After careful consideration, I have withdrawn my submission to Swiss Testing Day 2019.

I have spoken at the largest testing conference in Switzerland several times in the past years. My experience has always been rewarding and I had a lot of pleasure interacting with the delegates. I really liked the Swiss Testing Day, and according to the delegates’ feedback, they liked my sessions, too. So, I again submitted an abstract to the 2019 event.

There is a two-phase process with Swiss Testing Day. First, you submit an abstract of your proposed session, which the programme committee then evaluates. If your abstract passes the first round, they ask you for your slides upon which they decide on definitive admission. After submitting my proposal, I received a confirmation of passing the first round. Different to past years, the confirmation email, however, contained the following sentence:

• Please be advised that if your presentation is chosen to be included in the main program, sponsoring at some level is required.

I submitted my slides and also asked what that sentence meant exactly. As it turned out, they added an additional condition to their admission policy. Any company that provided some sort of services (e.g. me at House of Test as a consultancy), is expected to buy a sponsorship for the conference. I told them that this is not acceptable and asked for an in-person meeting. We had a long discussion, but it did not change their position.

After having made a reasonable — yet failed — effort to help the organizers understand, that a speaker’s responsibility is to provide engaging content and not to bear any financial burden, I withdrew my submission. I decided to go public because I believe that behaviour like this diminishes the quality of conferences in general. It favours the ones who are able (and willing) to pay over the ones who have a good story to tell.

It is regrettable that some conferences still don’t reimburse their speakers for their expenses and in this specific case even add costs on top of that. I find that unacceptable. Therefore, I have come up with my short list of conditions to speak at conferences:

1. The conference reimburses ALL speakers for their expenses (travel/accommodation)
2. For workshops and tutorials, I expect an honorarium on top of expenses
3. I refuse any special deal for myself

The above rules do not apply to non-profit events, meetups, peer conferences and any event whose main purpose is community building.

Here is my call to action for all speakers out there: Refuse to speak at conferences that treat their speakers unfairly. Come up with your own rule set and make it public. I do, however, understand that this is easier if you are an established public speaker. But if you are, your statement will help new voices to emerge. It will also help speakers with limited personal funds to come up on stage and tell their compelling story.

Let’s together work towards a more balanced relationship between conferences and speakers. The future is bright!

If you agree with me, please sign my online petition.

tags: conference, paytospeak, public speaking

As testers we try to remove all filters that prevent us from seeing the product for what it is. As barefoot runners we try to remove all fillers beneath our feet that prevent us from feeling the ground for what it is. Hah! Isn't it wonderful, let's indulge in exploring this hippie stuff and see some more striking similarities.

Exploratory Running
Your feet are a finely tuned exploration instrument. You cannot get a feel about the terrain before you explore it. By running on various surfaces you concurrently learn about the texture, decide on your next steps and design your path. Sometimes you may also find yourself lost in the woods and through exploration you'll find back to the light.

Automation in Running
Running in shoes is a labor intensive repetitive activity which will bore you to death and give you bad karma. As soon as you remove your shoes and transition into a highly sophisticated forefoot running style, your calf muscles will become spring loaded and will give you back the energy with each stride. You will have achieved partial automation of your running process. Then you can run it over and over again.

Agile Barefoot
I am sure — sooner or later — you will go through the following transition. You might enjoy running along a waterfall, but believe me, when you suddenly find yourself on sun heated black asphalt, your feet become incredibly agile and you will start to sprint almost immediately. In retrospective you should have laid out your route a bit more carefully on your (sc)run board.

Running Heuristics
Here are a couple of useful barefoot running heuristics: Run forefoot, be feather-light in your stride, don't go too far too fast too soon, take care of your sole, use a quality foot creme, don't break your metatarsal bones, tip your waiter.

Barefoot Reporting
Yes, your soles will reliably report to you after every one of your runs. Pachamama has given you all the information you need. Read it thoroughly and adjust your running. Don't forget to remove the crushed bugs from your feet.

Highly Cushioned Running Shoes
These are the ISTQB of running, so to speak. A highly scalable business model selling you something you don't need. Their marketing has been quite sophisticated and it has tricked people in believing there is value in it. Don't fall for such nonsense. It's not good for you and you might get hurt.

Factory School Runners
Oh, these poor souls! Still heel striking and not understanding that it neither worked forty years ago nor does it today. And they still wear these heavy weight "shoes". What a wasteful behaviour.

And after each satisfying run, have a spirulina-green-tea-smoothie with an organic kale salad, make a peace sign with your hands and don't forget to tip your waiter. Kumbaya, people!

BTW: If you happen to be at Let's Test Conference in Sweden this year, I will hold a barefoot running workshop. We meet on Tuesday, May 26 at 7:30am in front of Runöhallen. Don't forget to forget your shoes and come along!

tags: running, testers, barefoot

image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/wenzday01/6027317553

My Beliefs
I believe the agile and the context-driven communities are highly compatible and should make every effort to get married at once. The two communities have not been too close in the past and I believe they have not yet appreciated each other's value. My experience has shown that it becomes a winning ticket as soon as the two communities are exposed to each other in a professional setting. When it comes to education I believe demonstration is far more powerful than presentation. And that is exactly what we did at eBay.

Initial Setting
At the European Product Development organization at eBay we had five scrum teams located in London, Berlin and Zurich. They consist of highly skilled developers most of whom believed that if they applied all good development practices there would not be a need for any testers. Hence, they did not have testers aboard their teams. In parallel I lead a team of testers who occupied themselves in more waterfall projects offering testing services to other parts of the organization. No professional contact between the two teams. We decided to do something about it.

Transformation
About mid-year in 2013 we started to change the set up and place testers into the teams. It started with a first experiment, where Jan Eumann commuted between Berlin and London to offer his services to a specific project. Jan has vast experiences as a software engineer and consultant from his days before eBay and that certainly helped him to establish a service culture towards the team and boosted his acceptance. He later joined the team in Berlin and actively helped to bridge the connection to the business units in Berlin, with whom he already had good relations.

Earlier that year I hired Ben Kelly, who was one of the first testers getting himself fully involved into one of the teams in London. Since Ben is a master in finding words for what he is doing, he was able to convince the team that there was far more to testing than they initially believed. Ben has a rare talent of being humble and assertive at the same time.

We then expanded to the team in Zurich with Daniel Moennich early 2014. Daniel has a sound background in software engineering, which helped him a lot with gaining acceptance with his team. He introduced a lot of critical thinking at the beginning of the project and his approach of solving problems for the team in a calm way demonstrated his value.

At Let's Test in 2014 one of my missions was to identify yet another tester to hire for one of the teams in London. I spoke to many attendees and tried to evaluate who could be a match, which was difficult because the profile I was looking for required a sound level of software engineering knowledge and a ruthless mind of inquisitiveness and deep understanding of testing.

I then stumbled across Ioana Serban. I recommend you meet Ioana if you get the chance to do so. She's one of the most energetic testers I have ever met. Ioana is smart, technically proficient, inquisitive and will certainly not take shit from anybody.

Of course I made mistakes, too. At one point I hired somebody with whom I did not clarify what it means to be embedded as a tester in one of the teams. We both soon became unhappy and our paths went into different directions again.

Hiring the right people
Hiring people is a tricky matter because it is tremendously difficult to evaluate people in the artificial setting of an interview. Our process evolved over time and we found the following approach to be suitable for our needs.

I talked on the phone for about 30 minutes to applicants who passed my first screening of their CVs. I wanted to establish their general views on testing and get a feel on whether or not they could fit into our teams. Then they had to write a little application incl. unit tests. We evaluated their work in terms of elegance of their solution and the quality of their tests. If they passed that, we invited them for a full day at the eBay office and we did something we called "Sprint in a Day". The applicants were exposed to the teams we were hiring for and they had to solve some hands-on problems. In between senior people talked to the applicants and established an impression by doing behavioural interviews. All this helped us to gain a rich impression on applicants and if they did well, we hired them.

Uncertainty
When we decided to place testers aboard the teams I had no idea of how that was going to work out. It was a path of little experiments and learning as we went ahead. Our set up was that all testers were reporting to me but their day to day accountability was towards the team they were in. This meant that I kept my hands off the operational level and let the testers do what they were doing. As a manager this can be uncomfortable, since it is a loss of control and I as a manager — like many managers — like to be in charge.

I discovered that the "be in charge" had to take another form. Rather than involving myself in the day to day matters, I took responsibility to hold the community of practice together and make sure the testers in the teams exchanged their ideas on a regular base.

Outcome
Currently none of the teams would ever want to do without their embedded testers. Their opinion shifted not because I tried to convince them of the value of a tester, but because the brilliant people I talked about above demonstrated their value. Not only are the teams operating very smoothly with the current setup, but parts of the rest of the organization have suddenly become interested in learning how the European Product Development Teams handled their testing. What we have established is an incubation cell that will have significant influence on the whole organization. This is much more than I expected to achieve.

Learnings
Leadership is not control. It is also not about me. It is much more giving people the liberty to shine and not to take a center position, but to support the flow of what is happening by offering assistance where it is asked for. At one of our workshops the team came up with an Agile Testing Manifesto, which gave us an outline of how we work.

The experience with the European Product Development team of eBay has demonstrated to me that the context-driven way of testing is indeed highly compatible with the agile mindset. It is an encounter between two tribes, which both strive for craftsmanship and high quality of work. I hope the two communities move closer together in the future. People using software will gain from it.

tags: agile, context-driven

Almost three years ago I joined eBay with the goal of building up a team of world-class testers and changing how testing is performed in that company. It has been quite a ride with a lot of international travel and idea exchanges with a broad range of smart people.

I am proud to have been able to influence some fine individuals in their pursuit of becoming really good at what they are doing. I am grateful to some extraordinary talent from the context-driven testing community, who joined our team. It is hard to leave them, but — who knows — our paths might cross again in the future. I certainly hope they do.

There are two things I am most proud of:
I convinced the developers and managers of the five scrum teams in our part of the organization that having a tester embedded in their teams is a good idea. Their initial reaction was: Huh? Testers? We don't need testers! Today, their reaction is: There is no way we would do without a tester embedded in our team. I have married Agile with Context-Driven at eBay.
The other thing I am proud of:
Together with Ben Kelly we established the first and only testing education workshop we held for interested testers in San Jose and Portland. It has been a great pleasure to demonstrate critical thinking and tester games to a wider audience within eBay.

The three years at eBay have also been an intense learning experience. I have refined my views on what good testing is all about. I also learned how to navigate complex social systems. Today I feel more confident to negotiate outcomes that are mutually beneficial.

Farewell eBay, may you live long and prosper!

and:

Good morning House of Test!

Maybe I have not achieved all my goals at eBay and I am hungry for more. Maybe all past experiences have only been a preparation for what is coming now. I am joining House of Test to build up our Switzerland branch. We are currently looking for and hiring the finest testers on the market and I can promise you this: Being part of the House of Test experience — be it as a consultant or as a customer — will be breathtakingly awesome. To quote, and slightly alter the quote, of my good friend, Ben Kelly: "We will be different, and by different, we mean better".

I am tremendously excited to be part of the most vibrant consultancy company on the planet and expand its reach to Switzerland.

Our House of Test consultants will relentlessly focus on bringing value to your organization. They will not only do that by offering their services, but also by helping your own crew to grow professionally. If we can't help you, we will not be offering our services. But if we can, you will be amazed by our determination to provide you with the most outstanding service.

Does this sound appealing to you? Are you looking for external support by one of our fine consultants? Then let's meet, drink a cup of coffee and find out how we can help you.

Find out more about us here.

tags: ebay, House of Test

image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/frenchista/7213719436

Back in 2007 I went to the StarEast conference in Orlando and among other sessions I took part in James Bach's workshop on Exploratory Testing. At that time I was working for a medical device company and I was in search for a better way to do testing. The workshop was enlightening and I thought it would be a good idea to spread the message to other testers here in Switzerland.

I sent in an abstract.

As it turned out, there was a huge interest in the subject and I ended up in front of 300 people at Switzerland's biggest software testing conference Swiss Testing Day in 2008. You can imagine the nerve-wracking experience I suffered through as someone who has never spoken publicly. I was so nervous that I had to remain seated in order to hide my shaking knees and I just hoped nobody would notice my insecure voice. What an experience that was!

There was no mentor to guide me through my first public speaking experience.

Of course I would have loved to have had an experienced person on my side giving me feedback on my slides and somebody who could teach me how to speak and handle my nervousness. Unfortunately, Speak Easy did not yet exist at that time.

In the years since my first gig I have spoken at dozens of conferences and I believe I have learned a thing or two about it. At least I now think I know how to prepare and I find speaking at conferences is a tremendously pleasurable endeavour. A little secret here: I am still nervous right before I go on stage. The difference is that I know exactly how my system is reacting and I also know how to handle it.

Sharing is a great thing and I am proud to be part of the Speak Easy mentor crew. Let's work together and make your session a success. I am looking forward to talking to you.

tags: public speaking, conference, teaching

Exactly one year has passed since I joined eBay on July 1, 2012, and it has been quite a ride. Overall, the experience has been tremendously positive, mostly because the people I work with are both smart and a pleasure to spend time with.

Since my team is distributed at four different locations in Europe (Zurich, Berlin, Paris, London) and our projects mostly originate in San Jose, California, I am traveling significantly more often than in my previous jobs. For many people, air travel is tiring; I don’t perceive it as such. On the contrary, I enjoy the time on a plane because it allows uninterrupted time to read a book or do some thinking.

My team covers 12 European eBay sites in 7 different languages. In the past year, we have tested roughly 100 projects of features that were rolled out to the European sites. I am impressed by my team’s capability to handle all this.

There are many different approaches to testing within eBay, which often leads to intensive discussions with my colleagues in the US. In many ways, the misunderstandings are not unique to eBay. For some reason, there is a widespread view of dichotomous antagonism between manual and automated testing, whereby automation is regarded by some as a superior form of testing.

In these kind of discussions, I often appear to leave the impression of being against automation. Well, I am not. I am - however - against undirected/unreflected automation. I am against automation for the wrong purpose. I am against automation that is only done “because it is engineering”.

I am fiercely in favor of automation if it helps the team with their testing. I am forcibly in favor of automation, if it does the checking necessary to indicate regression effects. I am emphatically in favor of automation, if it does what automation does best - fast, repetitive checking of facts.

I’d be happy if one day the manual vs. automation discussion was no longer necessary.

Anyway, I am proud that my team does not quarrel with such lack of subtlety. They all have a sound mental model of how to do good testing. What more could I wish for? So, thank you team and everybody else in the organization I am in contact with for the splendid experience so far.

tags: testing, job, learning

tags: conference, observation, description

“If you never cry your eyes get all dirty, and you can no longer see” - Jerry Weinberg

There is no use asking for specifics about what is done at PSL because it might be the wrong question. PSL is an introspection into oneself, a mirror and individual thinking and processing.

more to come later...

tags: PSL, education

image credit: http://j.mp/XFQ1PS

Zounds! What a menacing title, you might think. Yes, I am fishing for effects and the word “Heroin” always appears to do the job. And so does “Fuck”, “Motherfucker”, “Fuck you!” and “Fuck it!”. “Cunt” isn’t bad neither.

As a freethinking European I find it amusing when you desperately hide these words behind tiny asterisks like “F*ck” or suggestive ellipses like “F…”. Come on, prude people, get a life! None of you has a problem spelling the word “kill”, do you? Fucking is pure pleasure, killing is not. What’s wrong with you people?

Admittedly, fucking is not the topic of this post, but after the highly screened and politically correct ebaytechblog post, I am gasping for some “political incorrectness”-air. So - if you allow me - fuck you all!

The topic is Twitter and its importance to the context-driven community. As I see it there is the twin fix of Twitter and Skype that do the job. They both keep the network connections alive. Twitter plays an important role in the dog-sniffing activities of the people in the context-driven world. Some friendly hellos, fervent fights about semantics and an abundance of pleasurable disputes and useful links.

Whenever there is a need to either take the discussion offline or elaborate on something more in-depth, Skype is the tool of choice. I have had many good discussions both on Twitter and Skype. All good so far.

Only that there is a problem here: Twitter is a terrible attention grabber and temporarily transforms - well, I don’t know about you, but it certainly does it to me - people into ADHD victims. In the course of a day there are countless checks on new tweets and there always is a strong urge to engage in discussions.

That is not very good when you should work on longer term projects, such as preparation of a conference presentation. One’s own vainness is also in the way of many things. It is flattering if your tweets are re-tweeted or favored by your followers.

I did an experiment today. My thought was: What kind of tweet would generate the most re-tweets? It certainly had to be crispy and short, unexpected, funny and unusual. This is the tweet I came up with:

QA = Questioning Assumptions

It produced a good number of re-tweets and marks as favorites. But why would this be important? I don’t know.

Still, Twitter plays an important role in maintaining the relationships between the context-driven testers. It is just a great experience to meet some of my Twitter friends physically at conferences. It is like meeting old friends you have never met before.

Semantical discussions on Twitter tend to generate a common view on the meaning of things. Twitter has a tremendous power to make thinking better and have people experience deep learning.

The one thing I have not yet figured out is how to actually handle Twitter in order for it to not rob a significant share of my time. I’d be very much interested in how you keep the balance of sanity.

Truthfully yours,
Ilari

tags: twitter, education, networking

‘This is a nice one.’ A very simple sentence consisting of five words. Yet completely unintelligible. What is ‘this’? What class of things does ‘one’ refer to?

It is indexicality, one needs to take into account. A word or an expression can be considered indexical, when its meaning is tightly connected to the circumstances or the context of its use. As an example, the word 'this' is only fully understandable if it is either accompanied by a hand or head gesture pointing to what it refers to or if in the preceding sentence indicates a reference.

• This is a nice one (Together with a pointing finger to a beautiful rose)
• This is a nice one (Preceded by the sentence: ‘We just found some gold nuggets’ )

Mitigation of ambiguity in direct human to human interaction is quite seamless and its procedure is mostly not even noticed. A facial expression, an utterance of 'huh?' or a short interruption with a clarifying question helps to create meaning. Meaning of words and sentences are mediated by their interactive use between humans.

As a tester it makes a lot of sense to be physically close to a developer who can fix a bug. Even non-linguistical indexical behavior, like a pointing finger, works just fine. I point to something on the screen and the developer is ready to fire up the debugger.

In written language this is a bit more tricky. And bug reports are often written in a bug tracking tool. It is just not the optimal choice for clarity. However, in a bug report, some of the ambiguous effects of indexicality can be mitigated by a clarifying screen shot. It provides the necessary context for understanding. Therefore:

• This leads to a 404 page not found (followed by a screenshot with a button circled in red)

Alright, boys and girls, be aware of possible indexicality the next time you write a bug report.

BTW: ‘Nice’ has always been one of these words that irritate the hell out of me. Noncommital, superficial and mostly just semantically muddy. Some time ago, the meaning of ‘nice’ was ‘stupid’, coming from its latin roots ‘nescius’ (=ignorant). My good friend George Carlin - in his context - could not have expressed it better.

tags: linguistics, bug reporting, writing, ambiguity