Lifelong Analysis Skills

for Explorers and Process Junkies alike!

Simon Morley@YorkyAbroad

Thursday, May 23, 13

Why did we not find that fault?

Why is testing late?

How do we find the most important features to test first?

What should we test?

Who should test this?

Thursday, May 23, 13

FICL - My little helper

F - Framing

I - Information

C - Consensus

L - LessonsThursday, May 23, 13

What’s framing?

Frames draw our attention to certain aspectsleaving other parts out-of-view / attention

Frame: A mental model that guides our understanding of a complex world by viewing it from a certain (limited) perspective.

Thursday, May 23, 13

Frame exercise

Talk to your neighbour and discuss what would be good quality in this product:

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Thursday, May 23, 13

Good quality?

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Transactional

Relational

Focus

Emotion

Fear offailure

Filter

Distort

Time Cost QualityRisk

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The exercises will explore different aspects connected to framing

Use your testing brains (whether test lead, tester, manager, developer, other...)

This /might/ mean you don’t have all information

But also, be careful not to chase details

Thursday, May 23, 13

Root Cause Analysis (Explore Framing)

Bug reporting (Framing and Information gathering)

Prio analysis (Framing, Info gathering & Concensus)

Risk analysis (Framing, Info gathering & Concensus)

Thursday, May 23, 13

Exploring Framing

Problem:

A customer receives a product and some feature isn't working.

The customer considers the non-working parts to be "basic".

So a root cause analysis is requested from the customer.

Thursday, May 23, 13

Thursday, May 23, 13

Exploring Framing #2Split into 3 groups:

Development Team, Project Team, Product Mgmt Team. Each team consider:

What might've gone wrong?

Potential reasons for problem?

Potential hypotheses/areas to investigate?

Make notes!Thursday, May 23, 13

Dev Team Proj Team

Dev Team

Dev Team

Dev Team

Product Mgmt

Proj Team

Customer

Thursday, May 23, 13

A customer receives a feature and some part of the feature isn't working.

The customer considers the non-working parts to be "basic".

A root cause analysis is requested from the customer.

What might've gone wrong?

Potential reasons for problem?

Potential hypotheses/areas to investigate?

Task Summary

Thursday, May 23, 13

De-brief / reflect

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Bug Reporting & Advocacy

(Whole Group)

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Bug Reporting #1

You sit in an integration team.

A bug/problem is found in testing - it appears to be blocking testing of a feature. So….

What to report, how and in what detail?

Any different perspectives?

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Thursday, May 23, 13

Bug Reporting #2

Consider that the problem might block a customer doing some acceptance testing

How would the perspectives and content change?

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De-brief / Reflect

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How did the problem change when looked at from the team vs the customer angle? (Framing)

Did the type of problem affect the frame?

Good Information in a bug report (Info gathering)

What was missing?

Thursday, May 23, 13

Risk Assessment&

Test Priority(Teams)

Thursday, May 23, 13

Risk Assessment2 Teams: Development & Project

Task: A new release will contain 1 new and 2 modified features. The new feature is a launch-blocker for a customer and the timescale appears “tight”.

What aspects should each team think about? Make a risk list with guesstimates of risk assessment.

Thursday, May 23, 13

New

ModMod

Thursday, May 23, 13

Test priority assessment

2 groups: Tester(s) & Rest of development team.

As a tester you’ve thought of a new approach to troubleshoot a problem you’ve been stuck with (to help the project)

E.g. There’s some new logging you can use

A developer on the team has got a potential fix for a problem that was blocking some testing.

Which aspects to think about in determining priority of the tasks? What perspectives and what information is needed?

Thursday, May 23, 13

Thursday, May 23, 13

De-brief / Reflect

Thursday, May 23, 13

Question re-visit

Why is testing late?

Why did you not find that fault?

You tested for THAT, didn’t you?

Thursday, May 23, 13

FICL

F- Framing

I- Information Gathering

C- Coming to concensus

L- Lessons/Learning

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References / Further Reading

Decision Traps: The Ten Barriers to Decision-Making and How to Overcome Them (1990; Russo, Schoemaker)

Winning Decisions: Getting It Right the First (2002; Russo, Schoemaker)

Quality Software Management, Vol. 3: Congruent Action (1994; Weinberg)

Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects (2003; DeMarco, Lister)

Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (1999; Heuer)

Understanding and Managing Risk Attitude (2007; Hilson, Murray-Webster)

Thursday, May 23, 13