AmiBug.Com, Inc. © Robert Sabourin, 2009October 11, 2015Slide 1 Happily Ever After Robert Sabourin President & Principal consultant AmiBug.Com, Inc. Montreal,

AmiBug.Com, Inc.

© Robert Sabourin, 2009April 21, 2023 Slide 1

Happily Ever After

Robert Sabourin

President & Principal consultant

AmiBug.Com, Inc.

Montreal, Canada

[email protected]

AmiBug.Com, Inc.


Happily Ever After

Testing Lessons from Classic Fairy Tales Robert Sabourin, AmiBug.com

Once upon a time, in testing conferences not so long ago, Rob Sabourin presented useful testing lessons from the most unlikely sources: the Looney Tunes gang, the Great Detectives, Dr. Seuss, Hollywood movies, the game of baseball, Monty Python, labor and delivery nursing, and the Simpsons. Now he turns his attention to lessons from classic fairy tales, those timeless fables designed to entertain and teach simple moral truths to children that also have important lessons for testers. What can the Three Pigs teach us about contingency planning? Can Mother Goose teach us to be great test leads? Can testers get the message across without crying wolf and live to tell the tale? What does Red Riding Hood teach us about critical thinking? Can we learn fundamental test design approaches from Goldilocks and the Three Bears? Were Hansel and Gretel test driven developers? Rob takes us through the realm of fairy tales, discovering wonderful, practical, and simple testing lessons that you can apply right away.

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• Overview– Learning and metaphors– Happily ever after– Cry Wolf– Three Pigs– Goldilocks– Hansel and Gretel– Pied Piper– Red Riding Hood– Rip Van Winkle– Ugly Duckling– Mother Goose– A Testers Tale

Happily Ever After

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Learning and Metaphors

• Teaching

• Learning

• Retaining

• Applying knowledge

• Share experiences

• Don’t get carried away …

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Happily Ever After

• Fables

• Stories

• Morales

• Parables

• Simple Truths

• Cultural Context

• Don’t get carried away …

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Cry Wolf

• Aesop

• “Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed. The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth.”

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Cry Wolf

• Attention grabbing

• Abuse responsibility

• Exaggeration

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Cry Wolf

• Right time, place

• Consistency

• Credibility

• Build trust

• Earn respect

• Report effectively

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Three Pigs

• James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps

• 1843

• “Benefit of hard work and planning”

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Three Pigs

• Straw

• Wood

• Brick

• Huff and Puff

• Blow House Down

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Three Pigs

• Good Enough

• Failure Modes

• Risks

• Contingency Plan

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Goldilocks

• Robert Southey

• 1843

• “cautionary tale … imparts a lesson about the hazards of wandering off and exploring unknown territory”

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Goldilocks

• Too Hot

• Too Cold

• Just Right

• Everything from food to matresses

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Goldilocks

• Focus The Testing• Domain Analysis• Equivalence

Classes• Any variable can

be partitioned into different classes

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Hansel and Gretel

• Brothers Grimm

• “Be careful accepting the seeming generosity of strangers as opposed to the harder to hear message of parents”

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Hansel and Gretel

• Retrace

• Candy House

• Evil Witch

• Disguise

• No way back

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Which Path to Take

• Risk

• Coverage

• Completeness

• Recover

• Deception

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Pied Piper

• Brothers Grimm

• “One must face the inevitable consequences of one's actions”

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Pied Piper

• Major problem

• Drastic solution

• Take for granted

• Cost benefit

• Pay the piper

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Pied Piper

• Risks– Follow the leader– Technical debt– Downstream costs– Overkill

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Red Riding Hood

• Brothers Grimm

• “Warns not to enter forests where wolves were known to live, and to be on the lookout for such”

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Red Riding Hood

• Personas

• Good enough

• Attributes

• Picnic baskets

• Hoodwinked

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Red Riding Hood

• Observation– Same– Different– Missing– Unexpected– Emergent– Behavior

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Rip Van Winkle

• Washington Irving

• 1819

• “To awake suddenly to profound changes in one's surroundings”

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Rip Van Winkle

• Sleep through life

• To suddenly awaken to profound changes

• Miss important issues

• Life passes you by

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Rip Van Winkle

• Context listening

• Actively look for change

• Drivers– Business– Technology– Organizational

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Ugly Duckling

• Hans Christian Andersen

• 1843

• “Take pride in yourself, don't let anyone criticize or reduce our value”

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Ugly Duckling

• Born different

• Outcaste

• Unaccepted

• Ugly

• Transforms

• Look beyond the surface

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Ugly Duckling

• Personal

• Transformation

• For the

• Better

• Look beyond the surface

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Mother Goose

• Sharing

• Extract Lessons

• Camp fire

• Retrospective

• Remember

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Mother Goose

• Tells the story

• Advocates the bugs

• Influences change

• Seeks out lessons

• Morales

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A Testers Tale

• Once upon a time …• In a land far far away …• There lived a very busy, busy tester …• And the busy tester found many bugs …• Testing day in testing day out always

testing …• Bug counters loved the busy tester …

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A Testers Tale

• But then suddenly one day the busy tester thought that there must be more to testing then finding lot’s of bugs …

• Something more fulfilling …

• Something more important …

• Something that made a difference …

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A Testers Tale

• First, a tool vendor invited the busy tester to a user group forum. The vendor promised to show how tools could help make testing much much more than just finding bugs …

• But the tester soon realized that the vendor was mostly interested in selling tools and services

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A Testers Tale

• Then, the busy tester met with a whole bunch of test certifiers. The certifiers promised that if the busy tester passed a special exam then the busy tester would be more valuable to more people, and be set apart from all the others

• But the busy tester soon found that certification was just a pretty sticker.

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A Testers Tale

• And then one day the busy tester learned about peer conferences

• At peer conferences the busy tester met with many other testers in other companies using other technologies but all with the same quest sharing insights and finding important new ways to offer value

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A Testers Tale

• The busy tester became part of a professional community

• Sharing methods, techniques & approaches

• Providing value to Stakeholders• Using test findings, offering information

& insights to guide stakeholders in making important decisions

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A Testers Tale

• The busy tester became a trusted adviser to stakeholders, realizing that testing was all about people, and the occasional bug!

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Thank You

Questions?

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AmiBug.Com, Inc. © Robert Sabourin, 2009October 11, 2015Slide 1 Happily Ever After Robert Sabourin President & Principal consultant AmiBug.Com, Inc. Montreal,