All posts by Mindful tester

Learning, Secure things

Losing gracefully

“Han Toan, something has to be tested.”
I got a short briefing, csv files and decent specifications. A senior tester and I had to test an interface. He started sprinting: opening a csv file and logging bugs. I froze. No time for writing test cases and reviewing them. I confessed to the tester, that I was uncomfortable with the situation. I tested a csv file, but I was losing gracefully.

Theory and practice revisited

The following text is translation of a text I found in a Dutch farm:

“Theory is: if one knows everything and nothing is right.

Practice is: if everything functions and nobody knows why.

In this company theory and practice are combined.

Nothing is right and nobody knows why.”

Learning to win

One evening I was playing Skip-Bo with my wife. My plan was to lose gracefully. So I forced myself to play the wrong cards. Her position in the game improved gradually. She was happy, so was I.

After a while I was holding too many good cards in my hand. There was no way, that I could hide them for long. I would either win or lose awkwardly. The last option was worse than the first one.

In the months after this clumsy situation I tried to repeat the steps during other games. What was the first wrong move I made? What were my following strange steps? Based on my observations I was able to extract a single rule to win or heuristic.

I think, that I might be able to find scientific evidence for my heuristic. But I chose not to, because it worked. That was my goal.

No log in required
During an afternoon session James Bach told about testing without scripts. He was in a hotel lobby and saw a computer. He described the techniques and heuristics he used to get access to this computer. At the end he succeeded.  

I was in the library. Killing my time with browsing newspaper articles. But that was not exciting after a while. I had an appointment within half an hour. In the meantime there should be something to be tested. I was still staring at the computer, when I remembered the story of James.

The computer environment had 2 access levels for normal users. A guest could use only basic functions, which were also limited. I did not have a library subscription, which would grant me a time slot to use standard office software and the browser. I could buy a time slot, but that would lower the challenge.

So I started testing the applications. There were many search engines for news and books. Then I noticed, that I could open the browser. It did not take me much time to go the download area. A document with Resume in the title drew my attention. I expected an error message, when I would attempt to open the file.

Then I actually opened the file. I had access to Word. And to personal data like name, address, birth day, …. I got more information than I had anticipated.

It was time to inform the information desk about this particular situation. One of the women acted adequately:
“Did you log in?”
“No. I did not log in.”
One brief look on the computer screen made her check the other computers in the library. She asked me the steps to reproduce the error. After my answer she continued with:
“After logging out the cache should be cleared. I’ll contact the system administrator about this situation. ”

I went back to the computer, which still showed the resume. I closed it. Then I noticed, that a pdf reader had been installed on the PC. One of the recently opened files contained passport in the name. One click gave me a high resolution full colour scan of a passport including social security number and picture of a fellow citizen.

I had made a little start. To explore in unknown environment. Without a script.

Mind trick, Psychology, Secure things

Déjà vu

Story number 1

My wife and I were enjoying the sun set. We had settled ourselves on a bench with cushions on the beach. A waiter came in our view:
“What would you like to drink?”
My wife answered:
“One hot chocolate milk please.”
“With or without whipped cream?”
“Without whipped cream.”
Then it was my turn to order a drink:
“One tea without whipped cream. ”
When the waiter went away, my wife remarked something about my joke.

After a few minutes the waiter came back with two hot chocolate milks without whipped cream.
“I did not order this beverage.”
“You ordered a hot chocolate milk without whipped cream. ”
“I ordered a tea without whipped cream. ”
The waiter was silent for a few moments. Then he offered me to bring me a tea.

Story number 2

When I was looking for a parking space for the car, one of my kids said:
“That car has the same colour.”
I said something like “A huh”.

I parked the car and my wife left to do some fast shopping. I stayed with the kids. After a few minutes I noticed movement in the rearview mirror. My wife had changed her coat, hair colour and glasses. And she had shopped.

“Something is wrong.” flashed through my mind. I turned around to have a good look. The woman looked me straight in the eyes. She was surprised. Her view shifted to the license plate. Then she looked to me with an apologising smile.

She slowly turned around, looking for her car. Then her eyes fell on a car with the same colour, the same model and the same brand. And off she went.

Breakdown

The waiter and the woman have some things in common: first they used the auto pilot (System 1). Then they forced themselves to think (System 2). This leads to the following graph:mindful-tester-deja-vu-systems-timeline

Back to business

The following story is fiction. So enjoy.  

Steve was waiting for things to happen. For more than one hour it was just him and his pen. The other stuff was boring: the same people moving on the screens in the same patterns. He noticed, that a pizza delivery boy parked his car on the parking lot. He just knew, that it was a pizza delivery boy. While many of his colleagues were regarding strangers as potential criminals, he just looked and knew.

The young man came to his desk:
“One large pepperoni pizza for mister Neal.”
“Sorry”, Steve replied. “You are not allowed to deliver, because your delivery is not on the list.”
Then a phone call came in.
“Hi Steve, John here. I forgot to notify you, that a pizza would be delivered.”
Steve checked off the following points:

  • It was the internal phone number of John.
  • He had an American accent with Scottish accent.
  • He was always late with meal notifications.

“Sure, no problem. One pizza coming up.”
“Fine. I’m hungry.”
Steve thought: “He always is.”.
He said to the pizza delivery boy:
“You can go the 6th floor. Mister Neal is wearing a T shirt.”
Steve thought: “He always is.”.
The young man nodded and entered the elevator.

Outside a car stopped. The same man came to Steve’s desk. Steve looked at the first car, which was still parked outside. There was something wrong. The pizza delivery boy looked genuine.
“He’s real.”, flashed through his mind.
Steve asked: “One large pepperoni pizza for mister Neal?”
“That’s right. Can I deliver the pizza?” with the same voice.
Steve looked at the monitor, which showed the same delivery boy in the elevator.

He looked to the pizza delivery boy.
“I have to write down the delivery time.”, while tapping 3 times on his watch. 3 short taps is S in morse: Social engineering threat. He felt 3 short vibrations of his watch. Now Steve had 3 minutes to evaluate the situation, before the alarm went off.

In the meantime another pizza delivery boy with the same face had come to his desk:
“One large pepperoni pizza for mister Neal.”
The same face, the same suit and the same voice.
“He’s not an actor. The body language is from a reluctant man trying to earn extra money for his study.”
Steve looked to the two pizza delivery boys standing for his desk: they looked like twins.

John was a hungry programmer: he ordered at most two pizzas at a time. Steve recalled, that John had ordered just one pizza. He pressed his two hand palms on the desk to push himself up. This way he concealed two small movements. With his right index finger he pushed the Down The River button. People inside the building could only leave the building: elevators would only go downstairs; doors would only open to the hallway. Etcetera etcetera. Annoyance crept in Steve’s mind:
“This is the real thing and my intuition failed me for the first time.”

With his left index finger he locked the control panel in front of him. While Steve was standing at ease, he casually placed his right palm on his watch. The watch scanned his palm and vibrated for half a sec: the alarm was confirmed. He imagined himself as a concrete wall. Now he had to stall, until the backup would come. The guitar music from the opening scene of Pulp Fiction started to play in his head. He defocused to get a better view of the situation. This way he could see the two pizza delivery boys and the entrance at the same time. Then tensome pizza delivery boys entered the building. Packed with pizza boxes. The trumpets in his head began to play harder.

Communication, Lean, Management, Mind mapping, Psychology

Fetching, fast and slow

Let’s start with a simple observation of the following sentence:

Do I communicate (without a mouse)?

If you were fast, then there is a high probability you were thinking: “The word mouse is used by the author instead of the word mouth. So the spelling is wrong.”

If you thought hard, then there is a high probability you were thinking: “The mouse is probably a computer accessory. So the question could be rephrased as follows: do I communicate (without a computer)?”

I once heard a great story from an experienced test manager René. He told me, that his project members were communicating with emails. It did not even change, when they sat in the same room. He just set a daily limit of 3 emails, which they could send. This lead to more face to face communication, which improved the project spirit and group cohesion significantly.

Breakdown

In the introduction I used a mind trick on you. This is a trick, which can be used to confuse people.  For the fast observations System 1 is used in most cases. This way of thinking provides fast, almost effortless way to digest information. Like walking to the office.

For the thoughtful observations System 2 is used. Doing complex operations like testing in the office. Both systems have been discussed in depth by Daniel Kahneman in the book Thinking, fast and slow. The title of this blog is based on the title of this book. And fetching is short for fetching coffee.

In March 2015 James Bach introduced the term testopsy. He analysed, what the tester did during a test. I thought about a post autopsy or blog post autopsy.  It is tempting to concatenate the strings post and opsy. But as a Dutch native speaker I do not take any chances. 

Just let me perform an autopsy for a blog post: how did I construct the blog post Do I communicate (without a mouse )?

Because I wrote the blog post, I have the original mind map, which was used as a basis. In the following picture I highlight, which System is used and the corresponding trends. System 2 is used in certain parts of the blog post and System 1 in other parts.

mindful-tester-mindmap-System1-Sytem2

A manager would say:
“This is nice. And that’s all. The relationship between the parts of the blog post and Systems is meager at most. ”

Time for a graph make over.

Graph SOS
There is a British car program, in which they deconstruct and construct a beloved car wreck. For people, who earn it.  And as a reader you definitely earn a better graph.

In case you did not read this blog post Do I communicate (without a mouse)?, please do. It makes the following graph understandable.

mindful-tester-timeline-system1-system2

In the graph above I show my usage of Systems 1 and 2 on the vertical axis. The horizontal axis shows the different parts of the post in reading order. So it is possible to observe, that System 2 is used less and less until the end of story.

A manager might be more interested in this graph than the previous one:
“So what you are basically stating, is, that people use System 2 for learning. And participating.”
Or even better:
“I wonder, whether System 1 is used during the meetings in my company .”

Breakdown 2

Over the years I saw a recurring pattern. Every time I boarded a project or got a new room, I had to change my coffee fetching list. And somehow I reduced the spent time. I eliminated waste: it looked to me, that I was lean. This story I carried with me for more than a year. Telling and retelling it to myself over and over again.

Then it was time to put it in a blog post. I started with the mind map with the condensed and descriptive title Coffee. The first branch contained the story. Then I added two funny anecdotes to add some flavour to the blog post.

In the meantime I had lost my favourite mug out of view: a bear, who juggles, while praising the owner of the mug. (That’s me.) After I had found the mug, I made a photo with my smartphone. The mug was on the foreground and my markers right behind them. Then I noticed my mouse: it was behind the markers and not on the photo. So I changed the view for the next picture: the mouse is on the background. Unreachable for normal use.

A few days later I noticed, that I was missing a photo with a funny text for the blog post. I needed something, that could be connected with coffee or tea. Then I remembered the picture of my mug, which was a major obstruction for using my mouse. A thought about communication entered my mind: Do I always need a mouse for communication? It was relatively simple to write an introduction from this point.

Most stories have a lesson at the end. I think, that it is highly predictable (and a bit boring). I wanted to give the reader a choice out of 3 lessons. But that was not entertaining enough. So I placed myself in the spotlights (again). If I could let my voices speak, then I would have a more recognisable situations instead of some abstract and concise questions without any explanation. I took the following voices:

  • The lean machine in me, cutting wastes on his way to the future
  • A woman constantly looking for her needs, while brainstorming and chatting
  • A service desk agent concerned about an implementation of a new functionality
  • A curious software tester looking for clues.

I somehow used a Dutch style form: the circle is round. I started with the title Do I communicate (without a mouse)? And ended with the same question.