Category Archives: Training

Software Testing at University of Technology Sydney

Posted by on February 17, 2013 11 comments

I’m lecturing at the University of Technology this year. I’ve revamped it the course from last year, placing more of an emphasis on the testers skill. This is essential if we are going to improve the quality of testing within organisations, and its why large organisations are excited about and want to work with UTS to make this course happen. As far as I’m aware, this is the first course in Australia of this kind.

The course is part online part tutorial. There is a big emphasis on learning by doing, with lots of opportunity to practice testing. There’s also an opportunity to work with companies, performing testing and reporting to real stakeholders, giving you a real opportunity to experience what software testing is about.

Here’s an overview of the course content:

Software Testing

This course teaches postgraduates the essential skills required in software testing. Learn how to test software in a way that offers stakeholders valuable and insightful information on the quality of the product by asking useful questions of people and the product you are testing.

To do that, you will learn the principles of context driven testing, critical thinking skills, test strategy, test planning, collaboration and communication and documentation.

Subject Objectives

  • On completion of this subject, the student will have the potential to:
  • Understand how context drives how software testing is performed
  • Think critically in software testing
  • Creating Test Strategies
  • Know how to model a product for the purposes of software testing
  • Become proficient in bug finding
  • Learn how to test effectively
  • Create test reports that provide relevant information to software testing stakeholders

On completion of this subject, the student will improve

  • Their understanding of what software testing is and how it relates to other roles in product development
  • Their ability to think critically by asking useful questions.

Teaching and learning strategies

This course is based on the principles of experiential learning with an emphasis of understanding through doing. Each topic will be taught through a practical exercise. Students will have the opportunity to work individually and in groups to complete assignments throughout the course. There will be a final group assessment where students will work in a company to create a test strategy, test software and develop a test report on the software tested. 

This course is aimed at postgraduate students who wish to learn how to test software in an applied and thoughtful way. Some degree of technical understanding is beneficial but not essential.

Content

This subject will cover the following topics:
1) Critical Thinking in Software Testing
2) Test Strategy: Modelling
3) Test Strategy: Coverage
4) Exploratory & Scripted Testing
5) Oracles and Bug Finding
6) Test Reports and Bug Reporting
7) Testability: Tools in Software Testing
8) Advanced Modelling – State Machines
9)  Communication with Stakeholders

Though the course is part of the post graduate program, they’ve agreed to allow people to take the module as a course in its own right. If your interested in taking part in this course,  go to the UTS website

Growing your own

Posted by on September 23, 2012 12 comments

So, I’m sitting here in my office on a beautiful  Australian spring day. The sun is shining brightly, the air is slightly fresh sending wafts of scent from the spring flowers. Its a good time to be alive and its a good time to be thinking of growth and change.

Potatoes in Spring

True to form, I trotted down to the local garden center and bought back a truck load of seeds and ideas on what I can do in the garden. I feel good this year, the potatoes are growing well, and I’ve managed to grow snow peas for the first time. Having invested a good amount of time in the garden, I feel content enough to sit in my office and allow myself to explore ideas on software testing and training.

And I’ve come up with the crazy idea, wonderful idea. For some time I’ve wanted to invest in online training in software testing. Its a model that I think will suit me well. I live far far away from the rest of the world and as much I as enjoy meeting new testers from around the globe, continuous travel is not for me.

To date, I’ve struggled with the concept of online learning. When I learn, I like to get my hands gritty, experience the stuff I’m wrestling with. With my online coaching, I make sure I include a task of some sort but thats one on one. Is it possible to offer online experiential learning to many people?

And then I read about these guys at Venture Lab. The courses are highly experiential & require collaboration to succeed. I sniffed a model that I could possibly work with.

But I’m taking it one step further. I want to make the students the designers of the course. Its the students who will work out what needs to be learned and how that will be achieved, and how they will know they achieved it. There will be some external structure, perhaps in the form of exercises, some philosophies to abide by, but basically, its the students who will dictate the content & the pace. In fact a lot of these ideas are from the coaching model James Bach & I have worked on holding onto the concept that learning requires real desire from the student, and to do that the student needs to dictate the learning (with the teacher offering space and direction to learn).

I see this courses as being a permission giver. We’re so drilled to think of learning as something we have to sign up for, like its impossible for us to learn outside a course. In this way, I’m helping overcome that little hurdle and get into some real meaty learning.

I’m very excited about these ideas and what will come of them. I’m not sure where they will lead and I guess that’s half the fun! If you want to join me on the crazy, wacky journey, feel free to contact me on Skype at charretts, or else add a comment below.

I’ll be adding information on this model as it progresses.

In pursuit of coaching excellence

Posted by on June 2, 2012 9 comments

When you coach a tester you’re working in an environment that dynamically changes as both the student and coach work through a coaching task.  If you look at the diagram below you can see all the different attributes that might change throughout a coaching session.

Also, throughout the coaching session, the student and coach have a mental model of the coach and themselves. They constantly re-evaluate these models as the coaching session progresses.

The coaching I do (and James Bach does) requires that the coach has a testing syllabus that they use to help the student. This is different to life coaching which is non domain specific. Also, our coaching is lot more directive. The relationship between the coach and student is more coach->student than the traditional peer-to-peer relationship you find in life coaching. I see our coaching more like sports coaching, where a coach outside of a game, runs you through drills and challenging exercises to help you improve, often without realising your in need of improvement.

Personally, I’ve experienced good and not so good sports coaches. In my school days I was a bit of a field hockey superstar (I joined the grade A hockey team two years ahead of time, making me the youngest player). My coach however was incredibly overbearing, shouting and yelling at us and telling us how hopeless we were. I’m not sure if we were hopeless or not, but I know we failed to win many games and left the season completely demoralised to the point I gave up hockey for four years. I was persuaded to pick up hockey again and this time we had a different coach. She was quiet, never said too much and let me play my free style. One day she came up to me and be a quietly suggested I move back 10 metres to be able to better angle my shots ( I was in a midfield position). Very quickly I realised the power of such a move, I was in a better position to be able to control the game. I was 16 when that happened and I’ve never forgotten the power of that one statement.

For me that’s what coaching is about and its the type of coach I aspire to be. Its directive but the direction is about the skill and how the student is performing that skill. Where its non directional is that I challenge the student to think for themselves. It’s paradox at play but one that works.

Its also powerful because it’s watchful, ready to tap into what a student is doing at an appropriate time, using pressure and energy as tools to make direction powerful to the student (just like my second sports coach did). The aim is to help the student feel empowered to achieve more.

But the energy is not only in one way. The coach is getting energised by the coaching session too. I’m constantly evaluating my coaching and testing ability. I become a better coach by doing this. My aim is to become the best coach I can be.

I can only do this by coaching lots of testers, evaluating the transcripts and also working with colleagues who inspire and want to become better coaches too. I’ve been doing that this week with James Bach. We’ve been working on our book on coaching, identifying ways in which we coach, syndromes that both student and coaches encounter (we need to do more of this) and also finding ways to better evaluate coaching transcripts.

I think an aspiration of excellence in any field is such a worthy goal. I was watching Ron Ben Israel who is a master baker of sugar dessert flowers. You can see his passion the how is pursuit of excellence has led him to create masterpieces in sugar. Who would have thought that you could become excellent in such a small field?

Excellence I think is different to perfection. Perfection to me sounds more absolute, perhaps a little unrealistic. Excellence however, is within my grasp but also always one step ahead of me. I can be excellent at one point in time, but I can always strive to be more excellent. I think this is a worthy pursuit and a good use of my time and energy.

What are you in pursuit of?

(if you want a coaching session on software testing, please contact me on Skype. My id is charretts, please include the word “coaching request”. I offer free skype coaching to testers as long as you’re willing to allow your transcripts to be used in my research and perhaps in the upcoming book. This means the transcripts may be published, though I do conceal the second name and any potentially sensitive data).