiment,
jot down interesting observations,
ideas, solution possibilities.
Be terse, so that you are
not distracted from what you doing.
After all, quick notes help in assimilating better
and jotting down quick ideas as they come by.

Describing the problem, explaining ideas,
solutions to a willing listener is something I do every time.
It clarifies my thoughts,
enables me to identify solutions that have been dogging me.
And this is just me explaining,
not including suggestions and more ideas
that I get from the listener.

Sometimes when mind is filled with information,
struggling to process, clueless about coming with ideas, solutions,
I stop whatever I am doing, empty my mind 
and in the utter calm, ideas/solutions fly in gently.

At times when it has been frustrating
to see nothing emerging to solve the problem,
I have found it wise to discard the pursuit
for solution and do something else.
Deflect my mind and engage in something else .
And after some time, suddenly ideas flash.

Once an idea to a solution presents itself, I work feverishly on it.
Implementing, refining, continually polishing by working feverishly.
Totally immersed, all senses absolutely tuned to the act of implementation.
Magical it is to see a larva of the idea become the beautiful butterfly of a solution.

In this smartbits video “” Zulfikar Deen

( In this SmartBits, Zulfikar Deen outlines  “  Management expectations of CIO & IT team “. The video is at the end of this blog)

Whether the end-user organization is small or large, the challenges remain the same for both of them. For a large multinational multi-billioncorporation, or a smaller organization challenges are very similar. They could be related to security, adoption, consumer understanding, delivery, timeline or quality.

The difficulty for a smaller organization is that IT team is much smaller, not an army of people. They do not have a huge budget to ensure the same challenges are tackled better. With small and shoestring budgets, it is difficult to bring in newer technology and solutions into operations. Not having an appropriate budget is an important challenge, but that doesn’t mean that they will be left far behind. They still have to adapt, invent and have to move at the same speed.

The next challenge is that business leaders come across sound bites (for example Blockchain) from meetings they attend and are keen to implement. Our role is to ensure they distill it correctly and make sure they are used appropriately in context to the business, in relation to the readiness of the systems and ensure they don’t fall too far behind.

Another aspect to be looked at, is the level of board and the top management  CXO organization’s ability to look at technology. Often, CXO’s would neither be a risk-taking forerunner nor they want to lag behind. We need to understand what level of comfort the management has and then we need to play along with that. One needs to watch for a technology shaping up and as soon as it is ready for usage in the system they should start putting it in place.

T Ashok @ash_thiru  on Twitter

Summary

Efficiency is a given now , high productivity aided by intelligent systems will become a norm, so what is our role?  In this age of automated & continuous testing, efficiency gains are given and productivity is on the increase. In this era of AI systems, it is time we shift from productivity to creativity. 

Over the years there has been an interesting shift in how we engineer software. Starting with emphasis on process systems in the 90s to ensure consistency and repeatability, we moved on to enhancing efficiencies with tools and Agile processes. Now the focus has shifted to productivity and value by fostering re-use(components, libraries, patterns, frameworks etc), cross-functional teams and more recently, using AI systems.

Efficiency is a given now, high productivity aided by intelligent systems will become a norm, so what is our role? The future is about creativity, a lot of people say. 

In testing with extreme focus on automated & continuous testing, efficiency gains are given and productivity is on the increase. With systems built using multiple frameworks, deployed in various environments, with high business criticality, high expectations of users, the demand of future demands tech savviness and serious creativity – ‘SmartQA , that implies how to get work done efficiently with value focus driven from creative angle’. 

Here is a short summary from two interesting articles on the Efficiency -> Productivity -> Creativity shift.

Focus on productivity, not efficiency

In the article Focus on productivity, not efficiency   Aytekin Tank says Ford reduced the manufacturing time of car from 12 hours to 2.5 hours by improving efficiency, breaking the company’s Model T automobile assembly into 84 distinct steps, with a worker specialising in a task and using power-driven machinery to do the work.

The tide changed in 2015 from being focused on productivity over efficiency. Efficiency is about doing more with less whereas productivity is about doing more with the same.

He then shares four tips on how to lead an organisation with productivity:

1. Team productivity > individual efficiency – Cross-functional teams work on one project at a time.
2. Get out of the way – Stop interrupting  the workflow of team members with meetings that don’t necessarily require their presence.
3. Maximize your MVPs – Do not box talented individuals placed in organizational roles that limit their effectiveness.
4. Lose the “more is better” mentality – Focus on impact not staying busy

Creativity is the new productivity

In the age of A.I and machine learning, just being more productive won’t cut it. The future belongs to the creatives says Scott Belsky in the article Creativity Is the New Productivity.

In his picture of Human Productivity Parabola , he says we have now passed the point — call it the “Productivity-Creativity Inversion” — where machines (algorithms, robots, etc.) have become a better investment for future productivity gains than humans. At this point, we as humans are better off spending our energy on creativity than on productivity.

Productivity, previously scarce and valuable, is now abundant and commoditized, and hence we need to creativity, a truly scarce resource whose value is on the rise, he says. He depicts this as a picture consisting of three phases – The Era of Productivity Scarcity, The Era of Productivity Abundance, and The Era of Creativity.

He continues on to state that AI will liberate creativity, by allowing machines to take over the mundane tasks, enabling us to be more creative.

In this smartbits video “Design for Testability& Automation” Girish Elchuri outlines how design for testability aids in test automation.
 The transcript of this video is outlined below.

There are three aspects to be looked at when we talk about test automation. The first one is running the test cases, the second, invoking the functionality that needs to be tested and the third, asserting the outcome tests as success or failure. We can talk about test automation only if we can automate all these three functions.

Test execution
Most of the time, running the test cases is perceived as automation, but ideally it has to invoke the other two as well. With reference to running the test cases, there are enough tools that can be used and invoked, but in case of invoking the functionality, a developer can make a big difference.

Backdoor invocation
Normally when a product is being developed, the product functionality is accessible only through GUI. Developers should also provide a backdoor to reach the functionality so that one can actually test the entire product functionality in a much more efficient way without having to invoke the GUI. This is how developers can help in terms of test automation.

Test outcome assessment
In the third aspect of asserting the outcome as success or failure, sometimes it is not clear whether it has succeeded or failed because of some small state changes that we do not know how to check. So a suggested way is to have extensive logs, these are also called as the structured logs. While logging we put debug messages, information messages and error messages. There is another category that needs to be added, these are called test messages. In a structured log with test messages, it becomes easy for us to go and check the log and ascertain whether a particular test case has passed or failed.

These are ways how a developer can help testability in test automation – by facilitating invocation and assistance in assertion of outcomes of test result.

In an era where we are obsessed with productivity, it is not about doing more, of being busy that is deemed as high productivity. In fact it is the converse, of being smart, of doing less and accomplishing more.

Software tools help in increasing productivity by allowing us to do faster, cheaper and better. But the most powerful tool “the human intellect” can help us do lesser ad coupled with tools of speed, productivity scales geometrically. In these times of AI, it is necessary to exploit HI (Human Intelligence) to do stuff beyond intelligent machines to deliver a higher value.

Here are 39 tips to being productive, in the article “39 tips to being productive – Do SmartQA“.

T Ashok, @ash_thiru on Twitter

Summary

With machines become more intelligent enabled by AI, it is time we focus on creativity to think differently and exploit machines for its intelligence.
A focus in shifting to using right brain more will certainly help in the goal to “Shift Left” – that of prevention or doing less.
Good testing demands a great logical ability to dissect, decompose, analyse, synthesize, correlate, question, hypothesise, experiment, ascertain and make appropriate choices. It is surely a left brain activity. And tools take the outputs of these activities in becoming scripts to be used in an unattended mechanistic manner to reap significant benefits.

Having exploited the logical
abilities and the technology to do well and faster, what next?

Testing
is not just about finding issues, it would be valuable if this can help prevent
issues or find it earlier before issues fan out. This is what we call as Shift
Left, the ability to move left-ward in the software dev cycle to find earlier,
ideally prevent. Today automation is seen as an enabler here too with the
process, forcing one to think and come with scenarios/scripts before code
commences or very immediately after code so that whatever is coded is
validated. Given that tools are available in plenty, does not imply they have
to be used every time, as it takes effort to script and maintain it.

Minimalism
and simplicity are popular today, these can help in doing less by heightening
sensitivity to aid in prevention and leveraging existing assets. Being creative
enables sensitivity, the ability to not be pre-conditioned, to be random, to
see beyond the visible and to come up with interesting possibilities. We know
that covering everything from all angles seems impossible, certainly costly in
terms of time, effort and money. Yes, we do resolve to use the logical ability
to analyse risky areas and appropriately channel our energies.

The
fertile right brain can cut through the chasm rapidly and enable significant
benefits beyond the logical right brain. What does it take to cultivate a
fertile right brain? What are the ingredients to fertility?

1. Constraints – Setting up constraints enables creativity. When we are faced with pressure, we find means to do less, do quick and do well. It is like the survival instinct kicking in. Testing in short sessions helps in here.
2. Write less – Writing long sentences as part of note-taking or worse still using software to document outcomes distracts you from exploiting the full power of creativity as we become logical in forming sentences and ensuring its correctness. Writing tersely in short phrases. Colours – Stimulate the visual senses too. Use colour sheets, pens, pencils, highlighters. Go beyond the black and white.
3. Be non-linear – Sketch, mind-map, draw to express. Let not the act of writing be left-right & top-bottom deaden your senses. Sharpen creativity. After all minimalism is a constraint forcing us to go beyond to express sharp and crisp.
4. Plan, yet stray – Before commencing a session, draw up a quick plan as to what you want to accomplish. As you go about the work, stray when you find something interesting, explore and improve understanding. Be sensitive to the clock though.
5. Flow –  Enjoying the work enables one to stay immersed in the work, and that is where time stops, a state of being in the ‘flow’. This is when the creative side is most fertile. Sharp and observant, super efficient, light and nimble a state when the work and the worker become one.
6. Favour paper – During a session, to take notes, to jot down observations/questions, pen down to-do-actions, adopt a lightweight method. Using paper to do this is the easiest, also using Post-It notes, white board is super light, enabling one to stay immersed in the work and not be bothered about the act of writing/drawing. Using a heavy weight word-processor or a spreadsheet IMHO is a no-no, as it is seriously high friction. If you prefer software, use a light weight note taking software.

Testing
is not a mundane job of evaluation bereft of fun. It is not a clinical act of
evaluation that is done by machines. Our job is not just to write scripts and
feed these machines.

It
is true that in these times, the focus is on speed, on the act of evaluation.
Yes, a machine executes tests really fast and is useful in continuous
assessment. In a continuous development scenario, it gives us a sense of
confidence that we are marching forward and nothing is broken. But remember
that the ability to trust that it is not broken is a function of test
scenarios/cases.This is normally the result of intelligent thinking.

With machines become more intelligent enabled by AI, it is time we focus on creativity to think differently and exploit machines for its intelligence.
A focus in shifting to using right brain more, will certainly help in the goal to “Shift Left” – that of prevention or doing less.