I have been speaking at Free Test conference in Trondheim, Norway last week. Even though we had not so many participants (~50 people vs. ~70 last year), which is probably due to the recession w/w, the atmosphere was good, and people really liked to get more knowledge. My talk was about Root Cause analysis - dealing with problems not symptoms. It dealt with an enhanced way for performing root cause analysis, using the 5ys and cause effect diagrams methods, enabling the outcome to include priorities in it, thus helping us pick the right improvement route to reduce chances for the problem to occur again (you may find it also on the testing experience magazine, volume 4, January 2009).
Other speakers I heard were Michael Bolton, Canada, who spoke about Median and the things be gain vs. the things we loose if we are over heating this median. Asha Jyothi Venkat Meruvu from India, spoke about the TestLink, open source tool for test management, and how it interacts with other tools (like Bugzilla, etc'). I also went to an interesting talk by Mike Scot, UK, who spoke of the Testify open source tool for quick infrastructure for test automation with Fit/Fitnesse, Java, etc'. The topic name was: 'Testify - One button test driven development tooling'. Mike presented the package he built quickly, and seems that it is easy to maintain and get things on ones test automation going fast.
Martin Gijsen, Netherlands, gave a nice view over the evolution of test automation, with clear examples and the right touch for business keyword driven approach. I guess KDT is here to stay...
Bernt Marius Johnsen, Norway, spoke of random generation of data, used with specific grammar of SQL sentences, to 'bomb' a few DB products (Like MySQL, Apache Derby and PostgreSQL) to find defects - which they do in his report.
Henri van de Scheur, who was the program chair, together with his dedicated organization team, worked a lot to make this conference a reality, and have succeeded in my eyes. Data, the organizer supporter deserve a lot of thank you on this, and I hope they will support the conference next year as well.
So, in general it was good choice of topics, and I had a lot of interest in those presentations, and it was fun as well! meeting interesting people with the same passion for test tooling, automation, and testing in general...
I am waiting for what next year is going to bring us...
Friday, March 26, 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Hiring New testers - How do they think?
As I was looking on other things, I stumbled on James A. Whittaker's blog on testers framework of thinking (http://googletesting.blogspot.com/), which I liked very much, also referred to Eric Jacobson (http://www.testthisblog.com/2010/01/test-this-light-switch.html) on the topic.
I have interviewed a few hundred testers myself in my professional life, and believe the insights are unique and gets your attention.
I usually ask the candidate to describe how she/he will test a commonly used device, thus not having to know specifications so much, and being able to focus on the approach, strategy, and scenarios. I like to see systematic thinking, and then on the other hand also unsystematic thinking. I believe that I have learned as an exploratory tester, that when you break you systematic thinking, bugs start to pop up.
Some good questions I have heard and used in past interviews are:
1) Which is more important positive or Negative testing?
analysis: in this question, I couldn't care less about what is being said, as they both are important, but I would like to hear the approach and how the candidate explains that to me.
2) If you had only half the time for testing what you have defined as in scope, how would you act?
analysis: in this case, I would like to hear the candidate find the way to identify, prioritize, improvise, be creative and approach this bad situation - which in many cases is a reality - and explain that to me. I accept questions and a few assumptions, so that the candidate would feel comfortable, but not too much.
3) If you had to provide quick feedback on the quality of a product, what will you do?
analysis: in this case, I try to put the candidate in pressure, as there is no time. I speak fast as well, and do not wait but only 3-5 seconds until I ask : well? and again, well? Creativity is important, improvisation as well, methods and good skills will get nice ideas come out from a guy who knows testing, and experienced challenging situations.
If we can identify testers thinking patterns and frameworks according to what we see in the interview, and even guess what approach they are going to take (after establishing the pattern), my question would be if we can identify and forecast their performance? and to what extent?
We all want to hire good potential testers, that would stay long at our company and fit our team profile, maybe further analysis will help us do that with a questioner or facilitated interview directed just at that?
We'll see...
I have interviewed a few hundred testers myself in my professional life, and believe the insights are unique and gets your attention.
I usually ask the candidate to describe how she/he will test a commonly used device, thus not having to know specifications so much, and being able to focus on the approach, strategy, and scenarios. I like to see systematic thinking, and then on the other hand also unsystematic thinking. I believe that I have learned as an exploratory tester, that when you break you systematic thinking, bugs start to pop up.
Some good questions I have heard and used in past interviews are:
1) Which is more important positive or Negative testing?
analysis: in this question, I couldn't care less about what is being said, as they both are important, but I would like to hear the approach and how the candidate explains that to me.
2) If you had only half the time for testing what you have defined as in scope, how would you act?
analysis: in this case, I would like to hear the candidate find the way to identify, prioritize, improvise, be creative and approach this bad situation - which in many cases is a reality - and explain that to me. I accept questions and a few assumptions, so that the candidate would feel comfortable, but not too much.
3) If you had to provide quick feedback on the quality of a product, what will you do?
analysis: in this case, I try to put the candidate in pressure, as there is no time. I speak fast as well, and do not wait but only 3-5 seconds until I ask : well? and again, well? Creativity is important, improvisation as well, methods and good skills will get nice ideas come out from a guy who knows testing, and experienced challenging situations.
If we can identify testers thinking patterns and frameworks according to what we see in the interview, and even guess what approach they are going to take (after establishing the pattern), my question would be if we can identify and forecast their performance? and to what extent?
We all want to hire good potential testers, that would stay long at our company and fit our team profile, maybe further analysis will help us do that with a questioner or facilitated interview directed just at that?
We'll see...
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