Analogies are helpful, not because they come with truths, but because they can help you highlight and think in different ways about the phenomena you are comparing with.
I think you can pick any subject you know a lot about, and after some thinking, interesting things will emerge.

The important moments

If two chess players are at about the same strength, the winner often is the player that realizes at which stage it is necessary to re-think the strategy very carefully. Some moves are more important than others.
For software projects that don't go perfectly well, and when unknown things happen, the better activities might be straightforward, or require a lot of consideration and creativity.

Technique

There are many typical methods that every good chess player must know about (forks, rook endings etc.) in order to see opportunities and apply them in the right situations.
Software projects differ much, much more than chess games, but there are many available quicktests, tricks and test design techniques that you can make good use of, if you know them well.

Opening Theory

In chess there has been an enormous amount of analysis of different opening moves, and a player has a great advantage if she knows a lot about how to start games, and the typical positions and strategies that are likely.
Since each project have a new starting position, and there are too many unknown elements, we can't have this in testing.

Understand what is important

In chess there are some key elements the player needs to think about (material, development, centre, king's safety, pawn structure etc.), but in each game these different aspects have different importance; it doesn't matter if you have a great advantage on the Queen's side if your opponent is mating in three.
It is the same in testing, we might know beforehand which areas and attributes that matter, but since testing can't be complete, and unknown things always happen, we need to adjust and focus on all those things that are most important.

Time trouble

If you spend too much time on your moves, you will end up in time trouble, and once there, it is a much bigger risk of making big mistakes.
We can get in the same situation in testing (e.g. a fixed release date, even though everything else has been pushed), with the main difference that the test team have little chance of avoiding this by their own means, we just have to make the best out of it.

"It is better with a bad plan, than no plan at all"

When you learn chess, you are often told that you must have a plan, that having no plan is a bigger mistake. Later, I have realized that a bad plan probably is worse, but by always creating a plan, you get better at it.
So we have the same in testing: it is essential to have a plan, and a bad plan is better than no plan from a learning perspective.

Practicing

There are many ways to learn chess, but a key element is to play a lot; and I think it is the same for testing.

Analysis of games

After a competition game where you have played for a couple of hours, it is common that the two opponents sit together and go through the game, move by move. They talk about their thinking, and examine what would have happened if better moves had been chosen.
The exact same thing is difficult to do for testing, but detailed retrospectives of important decisions or bugs can be a great learning exercise, and we should do more of this. Maybe directly after a pair session?

Classic Games

When learning chess you study the history, look at classic games that you learn from and get inspired by.
We don't really have this in software testing, but I hope we eventually will have more written details about successful testing projects.

Diversity

The people playing chess are of all different types, and like in testing with all types of backgrounds. Maybe the concentration of peculiar people is higher, both in chess and testing; this is a good thing.

Fun

You learn more when enjoying yourself, both in chess and in software testing.
When making comparisons it can be fair to list the most important differences:
* Chess is a game, testing isn't.
* Team work and collaboration is very different.
* Chess has a defined play area, and a specific set of pieces; and this is certainly not the case for any two software projects.

"The European Testing Excellence award 2009 goes to Anne Mette Hass" Those were the words that I did not hear; said by Dorothy Graham at the EuroSTAR conference, as I lay in my bed after having left EuroSTAR prematurely with a very nasty cold. I would have loved to be on stage and receive the award from Dorothy, but even if I had known, I don't think I would have been able to. Such is life - but that hiccup does not reduce my joy and gratefulness at having received the award.  

Dorothy had to call me on the 'phone and tell me. As she did, my first feeling was surprise, and then I felt very touched and grateful. And those feelings have not disappeared, but rather grown as I'm trying to get used to the thought, that I (of all people) got the award. I'm touched because the award is an unmistakable sign that what I have tried to do has been recognized. That is a tremendous feeling. And I'm grateful to those who have nominated me and voted for me, and all the others who have brought me here. It has been a long and interesting journey and it has not ended here, far from it!

I suppose you could say that I have been brought up as a tester. As a child my parents took me and my sister all over Europe to see castles, concert halls, churches, and all sorts of other cultural institutions. No matter where we were, the first thing my father would do was to check out all the light bulbs in the room, and if one was not working he would point it out to us. My mother would ask him if it really mattered, and he would say: "Yes it does, I don't like it when people are not paying attention." I think he took it a little too far, but still it sits with me: I don't like it when systems are not made as well as they could have been. This is why I'm a tester.

I started in IT in 1980 shortly after having graduated as a civil engineer with only one short programming course in the baggage. All the rest I learned on the way. I spend 2 years in the IT department of a hospital, where the first attempt for an electronic patient journal failed, because nobody had thought about the fact that the nurses could not type - they had more important things to do. After that 2½ years in an engineering company make software to control if the dimensions of steel constructions were large enough. Following this came 2 years in British Petroleum, first in Norway on a platform construction site (never actually on the platform, unfortunately), and later in London. The next year I worked for a telecommunication company, and this is when I first remember hearing the word "test" - after 7 years in IT. My boss called from a site somewhere asking the team if we had tested the code corrections we had just released on the production system. Tested? Oops, no, we did not think we had. "Never release anything without testing it" she said, quite kindly, and I don't think I ever have after that.

The next 4½ years I worked for Digital Equipment Corporation in Paris, designing and coding a lot, and testing a little. But that changed when I returned to Denmark to work for a company making software for the European Space Agency, and was immediately put in charge of system testing. I wrote hundreds and hundreds of test cases, not using any technique but my gut feeling. We found a lot of failures in the products, but I think it had more to do with the quality of the products than my test scripts.

In 1992 came my first EuroSTAR - the first EuroSTAR in fact, and that was a revelation. 3 days with people openly discussing testing, not hiding along the skirting; and ¾ of an hour with "Introduction to testing" by Geoff Quintin. There was so much I wished I had known before. There still is.

Since my first EuroSTAR I have only missed 2, and I have learned so much, and still am. I have learned on courses I have taken, ISEB Foundation and ISEB Practitioner, and I have learned on numerous consultancy assignments in testing. The last 5-6 years I have taught ISEB/ISTQB Foundation, ISEB Practitioner, and ISTQB Advance, and I still learn something every time a teach. That is the frustration and the beauty of something you really know and care about, I think, there is always more to know, and the thought, "I wish I had known" still comes back to me from time to time.

This is what drives me: to know more and to share that knowledge with others, so that perhaps they will not say "I wish I had known" as often as I have.

I have met many people over the years, and there is no way I can remember them all and thank them, but there are a few standing out: Geoff Quentin, Dorothy Graham, Paul Gerrard, Mark Fewster, Isabel Evans, Stuart Reid, and Taffline Murnane - Thank You! And thanks to by boss Jørn Johansen for letting me pursue my ideas and supporting me all the way. And my family for letting my work also be my hobby. And all the others testers I met over the years. The award is to all of us - not just me.

I hope I have many years of testing left - and yet: I don't really want to be a tester any more. As testing matures it becomes more and more evident how dependent testers are of requirements, and it becomes more and more evident that if requirements are not 'good enough' to base the testing on, they are not good enough to develop systems from either. So what I would really love to do is work with requirements engineers on expectations, using the test techniques I use for designing tests and the concept of coverage to express expectations that can be used as the basis for development and testing in one go. I would like to contribute to make test-driven development the way to work in the software industry; to have requirements engineers, designers, and testers always work together as expectation engineers. That is my dream.

For the time being, I'll keep on teaching and practicing testing, contributing to the new ISO standard for a full test process, and hopefully getting more ideas for conveying my ever growing understanding of what testing is.

It also looks at ways that you can get to attend conferences, like submitting to speak, entering competitions like EuroSTAR's VideoSTAR and much more - have a read below:

The blogosphere is pregnant with conference posts these days. And good ones too I might add.

• In his blogpost conferences on the cheap, Matt Heusser gives some helpful tips on keeping the cost of attending testing conferences down in these difficult times.
• Matt also created a conference wiki where everyone can add any kind of testing event or conference that is taking place. A great source of information, that is still expanding as we speak. If you know of any noteworthy events that are not yet listed, feel free to add them. 
• Very recently, the Software Testing Club spawned an interesting testing conference discussion whether or not people are paying for conferences out of their own pocket. 

I think being at conferences is great fun. You meet peers. You talk and share ideas. And get ideas, as well. Occasionally, you attend a track that makes you go "what was that all about?!", but in general I get tremendously inspired. Not only from the track sessions - most of the time the hallway discussions provide some decent food for thought as well. Of course these benefits aren't always very measurable, but conferences are doing their very best to provide attendees with ways to convince their managers and prove the added value. Eurostar even provides a justification kit and a Conference Evaluation & ROI Worksheet for reporting on the ROI back home.

But there's always other ways: 

• You can get in for free as a speaker, but in that case there's some effort involved. Writing abstracts, papers, making a presentation. Can be quite a hassle - tit for tat. And you have to get selected of course.
• Some conferences give away conference tickets in lotteries. Slim chance, but you never know.
• Step out of the dark side and show your face to the community
  - be a video star. Are you ready for your close-up, <insert name here>?

EuroSTAR 2010 call for papers is open!

Hardly has the dust settled from EuroSTAR 2009 when the call for submissions for the 2010 version of this conference is made. Why is this so early? The call is made to give prospective presenters time to get their ideas together, and enable a quality and varied program to be assembled. This year the Program Chair is John Fodeh, assisted on the Program Committee by a Swede (Rikard Edgren), a Dutch lady (Nathalie van Delft) and myself from the UK. John's bold aim is to make the 2010 EuroSTAR conference the best ever, and as there have some very good previous conferences, that is a tall order. However, the quality of the conference will be determined to a large extent by the calibre of the submissions. The theme for EuroSTAR 2010 is "Sharing the Passion".

Not all of those who submit an outline are accomplished speakers, and the review committee are looking for a mixture of theory and practice, advanced and introductory session to enliven the proceeding in Copenhagen around the end of November. Perhaps you have presented a session at SIGiST or in your workplace in the recent past, and your talk was well received. Then try for a larger audience. All conference attendees need a varied program incorporating key aspects of our profession, but we also need the unusual. Few who heard the session 'Testing on the Toilet' from Google co‐presenters at EuroSTAR 2008 will forget the impact of the talk, but it was not a run‐of‐the‐mill presentation. It should be noted that talks based upon experience, what I call 'war stories', are always popular and well received.

Get your thoughts on paper, and review, rework and refine the ideas. Aim to make 3 or 4 points, as it is better to have a few well thought‐out ideas, rather than trying to pack in too much. Ask a trusted friend or colleague to give you their (honest) opinion. Spell check your outline, taking note of the information on length and the guidelines on the EuroSTAR website (/).

You may like to use something like WORD to format your submission, and then use cut‐and‐paste to submit via the web site. You cannot be accepted for the free EuroSTAR conference slot allocated to speakers unless you submit a proposal (which is stating the blindingly obvious). The bad news is that if you are accepted, the hard work really starts. But that is into the future.

Here are the key dates to note:

Deadline for submissions: Friday 05 March, 2010
Notification of acceptance: Friday 16 April, 2010
Finalised slide material due Not yet finalised, but "end of August" as a guideline
Conference dates: 29 Nov - 02 Dec, 2010

Do consider submitting an outline by 5th March. Your story could make the conference extra special for a number of attendees. At the very least, it will make sure that the program review committee have something to do in March, when something like 480 submissions will be whittled down to 65 sessions for what is hoped will be the best EuroSTAR conference to date.

Brits are usually well represented in EuroSTAR speakers. YOU can make sure that the speaking record is continued.

Peter Morgan, EuroSTAR 2010 Programme Committee Member

The 'traditional' call for papers for EuroSTAR 2010 is now open, closing date March 5^th, 2010. This year we are introducing a new and exciting way of getting yourself a place on the conference programme - become a movie star!!

This is a call for video's... we want you to make a short video telling us why you should speak at this years conference. We don't decide the winner, the testing community does!

Don't go hiring a Hollywood studio for a month, remember it's content that matters when it comes to video. So get out your home camcorder, or even your phone, and start shooting! Remember, videos only need to be between 60 and 90 seconds long. To show you how simple it is, here's Kevin with his entry (no, we don't take him seriously either...!)

There are no rules as such, but we may discount some video's if we don't feel the content is appropriate. Otherwise the video contenders will appear on the EuroSTAR web site on March 29^th along with a simple poll, and the video that gets the most votes wins a speaking slot at the conference.

Doesn't matter if you've never spoken before, or if you've already submitted 20 proposals through the traditional call for papers channel, or if you're a test tool vendor, or if you want to talk about something 'related to/relevant to' testing, it doesn't even matter if you're a sales or marketing guy/gal. It also doesn't matter if you've already been selected to speak through the normal channels, the normal limits on number of speakers from a company/country/on a topic, do not apply.

If you can get the votes, then we will make you a STAR.

We want to create a real internet STAR, so the winner, as well as featuring on www.eurostarconferences.com will also get some airtime on our Facebook page, and be awarded a 45min speaking slot at the 2010 conference. Yes really!

So what do you need to do?

1. Put your Steven Spielberg hat on, and decide on the content of your video

2. Make the video

3. Upload the video to http://www.youtube.com/ and send the URL to Kevin@eurostarconferences.com (don't send the video directly to us as it'll probably kill our email server)

4. Closing date for entries is Friday March 26^th 2010 (Yep, a whole 3 weeks later than the normal submission deadline - just so you don't get distracted!!)

5. Once VideoSTAR The Competition launches on www.eurostarconferences.com on Monday 29^th March, you need to contact your testing colleagues, boss, friends, customers, accountant, postman, dog or just about anybody who will vote for your video. You must do the canvassing, and it's really simple, most votes wins!

6. After that keep an eye on the online poll and you'll be able to see exactly how your entry is doing.

7. Voting closes at Midday CET on April 16^th and winner will be announced!

This is a call for video's... we want you to make a short video telling us why you should speak at this years conference. We don't decide the winner, the testing community does!

Don't go hiring a Hollywood studio for a month, remember it's content that matters when it comes to video. So get out your home camcorder, or even your phone, and start shooting! Remember, videos only need to be between 60 and 90 seconds long.

All Info on VideoSTAR and how to enter can be viewed by clicking here

People, Process and Technology are the cornerstones for any IT project and getting all three aligned is essential. We would like to have this reflected in the programme.

We strive to provide pragmatic and realistic information. Submitting a talk about your passion in a certain topic might be interesting. However, much more interesting is how you have taken an idea, concept or technique, you were passionate about, and put it to use. Real world passions (and frustrations) are preferred to idealistic talks. "War stories", indicating what went well, what went badly, and what we could improve upon, are eternally popular.

EuroSTAR 2010 provides a unique opportunity to share your passion in these areas with your fellow testers. The call for presentations is now open and we look forward to receiving your proposals.

Click here to view the full Call for Submissions for EuroSTAR 2010
Click here to view the Speaker Submission form for EuroSTAR 2010

I absolutely *love* Stockholm in wintertime. Pepparkakor, glögg, gravad lax... and Eurostar too. People keep telling me that I would probably love it even more in summertime, but I'll always associate those dark days with Eurostar. I presented my first Eurostar track there in 2007 - nothing but good memories - and I was selected this year as well. The Eurostar line-up is always pretty impressive, so it can be both intimidating and exciting to be a part of that. It's just a matter of keeping the intimidation level below the excitement level, I guess. As a boyscout, good old Baden Powell always told me to "be prepared". Now sometimes I wouldn't recognize a life lesson if it punched me in the face, but here's one that I did remember. So I found myself writing a paper and assembling a presentation during those hot holiday nights in Southwestern France. You just gotta love those early deadlines!

November 29

After an uneventful flight from Brussels to Arlanda, set foot on Swedish soil. Met up with fellow Belgian Mieke Gevers, a member of this year's program committee and in charge of the track chairs as well. I helped her carry some excess bagagge that turned out to contain presents for the trackchairs - you can't go wrong with Belgian chocolates and "jenever". We took the Arlanda express (easy and quick) to Stockholm C and a cab to the Rica Talk hotel.

November 30 - Tutorial day

On monday I attended a full-day tutorial by Michael Bolton called "Exploratory Testing Masterclass" (slides available here). Two years ago I attended his tutorial on Rapid Software Testing, which I found very valuable. Michael Bolton is an engaging speaker and teacher who invites you to think, rather than just sit and absorb theoretical matter. There were lots of exercises, including one on factoring (identifying dimensions of interest in a product). We were asked to identify all dimensions of a wineglass that may be relevant to testing it, using the "San Francisco Depot" - heuristic (Structure, Functions, Data, Platform, Operations, Time) - not new to me but always worth repeating. A lot of mnemonic wizardry to be found here. What about that handy mnemonic for oracles - HICCUPP/F (History, Image, Comparable product, Claims, User expectation, Product, Purpose, Familiar problems) - never again say that you don't know why something should be considered a bug. Care to take a ride on that test reporting heuristic called MCOASTER? Well I'll see your CRUSSPIC STMPL, and raise it with a FCC CUTS VIDS (Mike Kelly's application touring heuristic). Mnemomania!

Of course, there were plenty of other impressions that kept lingering for a while.

• A quote by Jerry Weinberg: "A tester is someone who knows things can be different" - true.
• "If it ain't exploratory, it's avoidatory" - made me laugh. 
• "A good tester doesn't just ask "Pass or Fail?". A good tester asks "Is there a problem here?".
• CHECks are CHange detECtors, testing is exploring.
• A complete debunking of some boundary value analysis truisms: it is generally accepted that the behaviour at boundaries is more likely to show erratic behaviour, but how do we know these boundaries? The actual boundaries in a system may not be the ones we are told about. That's why we must explore.
• Testing is "storytelling" - I liked that take on testing:

"You must tell a story about the product, about how it failed, and how it might fail - in ways that matter to your various clients. But you must also also tell a story about testing, how you configured, operated and observed it - about what you haven't tested, yet... or won't test, at all - and about why what you did was good enough."

The end of the session was foreseen at 5 PM. The discussions kept going on until 5.45 PM. I think that says it all. Later that evening, an international amalgam of testers set out to explore the possibilities of finding food in Gamla Stan. Eventually we found an Indian restaurant using that good old I.NEWTON heuristic (Indian, Nearby, Edible, Welcoming, Tasty, Open, Not-too-expensive). The end of a great day. Had some nice conversations with Rikard Edgren, Tone Molyneux, Ray Arell and  John Watkins (my trackchair) as well.

December 1

The second day started with a tutorial as well, be it a half-day one: Managing Exploratory Testing by Jonathan Kohl. Of course there were a lot of similarities with the first tutorial, but this was more of a hands-on session, where we could put Michael Bolton's concepts from the day before into practise. There was some theory about coverage models - SF Depot anyone? We ended up describing a whole bunch of characteristics of a table that we had never associated with an ordinary table before. Practical and fun. Certainly an eye-opener.

At that point I was still trying to get a hold of the person I was supposed to trackchair on wednesday. Originally I would be trackchairing my colleague Wim De Mey's track about regression testing in a migration project, but Wim had to cancel his presentation at the very last moment because of unfortunate familial circumstances. A replacement was found in the person of Mika Katara, from Finland - but no sign of him, yet. Oh well, time for a quick lunch, a tour of the expo and the actual kick-off of the conference.  Dorothy Graham opened the 17th Eurostar conference in style. She introduced the program committee (Tone and Mieke made sure Isabel Evans was also represented by carrying an air-filled balloon with a face drawn on it - I'm not sure if Isabel would be too happy with the analogy  ) and set the scene for the first keynote speaker.

Lee Copeland started this very first talk of the conference about nine of the most important innovations in software testing: the context-driven school, test-first development, really good books, open source tools, session-based test management, testing workshops, freedom of the press, virtualization and "testing in the cloud". Strange that he sees the context-driven school as an innovation - as far as I know it was founded in 1999; the first book that explicitly named it was already published in 2001. I agree with the freedom of the press thing. Testing blogs are appearing everywhere (guilty, your honour), twitter is on the rise. Lee is apparently not a fan of twitter. Neither was I - I always thought of it as encouraging the spreading of triviality, but I'm actually starting to come back from that. I noticed that a lot of people within the testing community are using it to share their ideas, give advice or call for help. And it gives a great deal of extra coverage to an event like this (see twitter.com/esconfs), so maybe I'll give it a try. Later. 

The rest of the afternoon consisted of a series of  short 20-minute tracks, which is mostly just enough to launch some provoking ideas, but not really ideal for a lot of content. Johan Jonasson talked about how he managed to save a project with the introduction of a structured exploratory testing approach. This track would have benefited from a 45 minute timeslot - there was no time to go into detail, which I found a pity. Next up was Julian Harty, who explained the concept of "trinity testing": short session of around 90 minutes per feature, where the feature owner, the developer and the test engineer work interactively through the software to share knowledge and ideas. Pretty interesting, since I also found out later that "the trinity test" was also the name of the very first nuclear test ever conducted, marking the very start of the nuclear age. Julian is probably aware of this - I didn't hear him mentioning it, though.
Geoff Thompson then talked about reporting - "If only we could make them listen!". Well actually, it's more the communicator's job to make sure he gets heard. It was a great talk - he was able to slip in the Challenger disaster and the Heathrow terminal 5 debacle as examples of how important messages were apparently not deemed important enough, with horrendous results. Knowing your recipients is key, and knowing what information they want as well. Noteworthy: a lot of people are color-blind. If you absolutely want to make sure that everyone understands your reports, shouldn't you avoid the reds and greens?
Besides being a sapient testing evangelist, Michael Bolton is also a human quote machine. He did this cross between stand-up routine and  political televangelism called "Burning Issues of the Day" (available here). A lot of wisecracks and eye-openers, the funniest moment at Eurostar for me. He was even able to win a bet by slipping in a quote about agilists and sex:

"The agilistas did not discover pairing or test-first programming. They're like teenagers who've just discovered sex. It IS great, but calm down".

The last speaker of the day was the same as the first one. Jonathan Kohl talked about how our urge to be "Agile" can distract us from our mission to deliver software that our customers value, while supporting our team. Agile can distract from skill development too. The term "Agile" has become big business, and lost a great deal of it's significance. So let's stop worrying about whether what we do is "agile" or not, and go back to calling it "software development". As far as I'm concerned, he hit the nail on head. I wouldn't have minded him talking about this a little longer.

The day ended with drinks in the expo and my attempt at playing a memory game at one of the stands. I kept failing epically. While I was trying to get asleep I found the ideal excuse: my head was already full of things to remember - no room for these trivial button sequences.

December 2

Right before the first keynote of the day I finally met Mika, whom I was supposed to be trackchairing in the afternoon. He was invited as a backup speaker on friday to speak on wednesday, was able to make it, but had to leave immediately after his talk. A true case of hit-and-run guerilla presenting at Eurostar! Naomi Karten then delivered an interesting keynote about "changing how you manage and communicate change". Her talk was built around the Satir change model. There's an initial status quo, then a foreign change-inducing element causing a 'POW', then chaos, after that an adjustment and in the end a new status quo. When people are confronted with change, they are experiencing a loss of control, and they often react to that in an emotional way. Important: listen, be empathic, regularly communicate the status of the change, even when there is nothing to report. She also used a quote that I well certainly use myself when feeling cornered:  

"Hofstadter's Law: It always take longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law"

By then it was time to pay a visit to the Test Lab that was set up by James Lyndsay and Bart Knaack. It was a Eurostar first, and I am actually wondering now why it took so long to have some actual "testing" going on at a testing conference. The software they were running was Open EMR, an open source patient management and appointment book system. What made it even more interesting for me is that I have been testing and working with a similar (not open source, though) system for a long time, so I more or less know what to expect (or what actual users of the software would expect). I paired up with Rikard for a while and found a whole bunch of issues by merely touring the application - we noted them for later reference. It is always nice to pair with fellow testers to see what they focus on, and what their reasoning is. The state of the software under test was something else. It showed some pretty alarming behaviour, and it was far from intuitive or user-friendly.

By then it was time for Eurostar veteran Erik Boelen, speaking at Eurostar for the fifth time already. I've known Erik for some time now, and his talks are always entertaining and relaxing in a way. "The power of risk" was his view on how to use a risk-based test strategy that "makes people talk", like Läkerol. His main message was (apart from the implicit one that testing can be fun *and* will rule the world) that they defined all the risks and used them as entry paths for exploratory testing. For the highest and medium risks they documented their test cases, and for low risks they just reported the results.

After lunch I introduced Mika Katanen (from the university of Tampere in Finland) and his talk about Automatic GUI test generation for smartphone applications. I am totally new to model-based testing and I was impressed with the brief demo he showed. His track went well, and there were a lot of people approaching him for a chat at the end. I do hope that he was able to catch his plane on time. Parallel with this track, Shrini Kulkarni held his talk about software metrics which I was unable to attend. People said it was good - I hope I will be able to see him speak some place else in the future.

Remembering the memory game disaster from the day before, I decided to unfocus for a while - my mind was getting stuck again. I teamed up with some CTG colleagues plus a wildcard named Tom and enrolled ourselves for the quiz that was supposed to take place in the evening. We aptly named ourselves "The Handsome Oracles", but it wasn't meant to be. The quiz was canceled later on, so we weren't able to put the money where our mouth was. We also worked out some testing limericks for the limerick competition - we didn't win. I thought they were good, but that's probably just another example of parents not recognizing the ugliness of their own babies. There's a good joke and an interesting analogy about that here. Gitte Ottosen ended the day with a talk about combining agile and maturity models which was chosen best presentation last year in The Hague. I had the impression she was a little nervous - which is completely understandable. I was telling to myself that delivering a keynote for a full auditorium like that sure looked like a daunting task - until I suddenly realised that I would be standing in that same room tomorrow. My unfocused mind started wandering off.

While the temperatures were taking a dive, the Handsome Oracles went into town for dinner. I returned a bit earlier than the rest to rehearse my talk and to get a good night's sleep while the (by then just plain) Oracles went barhopping. Haha! Life's good, but not fair at all. 

December 3

The last day of the conference, and people started looking weary. Ray Arell gave us a good wake-up call with his keynote on moving to an agile environment, based on his experiences at Intel. Ray's a great speaker (and a fun guy too - I might add). He described his hits and misses; the 'misses' are often the most interesting parts of experience reports. Lot's of good advice and some nice puns (Wagile, FRagile, Scrumfalls).

I stayed in the agile track in the big auditorium where John Watkins presented some material from his book on agile testing, aptly named "Agile Testing". John had gathered case study material from twenty agile projects and proposed agile methods for small, medium, large, off-site, and even off-shore projects. Intriguing, but upon hearing the idea of "agile best practises", my context-driven genes started to play up.

John was also my great trackchair and introduced me as "Filmstar, Rockstar, Tester!" At least, that was his own juicy summary after I mentioned to him that I had worked as a movie distributor before and had also played in a rock band. Granted, I also admitted playing a zombie once - a serious case of method acting. Anyway, his introduction loosened the audience a bit and I was able to present my track "A lucky shot at agile?" without any problems. I wanted to tell a testing story and I think it went well. I felt at ease (those wireless microphones are really great) and there were many questions afterwards. During the rest of the day people I didn't know came up to me to congratulate me with the presentation, which was nice. I took a long lunch and had a walk around the expo. I went back to the Test Lab to report the bugs that we found earlier. I didn't succeed in entering them all, which made me feel kind of guilty - I wished that I would have spent more time there. But I had a hard time choosing. It's a pity that test labbing also meant skipping tracks as well.

The last regular talk of the conference was held by Rikard Edgren, who is also a Eurostar regular. I had seen his presentation on testing creativity ("Where testing creativity grows") in 2007 and I liked it a lot, since it is also a subject that is dear to me. There's far too many people that think that testing is not a creative or challenging activity. This time he talked about  "More and better test ideas". He promoted the use of oneliners as test ideas - a brief statement of something that should be tested. These test ideas can then be used as a basis for test cases, or as a guideline for other types of testing, or even discarded when there irrelevant or when there is simply not enough time. I think Rikard's subjects will always be a bit polarizing due to their innovative nature - you either like them or you don't. I am a believer and it was a good way for me to finish the conference.

I missed the first part of the Test Lab result presentation since they changed the timing and I totally forgot about that. But I got the most important statistics. Over two and a half days, more than 50 bugs were found. My first reaction was: "Only 56? Man, there's hundreds of them hiding in there", but then I realised that people had been testing in the lab only for short periods, in between tracks, just as I did. I wonder what would have happened if hundreds of testers had a go at it, all at the same time. Bugfest!

After a short panel discussion with John Fodeh (next year's programme chair), Geoff thompson, Tobias Fors and Nathalie Van Delft it was time for the award ceremony. Naomi Karten received the Best Tutorial Award and the European Testing Excellence Award went to Anne Mette Hass. In the meanwhile I was dozing off in my not-so-comfy chair - these 4 days of conferencing were finally getting to me. A friendly woman on the stage was mentioning someting about a longlist of papers, and a shortlist, and a final selection of three, containing two Dutch and one Belgian paper. Now wait a minute... how many Belgians sent in a paper? 1...2... before I could make the math, my name was announced as winner of the ENEA Best Paper Award. Two talks at Eurostar, two papers, two awards... what are the odds of that? I was absolutely flabbergasted. That's actually three in a row for my company CTG, since Bert Jagers won the award last year in The Hague. The pressure is on for next year .

I spent the rest of the evening in the hotel bar, where all the testers with an early flight on friday morning were flocking. We ended the day singing an eclectic mix of Irish traditionals, Dylan, early Springsteen and - of course! - Abba, accompanied by a non-certified tester, who plays a mean mandolin. I love Stockholm in wintertime. It was a good Eurostar. Yes sirree.

I am just back from EURO STAR at Stockholm. As a ritual, and like an obedient delegate and speaker, I am narrating the experience. It was my first visit to Sweden, home for Alfred Nobel. The conference started with a bang - welcome speech by Dot Graham, the program chair for 2009 edition of biggest European software testing event. After her being first program chair at 17 years ago, she still appear to breathe same energy of someone who is attending her first testing conference.

Lee Copeland, the veteran of testing conferences in the US, who followed Dot as a key note, was at his usual calm and composed best. He spoke on next few big things in testing- a good list to watch out for. His talk also contained slides on good books for the testers to read. Probably it has become a habit for him to promote his book on "Test design" in each of this talk ... (I have heard 3-4 of them). He might call it as "Shameless plug" or "No... I didn't mean it include it here", I think he should stop doing it as the book sells on its own merit. Thereafter there were parallel tracks and everyone had a choice to go to the talk that they wanted. This time I like many others, had the power of twitter to spread information about conference, with the hash tag #esconfs, I was one of those many active twitters using tweeting about the talks, and happenings at the conference. Check out all tweets related to this conference here.

As it happens in every conference, much of the action was happening outside the track sessions, people meeting, exchanging cards, and fiercely debating on topics that they hold to their hearts. There I was, roaming around trying to see which group to join. Eurostar Test Lab was in interesting addition to this year's conference, run by James Lindsey and Bart Knaack - was a big distraction (constantly pulling passionate testers towards it and away from the track sessions). I spent few hours of testing and spent some good time with James Lindsey one of my favorite exploratory testing proponent. I logged few bugs too. It was a good experience. James reminded me to explore and find out when I had a question about a feature of the application that I am testing. Here is a report from Michael Bolton on the lab

Michael Bolton was an attraction, true to his image of great speaker and testing wizard. I rarely saw him alone, always surrounded by few people, Michael was just keeping them engaged with his teaser questions and people kept coming to him. His talk - "Burning issues of Day" was a presentation inspired by collection of white board statements of conference attendees, presented in an immaculate MB style. He took mock at several testing folklores and argued convincingly against standardize and over structured software testing practices. One thing that was really remarkable in that talk was Michael's ease and confidence - with which he entered the podium and started the presentation. He was at his total ease. Many wannabe speakers should watch him starting a speech and finishing one. To me, Michael gave an example of "what it means to be being oneself". Good learning there.

It was great to meet/see likes of Jonathan Kohl, James Lindsey, Fiona Charles and Ray Arell. In the conference made few new friends - Johan Johansson, Tobias Fors, Daniel and others. That evening we got together with and headed for a dinner and followed by a meet up at a friend Pabalo's house. That was a chance for me and others to have a go at musical instruments. I settled at Drums, Michael and Pabalo took guitars. The concert went until 12-1 Am. I decided to call it a day as I need to catch up with some sleep before my conference talk next day.

It was a big day for me. Getting to speak at Eurostar has been my dream. My talk was about metrics and how they can be dangerous if used inappropriately. I wasn't nervous and was sure that I will speak my heart. I requested Ray Arell and Fiona to help me with few photos. Michael's and few others presence at my talk, helped. I managed to finish my 15 odd slides at one dot - 39 minutes. Few questions and it ended with applause. I was greatly relived doing my duty at the conference. I plan to write a separate post about that later.

I met this guy Daniel in the conference- he did not carry his business card hence do not know his coordinates. Daniel and I argued for hours about the nature of the software - physical or abstraction. Daniel insisted that software has a 3D physical existence. He even said that he had confirmed this with 2-3 physicists he knew. Software when reduced to its "atoms" or basic units is some sequences of 1's and 0's that are stored on a magnetic material. When we power the computer or a computer like devices, electric current passes through transistors and other electronic components and bring the software to life. Daniel argued that hardware components that held the sequence were real and physical. We could never take the argument to the conclusion. But it was a good argument.

Third day of the conference started with keynote on agile adoption at Intel and experience sharing by Ray Arell. It was a good session with lots of advice on getting agile right. I had to do lots of running between office and the conference venue (yes, I had some official meetings set-up on that day). I track-chaired a session by Aslak Hellesoy on "Cucumber". The session was good and well received. The name cucumber look puzzling to me as why "Cucumber" - Aslak clarified during the presentation that it was the name suggested to him by his fiancé/girlfriend. It is become fashion to name the tools/frameworks companies by totally unrelated names. Steve jobs success with Apple continues to inspire many to name their creations with the names that you typically would never make a connection. In the evening there usual conference rituals like panel discussions, prizes, vote of thanks and announcement of next year's track chair - John Fodeh. Zeger van Hese's paper wins the best paper award, Naomi Karten wins the best tutorial award and Michael Bolton wins best bug of conference. Michael wrote about it here.

In all, it was an excellent experience of being at Eurostar 2009 and at Stockholm. I will carry many memories from it for years to come... Thanks Eurostar!!!!

Don't forget to check out the photo gallery

Check out few reports about this conference

Female Funtestic Fanatic

Rikard Edgren's Test Eye

Star Tester issue 45

Note: Narrating a story or an event like a conference is tough, I think. I attempted to do it see if you like my story.

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In addition, Naomi Karten won the Best Tutorial Award, Zeger van Hese won the Enea Best Paper award for the second time, while Neil Pandit received the Logica Triple Star Award

I am sitting at the closing sessions of EuroSTAR 2009 and observing what is going on.  I actually see a community and not just a conference.  I see awards being presented from the community to the community.  I see people saying goodbye to each other as if they were saying goodbye to family members. I see other folks heading to the bar to keep the conversation flowing over a few drinks.  I see new innovations in this years conference that have come from the community - e.g. the Test Lab.  I guess you would expect this after 17 years.

In the new test lab more than 100 people were "actually testing".  Radical thought - "testing" at a testing conference.  The folks tested two open-source software products - a medical application (OpenEMR) and an open source mind mapping tool (FreeMind) - one multi-user product and one single user product.  The logged 55 pretty serious independent bugs!  I thought there might have been more - but 55 decent bugs is 55 decent bugs.  Some of them were howlers - like the pop-up window that merely said ... "Shall I close the pop-up you just opened"!  The bugs are all being logged in the defect logs of the respective tools.  The folks even had awards for best bug found and most creative bug, etc.. 

The final session included a panel session.  It was moderated by Julian Harty of Google.  Two people were selected for the panel for their prior experience - including John Fodeh from HP who has been consulting and speaking around Europe for years.  The second two people were relatively unknowns (new to the conference) but they were intelligently Tweeting with 140 characters or less (on Twitter of course!) about Testing before they arrived at the conference.  The community grows - in this instance through Twitter.  Julian asked the panelists to make their initial answers be 140 characters or less!  That was fun - to start with!  The audience had different colour cards to vote on each of the topics at the end of each segment.  For example the (largely Testing) audience felt that the role of Tester will become more not less important as we all continue to move to Agile as a development approach.  I wonder what would developers have voted on this question!  The Testers did vote for a greater push to invite Developers to this annual testing conference.  I wonder would they come?!  Probably if the agenda / content was good enough. 

The award for best paper went to Zeger van Hese of Belgium for "A Lucky Shot at Agile".  Apart from being top quality, it was deemed very helpful in the tips given and extremely honest in its story telling.  The extremely popular winner of the annual European Test Excellence Award for 2009 went to Anne Mette Hass of Denmark. Anne Mette is a selfless servant of the Testing community - always bringing new innovations forward - liking teaching testing through board games.  It is hard not to love Anne Mette and the European Testing community said they did.

John Fodeh, a veteran of many EuroSTAR conferences, was announced as Program Chair for the 2010 conference in Copenhagen and John closed the conference and thanked Dot Graham - this years superb conference chair.  The 2009 EuroSTAR conference closed but the EuroSTAR community continues into year 18.

Last year at EuroSTAR in Holland, Gitte Ottesen from Denmark was voted the best speaker and was invited back to keynote at this year's conference in Sweden.  Gitte works in a CMMi Level 5 certified company - Systematic - so it was going to be interesting to hear Gitte talk about agility!

Gitte presented the Agile Manifesto and explained that most sane people would consider that process and CMMi in particular would be perceived as non-agile.  Gitte explained that they wanted to be process compliant and agile at the same time.  And it gets worse - as Gitte wanted to be agile and also compliant with three international process standards - ISO 9000 and AQAP 150 and 2001 (military standards!) and CMMI Level 5. 

Ironically as I was listening to Gitte speak I might have been listening to Fintan who manages our development at BrightWork.  The development approach was very similar to the one we use at BrightWork.  On the agile front they do follow the Scrum approach.  But they also do long term planning - and have a product backlog.  They moved from waterfall to story based development.  They merged the best of Lean and Scrum to get their story based development.  They also moved from a small number of longer projects to many shorter projects as we did a few years ago.  They deliver internal releases every month but only deliver one release to the customer every six months.  Every internal release is broken into features / stories of about 30 to 50 hours - again similar to what we do.  They also make heavy use of inspections or code reviews as we do at BrightWork.  They also find inspections very expensive time wise when they are being done - but very valuable in terms of finding bugs early.  They have a "qualify feature" in their development - where they:

• install the new build
• execute all developed tests
• re-do regression tests
• do exploratory testing
• fix all found defects
  • then they "close" the feature

They have a nightly build against which they run a set of automated tests.  This build only includes all "qualified features" also called the "integration build".  They do a serious amount of sensible testing - and this was very impressive!  We do not have this level of sophistication yet - but Paula was impressed with the new Test Automation coming in Visual Studio Team Foundation 2010.  They do run through System Testing (not always advocated by some agile folks) - as we do.  For us it is also very important.  Then after System Test they do Customer Acceptance Test.  As a product company we could be more formal about having a customer acceptance test phase - maybe while we build the language kits we have some customers formally accept the English kit on behalf of their fellow  customers?  They do have a testing competition from time to time - where they have teams compete with each other - a bug hunt - they ring a bell when a bug is found and a judge comes to see if it is really a bug!  Prizes and more importantly team pride is on the line!

The results from Gitte's company:

• a 42% reduction in late stage testing.
• some customers would still prefer waterfall where they could sign a spec on Day 1 and collect the software on Day n!
• way more testing than before
• smaller projects the developers have to do the testing
• testers and developers integrated as "one team"
• configuration management is so critical
• they keep seeking improvements

With so much "agile process" Gitte's company developed their own manifesto for the future of their process framework to to keep themselves honest:

• people over processes
• simplicity over completeness
• training over education
• experience over theory
• usability over uniformity

I enjoyed the talk!  I only got to a few talks this year - shame on me - but this was definitely the best talk for me.

At EuroSTAR 2009 in Sweden Ray Arell an Intel veteran gave a good talk on ... "Moving to an Agile Testing Environment - What went right, What went wrong"

Intel has roughly 10,000 software engineers.  A pretty serious software operation for what looks like a hardware company.  Prior to the move agile Intel had a standard waterfall model - with many, many milestones.  Lots of the usual checks and balances.  Perhaps too many according to Ray.  Many, many teams involved in the development of the Intel software that goes into a PC.  Some of the software products needed 5 years to get to market.  This of course in conflict with Moore's Law (also an Intel vet) that explains that major changes occurs every year to two years.

The waterfall process locked down the requirements so early that innovation is actually stopped very early in the cycle, according to Ray.  Andy Grove, Intel's founder, in his book, "Only the paranoid survive" explains, - "There is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically ... ".  Intel felt that waterfall was too rigid and that they needed customer involved throughout so they changed to agile.  Interesting enough Ray figures that the name Agile does the approach a dis-service as some folks see it as an excuse for "cowboy coding" or "wagile" (which is really waterfall dressed up as agile).

Ray sees the agile nucleus as requiring three aspects (i) Customer focused, (ii) Culture (trust, just enough process, etc.) and (iii) Work processes.  Ray explained the "product backlog" at Intel as follows:

• Owned by a product owner
• Formal list of requirements written as stories - that contain acceptance criteria
• backlog is re-prioritised at the start of each iteration
• defects are tracked on the backlog

On Ray's team they went cold-turkey - switched over a month from Waterfall to Agile - shut down shop and trained everyone in that month.  It was not all plain sailing!

• the customers were confused - "why do they keep asking me questions!"
• the team were not sure if the "agile trust" was real - as they felt they were being "checked" every day in the Daily Stand-ups

Intel do now use personas with the agile approach, e.g. "Edward the Application Engineer".

However Intel came through the change and the results are very good.  There is no going back according to Ray.  The customer is happier.  The teams are more productive and more satisfied.  95% of people said team collaboration was better with agile.  90% said Scrum was a better and more Challenging Work Environment. 

Ray's final thoughts:

• you need to iterate your processes just like your product
• don't fall into Wagile / Scrumfalls!

Ray is a confident and engaging speaker - a person passionate about his topic and a person that has a passion to communicate.

We are lucky enough to have an interview with Michael Bolton below - hope you enjoy it!

- How did you get involved with testing initially?

Like all children, I was born a tester.  Alas, many of us seem to have the testing instinct suppressed by parents and school systems.  I was lucky enough to have parents who encouraged me to ask questions and to seek answers, and I was equally lucky to have several teachers who allowed me to explore and investigate the things that interested me.  When I began programming for money, around 1988, I quickly found myself in a humbling position.  I discovered that if I wanted my programs to work for other people, I had to test.  One kind of testing-confirming my own expectations and getting agreeable results from the computer-was relatively straightforward.  A second kind of testing was much harder-exploring and investigating the program and the problem space to discover whether my programs were actually solving problems for my clients. I think people are still wresting with that kind of testing today.

While working for Quarterdeck in the early 1990s, I was seconded to the testing department to assist with the development of DESQview X, a product that turned DOS and Windows into X Window clients, so that you could sit at any workstation in the organization and run any kind of program-Unix, Windows, DOS, or whatever you liked.  From there I became a program manager, the person who decided what went into the box, and who made sure it went in at the level of quality required by the company.  I was responsible for QEMM, DESQview, and CleanSweep, all of which were best-sellers.  Quarterdeck was very advanced; it ran itself into the ground in an Internet play, fully three years before it was fashionable to do that.  I jumped off the ship just before it was sold for scrap. When I left the company, I became an independent consultant, writer, and teacher, and have been ever since.

- What has been the most challenging test project in your career to date?

Every project has different challenges, and each one requires testers to learn something new.  Sometimes the challenge is in finding information quickly; sometimes it's in helping the client understand the extents and limits of testing; and sometimes it's in developing the means of discovering problems quickly and effectively.  One of my favourite challenges was developing a test oracle in the form of an Excel application that would rapidly produce an answer for comparison with a huge banking system.  Absolutely everyone on the project was convinced that such a thing wasn't possible, but fortunately I was resourceful, lucky, and stubborn enough to see it through.  The best thing about it was that I learned a ton in the process.  Array formulas are really cool, and I had to learn for myself how to do Boolean operations (ANDs, NOTs, ORs, and XORs) independently because of bugs in Excel's built-in functions.  That learning was really exciting.

- What has been the most interesting/unique test project/activity you have been a part of? And why?

For a few weeks just before my daughter was born, I worked on a project that was a total disaster.  It was an organization with "can-do" management.  "Failure was not an option", they said-so apparently it was mandatory.  It was fascinating to watch how the people running the project remained deliberately and desperately oblivious to the results that testing had clearly showed all the way along-that the project was in deep, deep trouble from the outset.  Eventually-almost a year after I left-the project got deployed roughly two years behind the original estimate and was charged with a $30 million loss.  That resulted in the disassembly of an entire IT organization.  At the time it felt pretty uncomfortable, but on the principle that we learn from failure, working on this project was like getting a doctoral degree.

- What changes have you seen take place in testing over the past 5 - 10 years?

The most encouraging thing that I've seen is a growing acknowledgement that testing is far more than just a process of confirmation, verification, and validation.  Excellent testing isn't about relentlessly revisiting what we already know; it's about exploring, discovering, investigating, and learning.  The Agile movement's focus on programmer testing has helped to move the confirmatory work back to the programmers, which helps to shorten the feedback loops and to produce higher-quality code.  That allows testers to focus on extending what we know about the product, rather than making sure that the same old tests still pass.  Products are too complex and too risky to leave to mere checking, they have to be tested.  I've written a fair deal about that on my blog recently ( http://www.developsense.com/2009/08/testing-vs-checking.html, and the blog entries linked from it).

The other thing that is most interesting to me is the increasing recognition of the importance of context, and a decrease in the babble about standardization and "best practices".  We work on different products, in different domains, for different customers, with different people who have different skill sets.  With all that diversity of product and of purpose and of people, there are no practices that are universally best, and it's silly to insist that there are.  If you look social and biological systems, maturity isn't about doing what your parents tell you; it's about independence and adaptability, having the skills and the wisdom to do what's right in context.

Finally, we are at last seeing some widespread skepticism-at least within the testing community itself-about the value of bogus certification.  Some certifiers have noble goals at heart, and others are more cynical, but I think that any question-and-answer-based certification that takes place without careful observation of how people actually test and how they report what they test has crippling limitations.  It's like a written driving exam.  A very expensive and very uninformative written driving exam.

- Where do you feel testing as a profession is heading for in the future?

The Agile movement has rediscovered the idea that it just might be a good idea for programmers to think critically about their code and to check it rigourously.  If that idea becomes widespread, my great hope is that the focus for testing will be on user experience and on value for our clients.  That means that testers won't be mere checkers; that we'll be mandated to learn about the relationships between the product, the customer, and the problems that the customers want solved.  Skilled testers need to understand all kinds of things about the business domain; about the ways in which people make decisions (and mistakes!); about the ways in which our products interact with other systems and with people; about programming and tool development; about critical thinking.  In order to handle all that, we'll need to develop rapid learning skills, and we'll need to grab ideas from all kinds of disciplines, everything from economics to anthropology to music (yes, music) to medicine to art to cognitive neuroscience.  Testing isn't just computer science, and it isn't just engineering.  Those metaphors have been useful-still are to some degree-but in the long run, they may be too narrow and too stale for a world of ubiquitous software.

- When you are not working, what do you do to relax and unwind?

I play Irish traditional music on the mandolin.  I'm tremendously lucky, because the Irish have travelled the world and planted pubs and the tunes all over the place.  A Web site called www.thesession.org (run as a sideline by Jeremy Keith, a Web designer that someone should invite to EuroSTAR) makes it easy to find them.  So I bring the mandolin with me in my suitcase, and after a day of teaching work or conference sessions, I often end up at an Irish pub, playing tunes with a bunch of new friends.  I've been to sessions in Orlando, San Francisco, Phoenix, Minneapolis in the States.  London. Wellington (New Zealand). Barcelona.  No matter where I go, the tunes got there first, and they're kind enough to introduce me to the people.  It's instant community.

I also love getting on my bicycle for exercise, and I read a lot.  Not at the same time, mind you.  These days I'm doing a lot of reading is about the history of science.  It's remarkable how much of what we see there is being recapitulated in testing.

- You have attended a number of EuroSTAR conferences, which was your favorite and why?

Well, you always remember your first.  My talk in 2007, Why I Am Not (Yet) Certified was my first major keynote address, and it was a thrill to meet such a vibrant and active testing community in Stockholm that year. But winning the CapGemini Innovation Award and receiving the highest-rated feedback for Two Futures of Software Testing in 2008 in Den Haag was a wonderful occasion too.  So they're tied, top two out of two.  I hope that they'll have competition in my affections from the 2009 conference.

- Has testing become a career choice amongst IT Graduates/Professionals?

I don't know.  To me, it doesn't look like it, though.  That's okay; as I suggested above, testing needs diversity above all else.  We need social scientists at least as much as we need programmers in this business. Maybe more.

- What specific areas of testing do you find yourself most attracted to?

These days I'm becoming increasingly interested in user experience.  User experience is a lot like testing; businesses are only just waking up to its importance, and we testers have a lot to learn from the user interaction and user experience communities.  As I suggested earlier, I'm also interested in areas like cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and economics; how we value things, why we make the choices we do, and how easily we can be fooled.

- Who has been the greatest influence on your career? Why?

I met Cem Kaner in 1996, when he taught a session of his Black Box Software Testing course at Quarterdeck.  James Bach has been an invaluable colleague, and I've been working with him since 2003, and as a co-author since 2006.  James put me on to Jerry Weinberg and his work.  All three of them have been absolutely focused on the idea that products and testing are there to serve people.  All three of them speak and write directly to this idea.

There's a fourth person that I should:  I should also mention Ross Collard, who gave me my first opportunity to teach testing classes.

- Where is your favorite holiday destination?

Work has taken me all over the world.  Standouts include Barcelona, Singapore, London, Stockholm, New Zealand, and India.  I wish holidays had taken me to so many places. Spain and the Netherlands are two places where I've been able to bring with the family, so they top the list internationally.  There's an area within a couple of hours of Toronto, Prince Edward County, where friends have a cottage, and that's another favourite since the family gets to go there too.

- If there was one piece of advice that you would give to an aspiring tester, what would it be?

Never get trapped by assuming that you're limited to a single option.

- Who is your favorite band? And what is your favorite song?

I refuse to be trapped by assuming that I'm limited to a single option.  I'm fond of XTC, Gomez, the Beatles, early Bruce Springsteen, and Irish traditional music. I'm a huge fan of Ry Cooder, too.

- Last question, what qualities do you feel are important in order to become a talented test professional?

Learning is available everywhere you look... and everywhere you don't look too.  So look around, and bring whatever you can to the craft. Testers need to focus not so much on correctness, but on what our clients value.  So my nominees for important qualities are curiosity, independence of mind, the capacity for general systems thinking, and empathy.

Entrants had to enter their preferred theme for EuroSTAR 2010 - we had some great entries so thank you to everybody that entered.

Congratulations to Junaid Naseem of Edixen Solutions in Sweden and to Mikael Madsen of Elbek & Vejrup in Denmark, we look forward to meeting you both at EuroSTAR 2009 in Stockholm!

As a new addition to the EuroSTAR community, we will be interviewing prominent testers from across the globe - this is an interview with Martin Pol from the Netherlands.

- How did you get involved with testing initially?

That happened in 1985. As an employee of the Dutch Ministry of Finance I was asked to implement structured testing and write a Handbook for that. Since there was nothing usable available in The Netherlands I was sent to the US where I met pioneers like Bill Hetzel, David Gelperin and Boris Beizer. I was able to attend an intensive training and exchange knowledge with people of companies that already made a lot of progress in the structuring process. Back home we applied the theory in a couple of big projects and based on the experiences we published the Handbook in 1988. This Handbook represented the initial version of the well known TMap approach, first published in 1995.

- What has been the most challenging test project in your career to date?

In the ninety's The Dutch Post-offices organization asked a big international system integrator to renovate their entire IT infrastructure, including all hardware, system- and application software, even training for the staff and new furniture for all offices were included. They agreed on a fixed price. Far too late (all contract work was done and the project team was assigned) they started thinking about testing.

The contracts contained terms like "error free delivery" and "full coverage". Not a single testing expert had been involved. At that too late moment I was asked to create a master test plan and lead the system- and acceptance tests. This project showed me the gap between theory and practice, between high-level decision making and "feet in the mud"; between "what's the good thing to do" and politics. The bad news is that the project used three times the original lapse time, the good news is that the test team did a great job and that we learned a lot.

- What has been the most interesting/unique test project/activity you have been a part of? And why?

My company Polteq was asked to help a Chinese company to structure their testing processes. They asked to assess their processes, advice about improvement steps, support the implementation of these improvements and train their (6000) testers. I did not believe 6000, but that was really the number they were working with.

It was a big challenge for the Polteq team to help this organization. I have personally been working for companies around the globe, in all kind of branches, in many language and culture areas. This experience helped, but this job exceeded everything so far. Apart from some language and culture issues (everything with translators and a very strong hierarchy in both reporting lines and processes), the high intelligence of the testing staff, the eagerness to learn, the acceptance of testing (no resistance), and the sincere friendliness of all people stroke me deeply. A great experience that I'll never forget.

- What changes have you seen take place in testing over the past 5 - 10 years?

Professional, well trained and certified testing staff became available: Testing shows craftsmanship.

This craftsmanship enabled testers to leave process thinking and give priority to working software that really helps the business.  Professional testers are able to contribute in any (agile) situation.

Integration of all kind of application systems towards the limit of the span of control, resulting in the need of adequate SOA solutions and regression/integration testing. Also the integration of development, testing and the business has matured.

More and more testing is being accepted at the right decision making level. Early involvement and a solid budget for testing have become common in many companies. Testing is between the ears of many senior managers now.

The breakthrough of outsourcing, also because of the lack of testing staff in Europe

- Where do you feel testing as a profession is heading for in the future?

Service Driven Test Management: Test management will fully focus on the project objectives: to implement a workable solution for the business. Not as a kind of referee but organizing whatever is required to enable the project team to add quality. As a professional member of the project team nowadays test management will find solutions for any testing related problem that could influence the project's success. Service Driven Test Management means: Taking Ownership and showing Partnership with Craftmanship

Test management will also be extended with outsourcing management, including monitoring and governance. Related to this many (on-shore) testing jobs will shift towards regression/integration testing.

Certification of testing staff, test processes, test scripts and last but not least software.

Full cooperation of development, testing and the business, working together in any (agile) way.

Supporting de-integration of the application systems.

- When you are not working, what do you do to relax and unwind?

For my work as a test consultant I'm traveling a lot. I always arrange leisure time at location to meet people, look around, sniff the culture and make nice pictures.

My biggest hobby is everything  related to Spain and Spanish: the language, the history, the tremendous growth of Spain since 1969 (my first visit),  the Spanish role in Latin America in the past and nowadays; the politics; Spanish music and their football, but most important the Spanish people. My wife Wil and I spend a couple of months a year in the Valencia area.

At home in Holland I cherish my pond filled with nice fishes and plants. You may understand that I don't like herons.

- You have attended a number of EuroSTAR conferences, which was your favorite and why?

I have attended almost all EuroSTARs so far. The 1996 one in Amsterdam has always stayed my favorite. This first real continental EuroSTAR in cozy Amsterdam established the foundation for the following great events.

- Has Testing become a career choice amongst IT Graduates/Professionals?

Yes, we have been successful in making it attractive.

- What specific areas of testing do you find yourself most attracted to?

The organizational aspects: management, people, outsourcing governance and process (improvement).

- Who has been the greatest influence on your career? Why?

That is a group of people that gave me the space to exploit my talents. I only mention two names: my wife Wil who supported me by thick and thin and my business partner Marjolein Steyerberg who always took care of all the business aspects I was not skilled for or didn't like to do.

- Where is your favorite holiday destination?

Spain and Scandinavia.

- If there was one piece of advice that you would give to an aspiring tester, what would it be?

Take your chances, don't be afraid to take some risks, work hard and fully focus on your objectives

- Who are your favorite band? And what is your favorite song?

La Oreja de Van Gogh, a well known band in the Latin world. My favorite song is "Jueves" (Thursday) linked to the terrorist attach in Madrid on the 11^th of March 2004.

- Last question, what qualities do you feel are important in order to become a talented test professional?

That depends:

Very smart wiz kids for design, analysis and engineering;

Good technicians for tooling and infrastructural aspects;

People with administrative skills for metrics, reporting, etc.

Politicians that combine the three qualities above for coordination and test management.

- How did you get involved with testing initially?

I took my first role as a test specialist in the 1980's at Metier Management Systems, after an interview and aptitude test; I'd had a few years out of the industry and was offered a test job rather than a programming job. Once I started, I realized how much more fun I was having than when programming.

- What have been the most challenging and exciting projects in your career to date?

The biggest challenges have been in business and infrastructure complexity, and in managing communication across organizations and time zones. People react so unpredictably. IT people make products that cause other people to have to change how they work and play; but are human so often dislike making changes to their own work and play behavior.

- What changes have you seen take place in testing over the past 5 - 10 years?

Many things that were seen as academic are becoming mainstream - when I took my computer science degree in the 1970's we were taught about state transition and similar models but these were seen as academic and not of practical use, now of course they are taught to testers as foundational techniques. Much of what is seen as new in the industry has been around for years.  One change I have seen is testing becoming a separate discipline from the rest of IT over the last decades, but I wonder if it will remain so. I can see two thrusts for the discipline:  increasing closeness to the business and increasing need for technical knowledge. We will still need a pivot role to see both sides - but is that testing? I am not sure.

- Where do you feel testing as a profession is heading for in the future?

Are we a profession? Do we want to be? I think that is still up for debate. At present my own view is that we are not a profession yet, but that we should look at skills, development and roles needed around IT. We need to differentiate between an activity "testing" and the job title "testers". Many people carry out testing; some people have the job title. We will always need testing, along with other QC and QA activities.  Will we need the job title?

- When you are not working, what do you do to relax and unwind?

I garden! Fruit and vegetables mainly. It has been a bumper year for fruit so I have been making preserves and pickles this summer.

- You have attended a number of EuroSTAR conferences, which was your favorite and why?

I've been inspired by something at every EuroSTAR conference I have attended - both keynote and track speakers. Something at every one I have attended has struck me as new, exciting or inspirational, as well as practical ideas and shared experiences. On a personal level, Barcelona was the first one at which I spoke so I have a soft spot for that one! I have always enjoyed speaking at EuroSTAR. I presented a tutorial in Manchester 2006 and then a keynote in Stockholm 2007; an honour to be chosen and tremendous fun to do.

- What specific areas of testing do you find yourself most attracted to?

Reviewing, test analysis and design, process improvement - these are all enjoyable!

- Who has been the greatest influence on your career? Why?

There have been many significant influences. Rick Keeble gave me my first testing job at Metier so got me into the whole testing and quality arena. Dot Graham has been an unfailing source of encouragement and inspiration since I first met her. Influence grows and changes over the years: the group in testing that influences me includes people like Neil Thompson, Graham Thomas, Stuart Reid; people I heard at conferences, debate with now and who I regard as friends as well as colleagues.

It's a cliché to mention one's parents in this context, but I have to; my father was a research scientist and my mother a teacher, and I observe patterns in my work behaviors inherited from both of them. Some of my earliest memories are sitting on the floor of my father's laboratory playing with molecule models (I would be about 3) and listening in to "what if" discussions above my head. The idea of questions and experimentation was built in early on in my life.

- Where is your favorite holiday destination?

New Zealand and Cornwall are two favorites. Peace, quiet, fantastic coast line and countryside...

- If there was one piece of advice that you would give to an aspiring tester, what would it be?

I find myself incapable of suggesting just one piece of advice... Can I have several?

Learn to program. Learn to analyze. Learn to communicate well with others. Don't be afraid to suggest ideas. Try to be positive.

- Who are your favorite bands? And what is your favorite song?

I don't have a favorite band or favorite song, but I listen to a wide variety of music - it depends on my mood. Is it a clue if I say I prefer the Rolling Stones to the Beatles? I was given an ipod shuffle last year, and the juxtapositions are weird and amusing - blues, country and western, and rock interspersed with poems, requiems and opera.

- Last question, what qualities do you feel are important in order to become a talented test professional?

Someone I know - not in IT - said that one's proper profession is the work one would do even if not paid for it, which gives pause for thought - that is one's vocation I suppose. So a good question to ask is whether one's chief motivation for testing is the financial reward or the pleasure of the work itself. I have enjoyed and learnt from the unpaid testing work I have done, for example with Stuart, Graham and others on testing standards.

I don't think as an industry we have faced up to what is required to be a professional. For someone to be a talented test professional requires aptitude, education and experience over many years. Look for tolerance, an open mind, a good standard of literacy and numeracy, a questioning disposition but willingness to adopt new ideas, and excitement about one's subject. Professionals undertake life-long study to improve their craft, have high personal standards of conduct, and take responsibility for their work. There is a duty to one's clients, fellow professionals and to society at large. Not just doing what one has been asked to do according to the specification for the job, but questioning whether that is the right thing to do - for us, our team, our organization, our customers, society, and of course our families.

You know I could talk about this for some time - can I just refer to my EuroSTAR 2007 paper...? J