Test Guide : Everything Else

Snow In Seattle On April Fool's!

micahel — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:35:00 GMT

It is snowing here in Seattle today, 1 April 2009. Mum Nature evidently has a sense of humor!

So You Want To Work For Microsoft...

micahel — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Several people have emailed me recently asking for tips on getting through their upcoming interviews at Microsoft. My advice:

Be Yourself. I believe this is the most important tip I can give you. I find that how someone fits (or does not fit) with my team is much more important than what they profess to be able to do. If you pretend to be someone other than you in fact are, I believe you are doing both yourself and your potential teammates a disservice. If the true you is not a good fit for a team, why ever would you want to join it?

How You Approach A Problem Is Way More Important Than Whether You Solve It. You will be asked all types of questions, from "Tell me about your background" to "Tell me about a time when ..." to "Write a function that ...". Each of these is intended to provide insight into your fit with your prospective team as well as with Microsoft in general. An important component of how well you do or do not fit is the approach(es) you take as you solve a problem. Take, for example, the coding you will almost certainly be asked to do. I have never had anyone complete my coding question. This does not bother me. I do not care whether the person I am interviewing knows C# inside and out if they haven't a clue how to solve problems they have never seen before. Nor I do care (much) how awful their code is so long as I feel their approach(es) to solving the problem is effective.

These are my tips. I could give you many more. They might help you. They are not necessary. Remember to be yourself, and to focus on how you approach the problems you are given rather than whether you solve said problems, and you will be fine.

If these tips help you get a job at Microsoft (or anywhere else, for that matter), let me know!

P.S. If you are interviewing at Microsoft, why aren't you interviewing with my team? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.

CASTing For Participants, Part 2

micahel — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Some months ago I posted about CAST 2008, how it's not your typical conference, how gobs of Smart Testers will be attending, and how you probably should attend too.

The program is up now, and it's a doozy! Jerry Weinberg is presenting the opening keynote and also an all-day tutorial on communication and interaction models. Cem Kaner is keynoting about why testing checklists can be helpful even though test scripts often aren't. Michael Bolton, Jonathan Kohl, Scott Barber, and several other testers will explain parallels they see between testing and music, civil engineering, magic, improv, and labor room triage. And there's more!

Check out the program, then head over to the registration page and let them know you'll be attending. (Note: Early Bird registration ends 31 May 2008, so hurry over if you want to save a bit of money.)

It's A Live (Mesh)!

micahel — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

A year ago I joined a team building a top secret project. Today we threw off our invisibility cloak and revealed ourselves as as Live Mesh. Come on over and browse around. Subscribe to our team blog, where I'll be posting from time to time. Then come back here, for two important reasons:

We are hiring! Our Test team has immediate openings for great Macintosh, Web, Windows, and Web Services testers who code as well as they test. Contact me if you are interested.
I have two Live Mesh invites to give away! Leave a comment describing the devious ways in which you'll test Live Mesh. I'll select two responses at random from all comments posted by Midnight PDT on 4 May 2008 and send their authors invites.

If you find a bug, please post it to our forums. I am focusing on our not-yet-released Mac client and so don't know much about anything else! <g/>

*** Want to work on Live Mesh? I need a tester! Interested? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.

I Don't Think That's Exactly What They Meant, Exactly

micahel — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:30:00 GMT

A hotel I was in recently had a toilet:

I found that sign over the toilet rather interesting:

Um, I can think of at least two other things which are going into their septic system!

AYE - Amenities

micahel — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:44:00 GMT

The conference hotel was one of those every-room-is-a-suite places. I found having an extra room helpful even though I wasn't in my room much. The hotel food was standard hotel food which I didn't bother eating. (A healthier menu with organic ingredients next year please!) Fortunately an organic grocery store was less than thirty minutes away by auto. (A different chain had a closer store, however it had only two small sections of organic produce, and everything else was way below my standards.) I probably would have skipped the hotel food even if it had been edible, given that I eat on a different schedule from most everyone else I've met.

The session rooms were a bit chilly, although this was easily counterbalanced by opening the doors to the ninety degree outside air. (Phoenix's low temperatures that week were higher than the high temperatures in Seattle!) I felt comfortable in the rooms, and I had little trouble ignoring what noise leaked through the inter-room partitions.

I enjoyed the all-day-every-day sun, the daytime heat, and the nighttime cool. Although I didn't do any sightseeing around Phoenix I did find some places (Taliesin West, Arcosanti) to see the next time I'm in town.

AYE - Friday

micahel — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:42:00 GMT

Friday I recuperated from the week of brain stuffing, intellectual and emotional stimulation, and long days by motoring up to Sedona, where I processed my week (and wrote this) with the assistance of an energy vortex or four.

AYE - Thursday

micahel — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:40:00 GMT

Thursday was SHAPE Day, a gathering of those conference attendees who are also members of Jerry Weinberg's SHAPE Forum. We started out about twenty, which number dwindled throughout the day as people left for the airport. This was effectively a live, in-person version of the Forum, replete with much good advice, the uncovering of a few Survival Rules, and many stories from Jerry.

AYE - Wednesday

micahel — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:38:00 GMT

Wednesday morning I took part in a writing workshop by Johanna Rothman and Naomi Karten, each authors of multiple books and copious articles. I picked up numerous tips, such as to ask reviewers for specific types of feedback rather than simply requested comments, and to replace verb+adverb combinations (e.g., walked quickly) with a stronger verb (e.g., strode, stumped, hurried). Much of the point though was to write, and write we did, starting with a three-minutes-to-write-and-forty-five-seconds-to-say introduction. Most of these (mine included) seemed to me to be standard issue. (Probably we weren't warmed up yet.) A while later we had five minutes to write something which used randomly assigned words; my paragraph is posted on my FreelyOffered blog. Our final assignment was to write on whatever subject we desired, timeboxed to fifteen minutes. My contribution to this exercise is posted on my FreelyOffered blog as well.

After each exercise each of us read what we wrote. My writings tended toward humorous; others' were poignant or factual or took on other tones. My writings were vaguely lengthy; others' were longer (how do they write so fast?) or crisp and succinct (such precision and clarity!). I was impressed with everybody's writings and look forward to reading more from my fellow session mates.

Wednesday afternoon I chose Do You See What I Hear?, wherein Don Gray took us through Virginia Satir's Interaction Model. The model is intakemeaningsignificanceresponse, and, as Don says, we go through it even faster. Slowed down it goes like this:

Intake, where we gather objective information from our environment: hand gestures, tone of voice, and so on.
Meaning, where we think about what we took in and decide what it means. (He is grumpy.)
Significance, where we think about the meaning with which we imbued what we observed and determine our feelings about it (I'm angry!) and our feelings about those feelings (And I'm guilty because I'm not supposed to get angry).
Response, where we use our context to filter our potential replies based on whatever rules we might have learned. (I don't know this person so I'd better stay impersonal and distant.)

Once we had the model down we put ourselves into it: one person talked to another person, with the rest of us playing the part of the Interaction Model. When Person A talked to Person B I was Intake. I found it difficult to stay focused on the facts of what was happening rather than running ahead and ascribing Meaning to it. I also had a hard time keeping track of everything Person A was doing: if I focused on his face I lost track of what his arms and hands were doing, if I paid attention to those I missed changes in his face, and how did his voice change again? When Person B replied I was Commenting Rules, and I found processing the many possible responses and reasons not to make them as challenging as objectively observing the Intake had been.

It turns out that different Temperaments utilize the Interaction Model differently. SPs usually run through the entire model quickly without spending much time on any individual step. Details-oriented SJs tend to get stuck gathering Intake data and can struggle to move on to the subsequent steps. (If you want to know what people really said and did, ask an SJ!) NTs often skip Intake altogether and go straight to Meaning, and NFs mostly skip booth and zoom directly to Significance. Both NTs and NFs are more likely to misinterpret actions given all those details they gloss over. Knowing their weak spot can help each Temperament process dialogue more accurately.

Next Don had us working in the Research And Development department of Clown, Inc. inventing new balloon creations. Even though I never did understand the point of this exercise, its relaxed pace was a fun and pleasant way to end the last session of the conference.

Late Wednesday afternoon brought the Conference Closing, where Jerry Weinberg helped us prepare to integrate back into the rest of the world.

AYE - Tuesday

micahel — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:36:00 GMT

Tuesday morning I took Naomi Karten's Building Connections That Amplify Your Effectiveness. I thought it would be about networking. Nope. (I don't know why I thought that since the class description didn't mention that topic.) It turned out to be informative nevertheless.

We did a variety of communication exercises each of which taught me something about communicating with other people. Such as that even us introverts can enjoy talking with other people! Another nugget I took away is to have several tidbits about myself ready to use when I introduce myself. Memorable ones, preferably. Which doesn't necessarily mean extraordinary; while I likely won't forget that Cindy is an expert marksman and that Mike's daughter has a pet cow, I will also remember that Ava is remodeling her bathroom. I had lots of fun in this session, and I learned some too.

Tuesday afternoon Don Gray led six of us in Experienc[ing] The Diagram Of Effects (DOE). DOEs come out of the General Systems Thinking world and are a way to depict a system and its dynamics in order to better understand them and/or make them work differently. Don started by taking us through a DOE he uses when he wants to keep group introductions within a certain time span. That introduced us to the (minimal) notation of DOEs. Next we split into two groups: one tasked with creating a DOE meant to explain how credit cards work to a teenager, the other responsible for creating a DOE to depict ways for banks to make more money from their credit cards.

I was part of the teenager group. I thought this would be a simple project, however we spent over half of the three hour session working on it. Our key breakthrough came when one of us thought to add the teenager's worry level to the diagram. That was exactly what we needed to get our point across.

Although I had read about DOEs some time back I had not attempted to draw one before this session. I was surprised how much we struggled to diagram what I thought was a simple system. Our discussions as we debated how to draw the diagram were I think more useful than the diagram itself turned out to be.

To my teammates beware: now I want to draw DOEs for everything....

Tuesday evening found me in a Birds Of A Feather on Reinventing Yourself. Johanna Rothman helped us each create a career timeline. This is a graph with time on the horizontal axis and our feeling about our work on the vertical axis (i.e., super hyper happy at the top, enormously unhappy at the bottom, and neutral in the middle). The idea is that seeing our career in this form would help us see patterns which we could then decide to take steps to break. My timeline confirmed that I switch jobs when I get bored. Another participant's timeline surprised him when it showed that his happiness-with-work level rarely drops below neutral. This is definitely a tool I will use with my mentees.

Deborah Hartmann followed with a description of a tool she uses to stay accountable to a group of colleagues with respect to her personal and work life. They defined a set of attributes to measure for their physical and work life, such as physical health, spirituality, and sense of achievement. Each week Deborah creates a radar chart depicting where she feels she is on each attribute. Her group meets online to share their charts, discuss how they changed from the previous week, celebrate positive moves, and make plans to counteract negative moves.

I like this process for making visible my status on and changes in hard-to-measure values. I think I am going to start doing this myself.

AYE - Monday

micahel — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:34:00 GMT

Monday morning I attended Steve Smith's workshop on Virgina Satir's Change Model. The short form of this model (see his popular article for the full skinny) is:

Status Quo. Everything is stable and going well.
A Foreign Element pops up.
The person/group Resists the foreign element's efforts to pull them out of the status quo.
The resistance is overcome and Chaos ensues. The person/group does all sorts of experiments as they search for a way to cope with the chaos.
The person/group stumbles upon a Transforming Idea.
The person/group Integrates the transforming idea into their daily practice.
The person/group reaches a New Status Quo.

This cycle can take minutes or months. We constructed a Change Model Guantlet in order to experience it ourselves by making each step a physical reality through which we passed. I was part of the Chaos step. The five of us identified five components of chaos:

Dreamkeeper, who reminds you why you started down this path in the first place.
Fearmonger, who tells you all the horrible outcomes which might occur.
Million Ideas, who peppers you with possible transforming ideas.
Siren, who pulls you back to the original status quo.
Distractor, who randomizes you.

When the experiencer-of-change reached us we shouted our respective shouts and pushed and pulled and tugged and rotated the experiencee until the transforming idea managed to pull them out.

Two "stars" ran our Gauntlet. I was fascinated as I watched the effects the various steps of the model had on the star: how comfortable they were in status quo, their apparent bewilderment as they were pulled into chaos, and their relief once a transforming idea took hold and they made it to the new status quo. I realized that while Chaos+Integration is my status quo, that is not true for everyone, and that anything I do to assist others through the cycle will likely be appreciated.

Monday afternoon I took Diana Larsen's session on Leading From The Middle. When she said it could have been called Managing From The Middle I made ready to bolt (if I ever have a direct report my career has failed); then she said it really was about leading and so I stayed put.

Diana gave us seven points to keep in mind as we attempt to balance the concerns and desires of those above and below us:

Observe Your Organization: figure out how it works, what its rituals and myths are, how you add value.
Learn About Your Leaders: what their values are, how they prefer to take in information, what they want from you.
Learn About Your Peers: ditto.
Know Yourself: what you fear, how you affect other people, what your blind spots are.
Communicate Consistently And Frequently: set up brief regular sync meetings with people above and below you, assume helpful intent even when it appears otherwise, under-promise and over-deliver.
Collaborate For Innovation: ask others how you can help them do their job. And be prepared to do seventy percent of the work, because it probably feels more like fifty percent (or less) to the other person.
Respond To Changing Conditions: anticipate change, influence changes as you deem necessary, pick your interventions judiciously.

This session was the least useful to me. I didn't learn much new. Also, I felt uncomfortable in the "Relate a time when..." exercises because I usually require a while to come up with specific examples of scenarios from my past (typical big-picture-ignore-the-details NT). I felt Diana was reading directly from the handout at times, which is an instant turn-off for me. (I later found out this was the first time Diana had led this class, which likely explains at least some of her referring-to-notes.)

I did however like the hoot owl whistle she used to call us back from our discussion groups. <g/>

AYE - Sunday

micahel — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:32:00 GMT

Sunday was a warm-up tutorial by Don Gray and Steve Smith. This was an all-day session meant to introduce newbies like me (and returnees looking for a refresher) to the lingo, vocabulary, and concepts used at the conference.

First up was the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which is perhaps the best known of the plethora of personality typing systems. Although I have studied this some and so already knew I am an InTj (way I and T, close to the middle N and J), I haven't yet managed to internalize the differences between the types. Now I have shorthand:

Extrovert v. Introvert refers to how you orient yourself to your environment and how you recharge. Extroverts talk in order to think and draw energy from immersing themselves in other people; introverts think in order to talk and need cave time before they can face the masses again.
Sensory v. iNtuitive refers to how you gather information. Sensors want concrete details while iNtuitives look for patterns and big picture theories.
Feeling v. Thinking refers to how you make decisions. Feelers are guided by emotions whereas Thinkers are guided by logic.
Perceiving v. Judging refers to how you orient your life. Perceivers don't need a reason for doing things; for them it's always playtime. Judgers, on the other hand, want to know the expected benefits before embarking on an endeavor, and they would rather finish all of their work before even thinking about playing. Another way to say it, for the programmers in the crowd, is that Perceivers are late-binding and Judgers are early-binding.

David Keirsey found that the sixteen MBTI types can be effectively grouped into four temperaments:

SPs, who ask "When", create and troubleshoot, and search for action. Think (Star Trek's) Captain Kirk.
NTs, who ask "Why", are rational and visionary, and search for knowledge and competence. Think Spock.
NFs, who ask "Who", catalyze their surroundings as they seek after ideals, and search for identity. Think Dr. McCoy.
SJs, who ask "What", guard and organize, and search for belonging. Think Scottie.

The differences between these groupings were highlighted when we split up by temperament to draw a map of the first floor of our hotel. Us NTs had the general sequence correct yet didn't remember enough details to decide which way the hallway hooked. The NFs used lots of color and abstract representations. The SJs knew how many chairs were at each table and the colors of their various parts. The lone SP knew the full details of everywhere she had personally been and nothing about the rest.

Don and Steve made a point of telling us that types are only preferences, not absolutes. Your upbringing and work environment can lead you to act contrary to your type, and your type can change over time. For example, I find myself moving towards the middle on all four axes, which I believe to be a good thing. I can actually talk to people now, and I admit that I have feelings. <g/>

With personality types firmly fixed in our heads we moved on to congruence. If a person is being congruent their words, emotions, tone of voice, and body position all match, and they are considering themselves (Self), the people around them (Other), and the situation in which they find themselves (Context) in their responses. When a person is being incongruent some or all of these factors conflict. Family therapist Virgina Satir identified four common incongruent stances:

Placating. "Yes, you're right and I am wrong, whatever you think is best is fine with me." This stance ignores Self, and the placater tends to feel worthless.
Blaming. "It's all your fault, you worthless idiot!" This stance ignores Other, and the Blamer usually feels unsuccessful and lonely.
Super-Reasonable. "One must think about such things, after all" followed by a five minute explanation which contains copious references to rules. This stance ignores both Self and Other, and the Super-Reasonabler removes all traces of feelings and likely feels isolated and vulnerable.
Irrelevant. "Did you notice how blue the sky is today? And that they replaced the carpet in the hallway over the weekend?" in response to a question about project status. This stance ignores Self, Other, and Context. The Irrelevancer often feels unbalanced, out of place, and uncared for.

Each stance has stereotyped body language. Blamer, for example, lunges out on one foot attacking with their pointing finger. We took turns assuming these stances with the idea that doing so would help us notice when we adopt these stances in real life. Time will tell whether it worked for me.

Last up for the day was Virginia Satir's process for identifying the temperature, or state, of a group. This involves five items in sequence:

Appreciations are a method for doing public thank yous. They follow the form "<Name>, I appreciate you for <whatever they did>." This highlights past helps and starts things out with warm fuzzies.
New Information is a forum for sharing exactly that.
Puzzles is an opportunity for group members to raise issues that, well, puzzle them. Puzzles are not solved here; doing so is postponed to a different time. Also, puzzles are distinct from complaints.
Complaints is the time for individuals to raise issues they have and make recommendations for resolving them. Both are required; if you don't have a recommendation, then either work with your teammates ahead of time to develop one/some, or transform your complaint into a puzzle (which will change it and give it a different flavor).
Hopes And Wishes gives the group a chance to share what they would like to happen in the future.

The tutorial ended with a temperature reading of our group, which was a useful demonstration of the technique and also a lot of fun.

Overall the tutorial was useful and informative, and I am glad I took part in it.

AYE? Aye!

micahel — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:30:00 GMT

I spent the previous two weeks in sunny Arizona. Last week I hiked around Sedona. The week before that I was in Phoenix attending the Amplify Your Effectiveness (AYE) conference. AYE is not your typical sit-in-dark-hotel-rooms-listening-to-droning-speakers-read-their-slides. Although the sessions were in hotel rooms, they weren't dark, and the presenters are not allowed to use slides. I've been wanting to attend AYE for several years, for many reasons, including:

Jerry Weinberg is one of the founders (and, I daresay, the godfather) of the conference, and I am a self-confessed Weinborg.
The teachers are all people whom I have come to hold in high regard.
There were only a few sessions over the entire conference which did not interest me, and at least two sessions in each timeslot which did.
I had a hunch that the conference would be rife with other SHAPErs, and that they would be as interesting in person as they are over the web. (They were.)
I knew that many of the sessions would be experiential, and (as I've already mentioned) that slide-driven presentations are not allowed. I expected that the differences from other conferences would not stop there. (Nor did they.)
The conference is limited to only ninety-nine people. I've never attended a conference that small.

AYE turned out to be everything I thought it would be. As I write this I have only begun to process what I took in over the week. (Actually, writing this is helping me to process it.) So I am at least as curious to see what I am about to write as you are!

The hotel was good enough; the conference was great. I am glad I went! I definitely recommend AYE 2008 to anyone who wants to spend a week (that will feel like a lifetime) learning about and working on themselves.

*** Want a fun job on a great team? I need a tester! Interested? Let's talk: Michael dot J dot Hunter at microsoft dot com. Great testing and coding skills required.

Driver Wanted

micahel — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 19:30:00 GMT

I was walking along, minding my own business, when a sign in a shop window reached out and grabbed my attention:

Driver wanted. Must have valid WSDL.

Say what? Applicants must have their own Web Services Definition Language file? I can see how it could be useful for a delivery person to be addressable via a web service. I must have missed the day when they handed out spinal implants to everybody...

How would you test that? "Can you ping me now? Good."

[Yes, I did eventually figure out that "WSDL" probably means "Washington State Driver's License"...]

Brain Overload

micahel — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 20:30:00 GMT

Tell me, please, when exactly it is OK to park here?

This is perhaps the most complicated set of parking rules I have seen. I am glad that a) I do not have a car, and b) I do not live anywhere near these street signs!