Fabian Scarano - Preparing Your Team for the Future

Contribution to EuroSTAR 2008

Fabián Scarano

Thursday 13 November 2008

Preparing your Team for the Future

© PA Knowledge Limited 2008. Page 2

EuroStar 2008 presentation Nov.ppt

Welcome to the Future



Agenda

Preparing the scene

Communication and abstraction

Creativity, stress mitigation

The future tester’s profile

SOA example

Teams and inter-teams performance

Conclusion



Produce more, Perform better, Care for your Team

Higher customer demands: Quality,

Performance, Availability

Higher customer demands: Quality,

Performance, Availability

Shorter product cycles: Agile, extreme, rapid

Shorter product cycles: Agile, extreme, rapid

Competition is tougher: Test

specialist, knowledge area,

high IQ

Competition is tougher: Test

specialist, knowledge area,

high IQ

Leverage Scarce

Resources

Maintain High Quality

Achieve and Sustain Competitive

Speed

ITITDo we make the most of the tester’s potential when we focus on excellent technical skills, a special knowledge area and requiring a high IQ?



Produce more, Perform better, Care for your Team

To make the most of our test team it is necessary to focus on the technical skills, a high IQ and the soft skills

Which soft skills areas?

• Abstraction, creativity, optimism and communication within the team

• Open mind to: working together with different cultures, accepting “wild” solutions, exercising more empathy

• Integration of teams with diverse goals and optimisation of the final product with the different teams

If emotional competences are relevant today, in the future they will become essential for any competitive test team in the market.



Communication: Abstraction

Is the process or result of generalisation by reducing Is the process or result of generalisation by reducing the information content of a concept or a observable the information content of a concept or a observable phenomenon, typically, in order to retain only phenomenon, typically, in order to retain only information which is relevant for a particularinformation which is relevant for a particular purposepurpose

(Wikipedia)(Wikipedia)

Is the thought process wherein ideas are distanced Is the thought process wherein ideas are distanced from objectsfrom objects

(Philosophical terminology Wikipedia)(Philosophical terminology Wikipedia)RedHappiness3R4

How did the language of mathematics develop? And what is it that enabled us to use this language not only to manipulate quantities and shapes, but ultimately to model our world and Universe, to successfully predict eclipses and the return of the comets



Example: Requirement Specification Definition Case

Cantor is our user and he is defining the set of Requirements, which the test team has to review, organise test cases, discuss with project manager and plan. He knows that it might not be that obvious and then he offers a crash course of infinite sets

N= Naturals Z= Integers

Q= Rationals R= Reals

1)

2)

Some definitions: - A set is a collection of elementsSome sets of numbers are

- The cardinality of a set is the number of members it containsNotation: for set S the cardinality is |S|

- Two sets have the same cardinality if they can be put to a one-to-one correspondence; or, If A ~ B, then |A| = |B|

|N|, |Z|, |Q|, |R| & |N| = 0א

- A set is countable iff its cardinality is either finite or equalt to

Now N Z Q R∩

When we know that in the interval [0,1] we can have all the N or [0,1]

∩ 1 / N

Then, is it true that∩

∩ |N| < |Z| < |Q| < |R| ?

0א



The set of Integers has the same cardinality as the Natural numbers. For every Integer number I can assign a Natural number that can count it 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

0, 1, -1, 2, -2, 3, -3, 4, ….

3)

The set of Rationals has the same cardinality as the Natural numbers.

For every Rational number I can assign a Natural number that can count it

1 2 3 4 5

1 1/1 2/1 3/1 4/1

2 ½ 2/2 3/2 4/2

3 ⅓ ⅔ 3/3 4/3

Then

|N| = |Z| = |Q| are denumerables because the cardinality is equal to 0א

Intuition in this case is false. The inequalities |N| < |Z| < |Q| < |R| are false; however not all infinites are equal in cardinality!




If we assume that we can put the Reals into a one to one correspondence with the Natural number we get to an absurd. Take the Reals between 0 and 1, express all the fractions as 0.ddddd…. Now under our assumption try to pair off the natural numbers with the Reals between 0 and 1.

4)

0א >1א

5) The continuum hypothesis (CH) asserts that there is no cardinal number a such that

0א

< |0The set of Real numbers is uncountable or |Rא

< a < c


Definitions: - A set is uncountable if its cardinality is greater than 0א

- The number of real numbers is the same as the number of points on an infinite line, where c is the cardinality, hence c =|R|

If we assume that this is true then = c



Humor

Optimism

Creativity



Humor, Jokes and Optimism Creativity

* Wikipedia

Jokes

Optimism

Hum

orCreativity

Is the tendency of particular images, stories or situations to provoke laughter and provide amusement*.

Freud stated that we build sensors in our mind, like barriers to stop the forbidden or unwished thoughts.

The strength of a joke relies on the description that fits simultaneously in two different frames. Where the first meaning has to be transparent and innocent, while the second one is disguised and censurable.

Some investigations show that optimism is directly related to the way one experiences and understands the reasons for negative situations; the feeling of a certain degree of influence and control over circumstances in life Observe that this is one

way to foster creativity, there are several different aspects



Humor, Jokes and Optimism Creativity

* Wikipedia

Jokes

Optimism

Hum

orCreativity

Creativity has been attributed over time to divine intervention, cognitive processes, the social environment, personality traits, and chance ("accident", "serendipity"). It has been associated with genius, mental illness and humour. Some say it is a trait we are born with; others say it can be taught with the application of simple techniques.More than 60 different definitions

Is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts*.

Exploratory testingScripted testingFlexibility planningReportingFeedbackEtc.



Belief of Control

* Albert Bandura, Stanford University

Self-efficacy Is the belief that one is capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain goals*

People's beliefs in their coping capabilities affect how much stress and depression they experience in threatening or difficult situations, as well as their level of motivation. Perceived self-efficacy to exercise control over stressors plays a central role in anxiety arousal. People who believe they can exercise control over threats do not conjure up disturbing thought patterns.

Self-efficacy does not refer to the actual control and influence, we have in a specific circumstance in our lives, but the skill of believing that we exercise control over it in the way we think and handle the situation.

Different research show that the degree of self-efficacy has significance in our skill to handle stress.

Observe that a person can have a low degree of self-efficacy in a specific area and a high degree in another



Belief of Control

The need to have exaggerated control over everything will on the other hand increase the risk of stress and burnout, and it is one of the characteristics of the “type A-behaviour” or “The hurry-up syndrome”.

Another important aspect to manage stress is to leave aside some tasks, especially those, which we have insufficient influence to solve.

Optimism is in this case closely associated with the belief of feeling control of situations related with stress, it is also valid in this case that an overdose “may kill”.

Phys

ical

and

Psyc

hol

ogic

al c

are

Degree of control

HelplessHopelessBoredomDepression

Type A-behaviourBurn-out Over control



The Future Testers’ Brain

Planning

Tester’sspecific skills

Multicultural tester’s gland Tester’s abstraction

centre

Tester’s communication skills area

Tester’s belief of control cell

Multidisciplinary tester’s cell

*Development, management and user patience, understanding, delivery delays, explanations, etc span

**

*Tester’s optimism particle

Tester’s social networkpower pack

Shipping software risk hub

Tester’s creativity and problem solving centre



Do you believe that this will still be a joke in the future?

Would you rather have in your test team female or male testers?



Multicultural, Multidisciplinary

The Future

Test team

Work environment• Universal product• Localisation• Global Understanding

Work environment• Diverse interest areas• Wide-ranged pole of

contribution• Social level impact

Tendency• Shifts involve

different time zones

• Fast handover of tasks

Tendency• Optimising the team• Broad Coverage• Efficacy, Identity &

trust



Example: Test Team in a bad coordinated SOA environment

What happens when SOA test team fails a good integration test?

Ask Brenda



Some of the new SOA testing challenges

• Testing services that do not have a user interface. There are two types of interfaces:

– A user interface

– A programmatic interface

• Data-driven business logic within services. Changes in data and state often result in synchronisation with other services

• External services to the organisation, using messages to communicate

• As SOA is evolving, security testing will have a higher priority and profile. Besides that, test must include the user interface as well as the programmatic interface

• Predicting the future usage of services to assist with performance, load, stress and scalability

• Tools are unavoidable to a successful implementation and CM

• State, messages and enterprise bus are specially tested



The team and the specialist tester

- Risk of silo effect- Complex Inter-team awareness- Trust among teams- How to achieve team Identity?



Team Team identityidentity

The Challenge

Team Team efficacy efficacy

Team Team efficacy efficacy



Trust among Trust among membersmembers

Trust among Trust among membersmembers

If the three essential conditions for team effectiveness are trust, efficacy and identity, the challenge is to integrate these in an inter-team frame.



Teams

Diverse range of talents: Planning, collecting and exchanging information, coordinating a plan. Not only engaging in the intellectual parts; but a balance of different profiles

Emotional capacity to face difficult data fosters an affirmative environment and encourages proactive problem solving, seeks opinions on task processes.

Team self-awareness, communication, task processing, self-evaluation and constructive feedback no longer remain within the team focus, but expand to the inter-team terrain

“High-IQ team members do not make out a High-IQ team or clever inter-team collaboration”



The Future Tester ...

is us breaching the path



Main Bibliography

• Bobby Zachariae, ”Stress-kompetence”, Denmark

• Marvin Minsky, ”The Society of Mind”, MIT

• Albert Bandura, ”Self Efficacy”, Standford University

• Hannah Hoag, ”New Scientist”, London

• Peter Suber, ”A Crash Course in the Mathematics of infinite Sets”, Philosophy Department Earlham College

• Torry Harris, Business Solutions Inc, US, 2007

Fabian Scarano

PA Consulting Group

[email protected]

Software

Fabian Scarano - Preparing Your Team for the Future