30 days of testing

The guys over at the Ministry of Testing proposed a 30 days of testing challenge for july. If you are somewhat interested in testing and out on twitter you will probably have stumbled upon the #30daysoftesting hashtag. If not, well you missed out on something! In a nutshell: The challenge was to perform a certain task on every day of the month:

30 days of testing

As you can see, I did not put a check on every task, so you could probably say that I failed the challenge. But personally I think that I gained a lot out of it. So in contradiction to what is usually expected, I will start out with my personal summary and retrospective before having a look at the specific tasks.

The #30daysoftesting challenge made a lot of testers participate and share their experiences, ideas and tools. The great thing really was that known and unknown people joined in, each bringing a very unique flavour to the whole challenge. Personally I got to know some new tools (see below), read some very interesting discussions on twitter and on blog posts . You can get valuable insight on different topics, if you search twitter for the #30daysoftesting hashtag. And from a more retrospective point of view, I struggled with some of the tasks that boiled down to hands-on testing. Not really contentwise, but as far as time was concerned since my job is a bit more on the managing and coaching side of testing and it sometimes just didn’t fit in with my schedule. I actually fulfilled the tasks on other days, but since the challenge was to do them on a certain day that doesn’t really count.

But let’s get straight into the challenges now:

Day 1 – Buy one testing related book and read it by day 30


I probably checked this one a bit prematurely. I chose this one because specification by example is a great way to get different people involved in the software development process to not just talk to each other, but to talk together in a way so that everyone understands about what has been talked about. The book is great from what I can judge after having read 56% and certainly is a reading recommendation.

Day 2 – Take a photo of something you are doing at work


Day 3 – Listen to a testing podcast

This was a welcome reminder to get back into something I have abandoned since I joined my new employer in March. Up until February I spent a lot of time stuck in traffic jams while getting to work and back and I often listened to podcasts. My favourite ones being testing in the pub, letstalkabouttests and TestTalks. My new commuting time is about 5-10 minutes, and I really stopped listening to podcasts, because I always want to listen to whole episode at a time…yeah, lazy me.

Day 4 – Share a testing blogpost with a non-tester

Day 5 – Read and comment on one blog post

Next up was #commentchallenge – a challenge I actually try to fulfil every week and it really gets easier if you can make it a habit.  Funnily enough I decided to comment on Karo Stoltzenburg’s blog while she commented on mine. But that wasn’t planned or anything. Actually day 5 shattered the record for visitors on a day on my blog and I had a number of comments as well, so that was a great thing.

Day 6 – Perform a crazy test

This was a somewhat vague challenge as many people pointed out on twitter: what is a crazy test? Putting a salami in a glas of coke? Well, I decided to go for a somewhat standard test for me, but for which I have been told that I was crazy: Testing on maximum browser zoom. And hey, sometimes you happen to see things then.

Day 7 – Find an accessibility bug

I haven’t really done a lot of accessibility testing before, so I decided to have a look at Katrina Clokie’s great pathway to usability and accessibility testing. And I used this to check my blog:


Day 8 – Download a mobile app, find 5 bugs and send the feedback to the creator

Not much to add, I decided for pocket since it was recommended to me and gave myself 30 minutes time for an exploratory session (yeah, not that much, but that’s all that was left for the day…). Well, installation went smoothly and fiddling around with it, I didn’t really come across anything noteworthy.

Day 9 – Create a mindmap


Ministry of testing provided two lists with words that make testers either feel good or feel bad. Since these words were in quite a random order (at least to me) and led to some discussion, I decided to group these words in terms of semantic categorization and closeness. Interestingly enough, though not really surprising, it were the terms on the fringe that caused most of discussion and disagreement in the mentioned discussion. The closer a term is related to a core concept (testing in this case), the more widely it is accepted (i.e. leads to less discussion).  As you can see I only included the positive list so far, maybe I should include the negative one as well.

Day 10 – find an event to attend (online or face to face)


If you haven’t heard about liberating structures, have a look here. It is a great toolbox for improving meetings in terms of getting everyone involved and getting results.

 

Day 11 – Take a picture of your team

Seriously: No one ever said that I would have to share the picture. The challenge clearly just asked for taking one!

Day 12 – Doodle a problem


Day 13 – Find a user experience problem

Well, I knew of this problem before, but experienced it again that day. Actually I am already able to predict where I will loose the connection. And that is voice connection, no problems with data connections at all.

 

Day 14 – Step outside your comfort zone

 

Day 15 – Find a problem with an e-commerce website

Finding bugs on this e-commerce website was easier than for the day 8 challenge. Quite a few of clipping and translation problems, but this one actually stood out.

 

Day 16 – Go to a non-testing event

If you are ever in Lübeck, be sure to take one of those tours. Sightseeing from a boat is always an interesting thing to do.

Day 17 – Find and share a quote that inspires you


Day 18 – Find a broken link. And report it

I didn’t know http://www.deadlinkchecker.com/ before, but it came quite handy for this task. If you are testing, you occasionally stumble across dead links, but looking for them is a different story.

Day 19 – Find and use a new tool

see day 20.

Day 20 – Find a good place to perform some security tests

see day 19. Well, maybe not:

 

 

The Zed Attack Proxy is an interesting tool for performing security testing. I didn’t really get past installing it, watching some tutorial videos and playing around a bit, but familiarizing myself with it is in the upper third of my personal backlog.

 

Day 21 – pair test with someone

I failed on this one. And that makes me a bit angry, because I am a big proponent of pairing up and sharing knowledge.

 

Day 22 – share your favourite testing tool

Sharing a brain is pretty hard to do, so this one will have to do. And I bet (and hope) that bugmagnet is the most recommended tool for this day.

 

Day 23 – Help someone test better

I didn’t participate in this challenge due to other social events, but this is a truly remarkable thing. Hats off, Danny!

 

Day 24 – Connect with a tester who you haven’t previously connected with

There was a weekend testing Europe session that day. If you don’t know WTEU yet, better get to know it! Great way to connect with testers from all around Europe and beyond.

Day 25 – Contribute to a testing discussion

We had our regular tester’s meeting that day over at Mach AG, which is a great community of practice with interesting test-related discussions every time, so that’s a big check, even without a tweet.

 

Day 26 – Invite a non-tester to a test event


Day 27 – Say something nice about the thing you just tested

I didn’t do any hands on testing that day, so I missed this one out (again). But this challenge to me is about a paradigm shift. Traditionally testers pointed out what was wrong with something. So saying something nice was not really part of the game. Nowadays, with an evolved testing understanding focusing on giving feedback, saying nice things comes more naturally as part of a broader feedback culture.

 

Day 28 – Summarise an issue in 140 characters or less

Again, no hands-on testing that day. But being concise is certainly a skill every tester should possess.

 

Day 29 – Find an out by one error


Day 30 – Give someone positive feedback

Well, this is an extension of day 27 to me (saying something nice without anyone hearing isn’t that helpful, isn’t it?) and since positive reinforcement has been one of my mainstay as a coach, this comes naturally to me and I do so quite often. Positivity ftw!