QA Hates You

This month, my work also appears in the March 2012 ST&QA Magazine (registration required) and the March 2012 The Testing Planet.

So if you’re looking for some lengthy reading about testing and QA, go get ‘em.

When I was trying to sign up for something on Dice.com, I got this CAPTCHA:

So, if you mean in numerical order, it would be seven, but wait a minute, seven is not a number in this question, it is a word representing a number, in which case 15 would be the first number in the series. BUT! in the list, 16 is the first number, and the list is missing the serial comma which might indicate that the and is equivalent to the + mathematical operator, which would make the second number 22. But what if it’s one number: 16,157? Then the first number is 1. But wait! If we’re counting ordinal numbers along with cardinal numbers, 1st is the first number that displays!

I tried entering seven.

I tried entering 16:

To hell with it. I reloaded the page and got a CAPTCHA that makes sense.

So what are the effects of CAPTCHAs on users, particularly in abandoned forms? Here’s one fellow’s thoughts.

If you have the Turkish Lira symbol somewhere within your application (and, hey, who doesn’t?), be advised there’s a new symbol in town:

Turkey on Thursday introduced a new symbol for the national currency.

The symbol–a double-crossed, T-shaped anchor–is intended to mean “safe harbor” says Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The upward-facing crosses symbolize Turkey’s growing economic clout, he added.

I haven’t been able to find out how this will impact computer codes/symbols yet, but some of us need to consider the implications.

I noticed something in Windows 7 Explorer. Well, I noticed something missing. In the upper left corner of a Windows application, there’s a little icon not unlike the fav icon you get on the browser bar in a Web browser. You might not know this, child, but you can click that icon to get a short menu of window manipulation or you can double-click it to close the window. This has been pretty standard since OS/2 (go ask your grandpa what that means).

But in Windows 7 Explorer, there’s no icon. But the menu remains when you click that portion of the title bar:

Which got me to thinking.

If you’re working on a mature application, say something that’s been built two years ago, has customers, and plans new releases without a complete rewrite in the latest technology/platform fad, what do you do when your company sunsets a feature?

You know, they determine that the customers don’t use it and they don’t want to maintain it any more, so they turn off the Fax feature. What do you do, QA?

You tear the relevant test cases out of the binder (ask your grandpa) and schedule 2-5pm Friday for margaritas!

Well, that might be what you could do. But what you should do is analyze where that feature is exposed. Not just the Fax to dialog box, not just the Fax to menu item. Features woven into a robust application get exposed to the customer in a number of ways.

• Steps in a wizard where the Fax to is an option. 
   
• Hotkeys. 
   
• Spots in the online help that launch the page/dialog box. 
   
• The documentation and marketing materials. 
   
• Buttons in other features that shortcut to the deprecated feature.

Only you know, or should know, where the features are exposed across your application. The developers look at their trees and don’t see the forest.

The simple act of excising features and dialog boxes, windows, or pages from the application requires not only the removal of test cases and test scenarios, but also the creation of separate tests to make sure it was removed completely and cleanly.

Why the Progress Bar Is Lying to You

Frankly, it’s nothing but a visual marker that the computer is doing something and has not failed. So perhaps a spinner is better than a progress bar, although that might lead one to think that the application has broken but the wheel still spins.

According to Inc. Magazine, they are. The list from the article 8 Qualities of Remarkable Employees:

1. They ignore job descriptions.

   QA employees are not only testers, but also programmers and systems administrators when they’re working in their labs. Also, they ignore the job descriptions and titles of other employees, particularly the implied prestige therein. I don’t care if you’re the Senior Vice President of Development. If we have a problem, you’re going to help me get it fixed.
    

2. They’re eccentric…

   At the very least.
    

3. But they know when to dial it back.

   Well, maybe QA employees are not perfect. But we know when to go from actively antagonistic to holding a grudge.
    

4. They publicly praise…
5. And they privately complain.

   Given our job description, these are toggled to some extent. Our jobs are to complain, but it’s important to let the people who do a good job know you know they’re doing a good job. But not publicly. It’s not a show, it’s a sign of respect.
    

6. They speak when others won’t.

   That is what we do. Point out the obvious, too, since what’s obvious to someone might be obscure to others who are looking at their phones instead of paying attention.
    

7. They like to prove others wrong.

   Heck, yeah.
    

8. They’re always fiddling.

   Trying different things, poking, prodding, questioning, violating the laws of physics whenever the software lets us, that is testing.

   Unless this item refers to playing a stringed instrument with a bow while the project goes up in flames, in which case this is more of a project manager quality.

Not my novel John Donnelly’s Gold. (Available for Kindle at 99 cents! Also in paperback!)

Rather, it’s one of the books based on the Mass Effect video games:

The recent release of Mass Effect: Deception, a new novel written by William C. Dietz and published by Del Rey, didn’t sit well with fans.

Upon its release, a lengthy Google document was created outlining many of the book’s errors. BioWare has since acknowledged the issue and is releasing a new version of the book with the errors corrected.

When I was revising my novel for publication, I found such errors as an eight day week, a semiautomatic pistol that changed to a revolver at its next appearance, and one unholy flaw of realism that remained in the book because I couldn’t write around it. And that’s working within the framework of my own creation, not a universe already created, populated, and maintained through a series of preceding video games, novels, and other interactive media.

The Google doc with the error list is awful long.

Which goes to prove: writers need editors, and by extension, developers should not test their own code.

Here’s the heartwarming story of an advertising agency that was on top of the world five years ago, but isn’t any more: The King’s Comeuppance: How the hottest ad agency of the aughts fell from grace.

Key paragraph:

“They’re much more important than the client, in their minds,” says Peter De Lorenzo, editor in chief of the car commentary site AutoExtremist.com. “They make ads to amuse themselves.”

Holy cats, that’s a bunch of people in software development, too, ainna?

The chick doesn’t build UIs, but she does use them. And she doesn’t like some elements of them.

I don’t normally work in the UX/UI design world, but I know enough from constantly filling out web forms that too many designs out there are destined for a special ring of data Hell. If you’ve followed any of my web form rants on Twitter, you may have heard this before…but it should be repeated.

Go learn her list of peccadilloes and think about your own. Then, bother your designers and developers when they do something convenient for themselves once, but annoying to users thousands of times.

(Thanks to gimlet for the link.)

UPDATE: Karen Lopez has emailed me to let me know she is a chick, not a guy. I’ve changed the pronouns and whatnot to reflect that.

Find some of my other work elsewhere on the Web:

“Trouble Tickets Are Your Business” in ST & QA Magazine.

Book recommendations in The Testing Circus.

The software development community has an axis of partisans that runs from those who want to view themselves either as free-wheeling creative types channeling form out of the aether and putting it beautifully, elegantly into code to those who view themselves as white-suited scientists or engineers reasoning natural laws and applying those laws to GUIs. Hence, we get a constant stream of articles like this one, “Software engineering: Art or science?” from the November 8, 2011, SD Times magazine. November 8? Jeez, how deep is the pile of things on the left wing of my desk?

Point of order, Mr. Chairman: Software development is neither art nor science.

Were it art, the product would be meaningful only in invoking thought or providing a comforting sense of beauty. I mean, you don’t use a painting or a concerto for something other than enjoying the painting or concerto. Unless you’re breaking prisoners of war with them or something.

Were it science, the product could be replicated over and over again by others in other organizations and come up with the exact same result. I’m not talking about duplicating CDs or packaging distros; I mean when one wanted to connect to a database, one would use the proven method that had been established, basically, by Isaac Newton. Software development is not that way; its experiments–that is, the development of individual projects or products–do not yield a similar result when done over a series of time and in different location.

What is software development, then? It is handicrafts.

• The end product does something. The end of the coding process is not some pretty Matrix-drizzle of green numbers to make everything pretty. The end of the coding process is some sort of tool. Ergo, the application is not a work of art. While crafting often produces just art, in other cases it produces something that does something else, however twee. Quilting produces a device that retains heat; woodworking produces furniture. And so on.
   
• The end product is unique. Assuming you’ve built a phonebook database, a Web site that allows users to enter into a sweepstakes, or a Web service that seeks and receives data from a database to dish to a presentation layer somewhere, you’ve built something different from all the others that have been built before, even those that do the exact same thing. If this were science, your process would yield a finished result that matched the others.
   
• The end product bears certain trademarks of the craftsmen. Come on, your fingerprints and foibles are all over your software. The tweaks and ways you do things are different from everyone else’s, and someone who’s familiar with your work and with the industry will see your marks on what you’ve done.
   
• Each end product will have unique defects. In handicrafting, it might be a little glue showing in the gaps of bonded surfaces, maybe a little nesting somewhere in a seam. Maybe they won’t be glaringly obvious, and only another craftsman will see them. Maybe they’re obvious enough that nobody will buy them from your table in the bazaar. Regardless, the defects will be unique to the product, and your other products even if they’re very similar products will have different defects. Or maybe you make the same mistakes over and over and your defects are your trademark.
   
• Best practices and technologies are faddish. The things you’re coding in and the ways you’re doing it are not necessarily the end result of some evolution or even rational processes. They might just be what someone read in a magazine and thought would be worth a try. Evaluating the practices’ effectiveness might become secondary to trying something novel. I know how to paint the glass into which I pour my candles–what if I try etching the glass? What, indeed?
   
• Truth does not determine what tools or technologies you use. You know, for that pyrography design, perhaps a wire nib is called for. However, your budget only allows enough for a cheap Walnut Hollow solid nib woodburning kit. As in software development, sometimes the “best” tool is the open-source product that meets some subset of your needs, but it’s free. So you make do. Like a scientist working with studying particles with a Moderately Sized Hadron Collider.
   
• The craftsmen are more like gossipy ladies at the Singer sewing classes than steely-eyed doctors. I mean, granted, even steely-eyed scientists can be a gossipy lot, but. Any time your craftsmen speak from authority, they’re speaking from some experience, some faddish magazine or blog articles, and/or some education, but they’re not as ex cathedra as they’d like you to think.

Does the metaphor break down? Assuredly. I am a mere craftsman. But if you try to pour software development into some metaphor to make it comprehensible to non-IT people, you could do worse. Like saying it’s an art or a science.

Because I think I need some more Aries on my team.

I’ve mentioned early and often that people used WebTV in 2005 and that I encouraged my employer at the time to account for that browser on its Web sites.

It’s 2011. Surely you can not consider a twentieth century technology now, right?

Well, here’s an indication that they’re still out there:

And trying to use Facebook, a modern gee-whizzed up Web site.

Feeling all excited about the prophecied end of IE 6? Microsoft hasn’t completely killed WebTV / MSN TV yet.

Microsoft continues to support the subscription service for existing WebTV and MSN TV customers.

(An explanation of “Roberta” here.)

Penny Arcade today has a long chain of emails that transpire when a customer is disappointed with an arcade controller’s long delivery time and the eventual tone of the distributor when responding to his concerned emails over the course of two months. A taste:

From: Dave
To: Ocean Marketing
Dec 26, 2011, at 9:47 AM

I noticed the updated info on the webpage, and I don’t understand why there is absolutely no benefit given to those like me who have already ordered, and paid their money. You’ve had my money interest free for nearly two months, yet now ANY new order will get $10 off….meaning I should just cancel my order for 2 controllers, get my money back, then re-order.

My other questions is regarding item compatibility. Ocean Marketing seems to be involved with the Xtendplay controller holder, so I was wondering if the Avenger N-Controller can be used in conjunction with the Xtendplay (for both Xbox and PS3)? Thanks

From: Ocean Marketing
To: Dave
Dec 26, 2011 10:14 AM

Yes it can be used with xtend play if you remove the stand and no one is allowed to cancel and re order if we catch anyone doing it we will simply just cancel your order all together and you can buy it retail somewhere else.

Things happen in manufacturing if your unhappy you have 7 days from the day your item ships for a refund. You placed a pre order just like any software title the gets a date moved due to the tweaks and bugs not being worked out and GameStop or any other place holds your cash and im sure you don’t complain to activision or epic games so put on your big boy hat and wait it out like everyone else. The benefit is a token of our appreaciation for everyone no one is special including you or any first time buyer . Feel free to cancel we need the units were back ordered 11,000 units so your 2 will be gone fast. Maybe I’ll put them on eBay for 150.00 myself. Have a good day Dan.

When JasonS. alerted me to this story, I immediately thought about how I see similar attitudes when dealing with software releases and excuses for not fixing defects.

I mean, you get the normal arrogance of developers combined with a risk-to-punishment reasoning that says, “If the bug just happens to one person, it’s cool. Or at least it’s not a problem worth worrying about.”

Unless, of course, it’s a vocal user who then speaks up about problems he or she has and that others probably encounter. Then the value of your application drops in all users’ eyes as the Internet clogs with stories of YourApplicationSucks.com.

Your application and its interface are customer service and support. Think about the worst phone tree you endured to make something right or the worst bunch of “dropped” calls and runarounds you got that didn’t make something right. Is that your application in your users’ eyes?

Frankly, I think this is what the Mayans were talking about: NFL playoffs, Super Bowl to be streamed online:

Football’s big game is coming to the small screen.

For the first time ever the Super Bowl, along with some postseason NFL games, will be streamed online and through the league’s mobile apps, the NFL and partner Verizon Wireless announced Tuesday.

Good luck with that.

So what’s going to happen to your sites and applications when third party Internet calls start timing out because the whole Internet is going to be running at half speed?

IBM promises, in an ad:

There’s a lot of sugar in the gas tank if your car is fueled by software:

Car manufacturer Jaguar has had to recall nearly 18,000 of its X-Type cars after a serious software bug has been identified in the on-board system of the vehicle. The bug potentially stops a driver from turning off the cruise control system, which is more than a little dangerous.

Yeah, I know it’s an old story, but it took me a couple months after seeing the story to see again the advertisement it reminded me of.

Now, here’s this: Now Every Company Is A Software Company:

Ford sells computers-on-wheels. McKinsey hawks consulting-in-a-box. FedEx boasts a developer skunkworks. The era of separating traditional industries and technology industries is over—and those who fail to adapt right now will soon find themselves obsolete.

On one hand, hey, job opportunities if every company is a good software company and hires some QA people. On the other hand, the whole world is going to become even more buggy than it is now.

Here’s a good post on problems with estimates: 8 Reasons Why the Estimates Are Too Low.

To which I add number 9:

9. Building the estimate based on the deadline or budget.
    
   Starting with the client’s budget or required go-live date, the estimate is put together to reflect how that number of hours or days will be spent. The estimate is not, therefore, based on any earnest guess at actual effort on the tasks at hand.

We’ve all been in on one of those projects.

(Link seen via tweet.)

You see the parades outside your window right now? That’s the whole Web development world spontaneously reacting to the news that Microsoft is going to automatically background update Internet Explorer:

Microsoft today said it will silently upgrade Internet Explorer (IE) starting next month, arguing that taking the responsibility out of the hands of users will keep the Web safer.

That will take it out of the hands of the consumer and end user. But the enterprise users? Not so much:

Microsoft’s scheme differs from either Mozilla’s or Google’s, however, in that the company will let enterprises retain control of upgrades.

This means that all those corporate networks who are still running 10-year-old applications custom-crafted to work with IE 6 will still keep their desktops running IE 6, and all their employees who browse from work will still use IE 6 to visit your sites.

Further:

Nor will it force updates on consumers who have already declined earlier offers to abandon an older IE.

So people who have explicitly opted out of upgrading that one time several years ago when they didn’t read what they were clicking, they won’t get the upgrade, either.

And Roberta, out there surfing the Internet on a machine that does not support the new gimcracks and gee-gaws like IE 9? She’ll still be tooling along on IE 6.

So, ultimately, what does it mean? Well, it means Microsoft got into the news again. Good job, PR staff!

It also means you need to explore whether you need to install one of the toolkits to block the automated updates on your test machines to ensure you continue to have backward compatibility to test the sites until such time as those IE usage numbers really start to fall off. (You can find them here: 7, 8, 9.)

Don’t base your test strategies and your compatibility matrices on press releases or Microsoft blog posts.

On the wrong side of the table. Matt Heusser on being in IT over the age of 35:

No, what struck me were the people.

All of the people I met — and I mean all of them — had this sort of early-twenties look to them. Like the characters in Microserfs, these were “firstees”, young adults in the middle of the first things like life: First job out of college, first house, first child, first mini-van.

All of them.

The google t-shirts, while not universal, were ubiquitous; you couldn’t walk twenty feet without running into someone in Google-wear. Conversations about relocation tended to center on corporate housing, which sounded well … something between a good room and an apartment.

Well, I should be careful, here. Every now and again you’d run into someone in his early 30’s, trying to act inconspicuous, perhaps with a beard, glasses, or both.

These were the managers, almost certainly on their first management job.

I mean, these are people who refer to the extra weight you gain in the first six month as the “freshman fifteen.”

With my grey hair and, and, well, senior sixty, I kinda stuck out like a sore thumb.

I’ve sat in on a couple of those interviews, with a resume that stretches back over a decade and that still lists technologies like RoboHelp, WinRunner, and OpenVMS in the furthest reaches of ancient history (the 20th Century? How….quaint).

You know what else the urchins have highlighted? The fact that I have an English and Philosophy degree, and not a modern 21st century computer science degree like they do.

What should someone on the other side of 35 do? Pretty much what Matt says. But I’d like to offer the following additional tips, old man:

• Stop making allusions to Mel Brooks movies and go find Harold and Kumar films. Suffer through them and make some appropriate quips. It’s for your career, so some sacrifice is in order. Remember: If it’s older than Napoleon Dynamite, you might as well be quoting Spencer Tracy.
   
• Clash of the Titans and Conan the Barbarian both sucked because those damn kids only know the remakes.
   
• Pink Floyd? Hardly. Sublime meaning and musical depth to your future bosses comes from Lady Gaga and the Black Eyed Peas. Put some of that on your iTunes, senior. But lie and say they’re on your Spotify list.
   
• Take your hearing aids out. It’s not like you need to hear the questions since you’re just going to tell them about how you want to get CI experience. They don’t have to know you hope the medical benefits include a cochlear implant.
   
• Don’t think it’s cool to talk about Dungeons and Dragons. These children have never seen graph paper, even in math class.
   
• Don’t tell them about your blog. Anything over 140 characters long is boring, square.
   
• Mention reading anything on paper at your own risk.

…. …., … ….

I SAID, “GOOD LUCK, OLD MAN.”

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