The Ugly Duckling - The Changing Face of Testing

“The Ugly Duckling”
The changing face of testing

T Ashok
ash@stagsoftware.com
in.linkedin.com/in/AshokSTAG

"The Ugly Duckling" is a
literary fairy tale by
Hans Christian Anderson.

The story tells of a homely little bird born in a
barnyard who suffers abuse from his neighbors,
until much to his delight (and to the surprise of
others), he matures into a graceful swan, the
most beautiful bird of all.

The story is beloved around the world as a tale
about personal transformation for the better.
Copyright 2011 STAG Software Private Limited. All rights reserved. www.stagsoftware.com

Once upon a time, there lived Joe, a quiet hard-working soul. He was assigned to
check if the product worked fine. He was part of the dev team and shared the
environment with them. He did whatever he could, to find bugs in the product.
The manager used him to test & retest and the good soul put the bugs on the table.
The engineering team picked up what they could fix but told him to be quiet if he
raised his voice. The product was simple, the process ad-hoc/lightweight, and
tools were not very many. Joe worked tirelessly, was voiceless but still did his
best...

He was the black “duck”...

As time went by, things changed..
and Joe also changed....


More Joe’s were added, the team grew, and they
became an independent team. They setup
systems, trained better and found more and
better bugs. Their collective voice was heard.

Dev
Dev QA Dev QA Dev QA
QA

He also found that he had teams outside his
company and also a bunch of freelance testers
on the Internet...


His customer C.Omer saw results &
wanted more...

... wanted more at lower cost

... wanted quicker turnaround

... wanted faster ramp-up

... expected higher productivity


Joe ﬁgured out that
“Hard work is not enough anymore”

Joe & co are recognized for the value they
deliver, not for the effort they put in.

Joe & co now work on ﬁxed price. $

Joe & co not has only deliver work on time,
they also give SLA guarantees.


Joe understood C.Omer expects higher quality.
He started to focus on non-functional tests.

Functionality

Load, stress

Performance

Security,
Usability

…


Joe ﬁgured that he needed specialists &
built specialized teams.
A team

to Multiple specialized teams..

Certiﬁcations became popular.

Joe also realized that every member
needs to be multi-skilled.

Single skilled -> Multi-skilled

Broad based testing skills
Tooling skills
Speciﬁc domain skills
Deeper technology skills


Joe &Co’s work was recognized and
attitude towards them changed..

to

Do what I say Tell me what to do
(authoritarian) (consultative)


Test infrastructure became complex.
... multiple distributed systems
... higher dependency on third party software

Now Joe had to worry about infrastructure & how to
optimize the same.

In some cases, he needed dedicated test infrastructure.
He had bigger budgets now.
He also ﬁgured that in some cases “cloud” was helpful.

Joe & Co realized that test data needs to reﬂect real life
data and he needed larger data sets.
He invested in data creation and population tools.


The process models changed and Joe had to adapt..

Monolithic & Slow to
Sliced & Agile

Testing big chunks to

multiple byte sized

Document based to

Intelligent understanding based

Intrinsic measures to
Extrinsic measures


Technology evolved rapidly and life
became more interesting..

Distributed applications

Service based applications

Numerous specialized technologies

Rapid obsolescence rate

Open source became mainstream...


Systemic changes were happening and
Joe evolved.

Place Shifting

Distributed marketplace – Differing needs, sensitivities, tolerances

Distributed development – Differing styles,processes,expectations

Distributed infrastructure–Dependencies, availabilities

Distributed deployment –Multiple failure points
Co-existence – Multiple applications & technologies: Old & New


Now Joe has a large team(own & contracted), distributed across the world, with
dedicated complex infrastructure, plethora of tools , a multi-skilled & certiﬁed
team, validating builds by the hour, working across a wide spectrum of domains
and technologies conforming to a variety of process models and test technologies.

C.Omer is still breathing down his neck with higher expectations.

But Joe is in control and enjoying every moment. He is conﬁdent that he can
handle any complex testing job. He is widely respected and admired.

He had evolved into a “beautiful swan”.


Thank you!

Follow us @stagsoft

This was presented as a keynote talk at SoftTec 2010 Conference, Bangalore.

The Ugly Duckling - The Changing Face of Testing

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