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.

In this edition of SmartBites, listen to Zulfikar Deen on “Expectations of end users & management from IT team”. In the nanoLearning section Shivaji Raju outlines four key aspects of “What is Digital Testing”.

“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?’

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.

Enjoy the poster “It is not about finding bugs, it is about being sensitive 

In this edition of SmartBites Video, Shivaji Raju Expert Architect at Allstate Solutions helps us understand as to what test automation is in the new digital world and highlights the key shifts.

“Automating test execution in isolation ends up being more of a problem than a solution. Any automation solution either to enhance quality and to improve test cycles should encompass the tasks across test discipline. Automation should be considered a lever to meet the business objectives and not an objective itself.” More in the interesting article Automation in isolation is more of a problem! in ‘beEnriched’ section by Vijay Kumar Gambhiraopet, Test Automation Leader for North America at IBM.

“Approximate thinking” is a very necessary skill that allows one to rapidly work out facts quickly and rapidly understand. When I ask the simple question “How many hairs do you have on your head?” to workshop participants, the answers have varied from 5K-5M! Crazy variation, right? “The Art of Profitability” is a brilliant business book that inspired me to delve deeper into this. Read how the book inspired me in ‘expandMind’ section.

In ‘nanoLearning’, Raja Nagendra Kumar outlines four key “Habits to Clean Coding”: ‘Understand that DONE MOVES'(1), ‘There will be bugs, and for heaven’s sake, LEARN and ADJUST’ (2), ‘It is not just about functionality, constantly focus on NFRs’ (3) and ‘Continually re-factor right so that you don’t get into ‘fire’.(4)