In part II of our Testing the Limits interview with Lanette Creamer – aka “Testy Redhead” – we cover the need for Exploratory Testing; Matt Heusser and the “rebel alliance” of testing; how to create a popular testing blog; her stance on tester certifications and more from the wide world of QA. Catch up by reading part I, and when you’re done with this one, go check out part III.

uTest: In one of your recent blog posts, you mention Elisabeth Hendrickson’s STAREAST declaration that “Exploratory Testing Is Not Optional.” Why did this statement resonate so strongly for you? Do you think all testing managers should follow Hendrickson’s lead?

LC: As a frequent conference attendee and enthusiastic reader of testing blogs, I’ve seen many ideas about how to improve testing. I’ve been through countless industry trends, such as borrowing manufacturing ideas, extensive measuring schemes, and repeated attempts to automate all testing. The bottom line is exploratory testing works in practice. Not for a few months or years, but it works to find important bugs year after year no matter what other quality trends are happening. It works well side by side with automated checks, manufacturing ideas, and it can be used with session based test management to provide measures and metrics if needed. It is the one constant a tester can go back to and find bugs that impact the user experience. It is the meat in my testing sandwich. (My pun filled humor is the cheese.) To hear Elisabeth acknowledge the importance of exploratory testing in public shows me that agile testing is about more than just automation. Agile testing can be about a balanced approach to overall quality. It resonated with me strongly because it makes me hopeful for the future of testing on agile teams.

I think test managers should evangelize and defend what works well in practice on their teams. My experience has been that exploratory testing is generally undervalued considering how effective and practical it is.

uTest: What’s the deal with this “rebel alliance” thing we’ve been hearing so much about? It sounds subversive – we want in! Seriously though, what’s the mission of this group? Please explain it to our un-initiated readers.

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Next up in our Testing the Limits series is Lanette Creamer. Known to many in the QA blogosphere as “Testy Redhead”, Lanette has over ten years of experience in the software industry, including her current role as Quality Lead with Adobe. Like many of our guests, she writes a popular testing blog, publishes technical papers and has been known to speak at a conference or two. And yes, she’s on Twitter.

In part I of our interview, we get her thoughts on testers vs. hardware; the idea of “quality advocacy”; why unemployed testers should study The Price is Right;  life as a shift manager at a charity bingo parlor; and much more. When you’re done with one, be sure to check out part II.

uTest: What’s the biggest trend/challenge in testing that no one’s talking about yet?
LC: Testers are breaking out of the office like William Wallace, but with laptops, not swords. How much more affordable is it for a company to buy a great laptop every few years than all sorts of different hardware? Let someone else manage the machines so we can focus on the testing. Of course, this isn’t appropriate for every context, but I’m interested in going beyond multi-boot systems, local images, and to truly getting out of the business of managing hardware. I’m interested in cloud-based imaging. Part of my personal strategy of investing in one laptop that can run multiple operating systems is the temping ability to verify the scope of a bug on one machine. To do that without even rebooting with more built-in logging and debugging tools is really the next step to freedom from hardware and location-reliant testing.

uTest: In the last year, we’ve noticed you blog about the prospect of unemployment. What advice do you have for other testers who find themselves in this situation? Should they just wake up at noon, watch The Price is Right and eat nachos until a hiring manager comes knocking on the door? Or should they try to keep their skills sharp? If it’s the latter, then please elaborate on how to go about this.
LC: The Price is Right can teach you something amazing about interviewing. Have you ever noticed who they pick? It is the most enthusiastic people with the best stories. Come on down, job candidate! You’re the next contestant on The Job is Right. Can you imagine what The Price is Right would be like if they picked a contestant who was just above it all? Laughed at the fabulous prizes? Ignored the host? Win or lose, play the job interview game with style and be memorable. Also, I do like nachos. Layer the cheese and make them in the oven.

Well, rather than bouts of unemployment, I’ve been facing one very long pending layoff. I’ve not yet experienced the unemployment part, so maybe your readers can help me out with their advice when that happens. As a part of the CS5 team, my layoff isn’t effective until June, and it impacted every tester on my current team. The day I first became aware of my pending layoff, I felt a bit powerless. I realized that it was really up to me to decide what to do next. I decided that I wanted to end well and finish the project, and I really wanted to complete my 10 years at Adobe. I am proud of my work for my entire career at Adobe, and that hasn’t changed with my layoff notice.

Here’s what I recommend for those of you working in a job that you know is ending:

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After Twitter-stalking him, making some harassing phone calls and sending threatening letters, Jon Bach (@jbtestpilot) cheerily agreed to take part in our Testing the Limits series. Much like his brother, Jon has a remarkable understanding of software testing – both in theory and in practice. Having worked for companies like Quardev, LexisNexis, HP and Microsoft, Jon is also a blogger, author and software testing consultant. An expert, in the truest sense of the term.

In the first installment of our two-part interview, we get Jon’s thoughts on sibling rivalry; the blame spiral of software development; the emergence of “agile-fall”;  testing at a startup vs. testing in the enterprise; John Schneider as Jon Bach and more.

uTest: A few months back, we asked your buddy Andy Muns who’d win a fight between you and your brother (this was a big debate in the uTest office). He said you would win hands down. Would he be right? And since you and your brother seem to share the same testing philosophy, what would do you think the fight would be about?

JB: It’s hard to fight with someone who stayed in their room for most of our childhood.  He was either reading or doing science experiments with a microscope or the chemistry set.  It got worse when we got the TRS-80 in 1980.  In fact, that’s probably the last time we fought — over who got computer time next.  My memory may be fuzzy, but just when it came to blows, he programmed a user name and password dialog? Something clever like that. Now it’s better just to learn from him and do my best to keep up — but that’s true for all younger brothers, I think.

As for modern-day fighting, sponsor me for a testing certification and let’s see what he’d do.

uTest: Say you’re named grand poobah of the QA universe… what’s your first decree?

JB: Effective today, “Quality Assurance” is now “Quality Assistance”.

(Try it.  Watch what happens when you start using it.)

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In Part II of our interview with Google’s Patrick Copeland, we discuss the challenges of managing a global engineering team; rewarding developers with food pellets; the difference between a good tester and a great tester; and why some companies will never launch a high-quality app. By the way, did you miss Part I of our interview?

uTest: What are some of the challenges that come with managing teams in dozen (or more) countries, as you’re currently doing? How difficult is it to maintain control over the people, processes and products? And when do you sleep?

PC: “Maintaining control over people” <smiling and laughing like Dr. Evil>.

But that’s not how it works at Google. The truth is…our team structure is atypical in the industry. For one, we are a flat company with many Nooglers being a few steps below senior executives. The expectation is that people and teams are semi-autonomous. In this model it’s impractical for managers to be controllers. And regardless, I’d rather set up teams that are made of great people who can run their areas themselves. My focus is on helping teams to be effective. Managers at Google are generally judged on their ability to enable smart people to get things done. Many have 15 or more direct reports, introducing some chaos and reducing the time available to micromanage.

One way we get everyone moving in a similar direction is to use OKRs, it came to Google thanks to board member John Doerr back in 2000. John stressed the importance of setting overall company Objectives and Key Results that would help develop departmental objectives; in turn, individual OKRs for every employee would support achievement of team and company wide goals. In Q1 of 2000, we rolled out our first company-wide OKRs, which included “8 million searches/day” and “Select CEO.” We’ve come a long way since then.

uTest: A lot’s been made of the unique and friendly work environment Google offers its employees. Does this also apply to your engineers? Or are they handcuffed to their desks and given food pellets for every line of code written (like we do at uTest)? Seriously though, how does an open atmosphere lend itself to better software?

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In this month’s Testing the Limits interview, we’ll put Patrick Copeland on the hot seat. Patrick is the Senior Engineering Director for a promising young upstart named Google (we’re not familiar with them ourselves, but we’ve heard good things) where he oversees a global team of about 800 engineers. But this isn’t his first rodeo –  prior to Google, Patrick spent a decade at Microsoft, where he specialized in all things related to software engineering.

So what do you ask someone who’s probably forgotten more about software than we’ll ever know? Well, in this installment, we’re going to get his views on catering to a global base of users; his criteria for evaluating testers based on their “tester DNA”; the recent addition of our good friend James Whittaker; the challenges of launching new products like the Nexus One, as well as other tidbits from inside the GooglePlex. Stay tuned for Parts II and III in the days ahead.

uTest: What are some of the challenges that come with having a global base of customers and users? Are certain products noticeably more popular in some areas rather than others? And how does this affect your future planning?

PC: Yes, of course some products and features do better than others. Our approach is to do lots of experimentation and to release and iterate. We push bits to customers early and often, and then we listen and watch usage. Customers help us by “voting with their feet.” Popular features and products are improved, and poorly performing products are deprecated. With a big focus on innovation, we also need to “fail fast” and customer feedback helps us make those decisions.

Not surprising, our global customers have different demands of our products. We want products to “feel local” and we need to support features that may be unique to specific markets. For instance, in Indic based languages using a standard keyboard is difficult, so we develop strategies like virtual keyboards or category browsing for search. As we specialize our products for certain markets, it introduces more challenges for testing (eg. requiring special cultural knowledge). When we can’t find internal talent, community-based testing is an interesting solution to this challenge.

We base staffing and planning decisions on several criteria:

• Strategic: Maybe a new feature, but in a market with existing competition (like Android).
• Financial: Obviously Ads and Search, but we have several emerging businesses that are also getting important.
• Customer usage: For example, popular high-traffic applications like GMail.
• Legal or Compliance: Certain areas need to be prioritized high for legal reasons. For example, SOX compliance for CheckOut.
• Ability to Impact: We look at our capability and decide if investing testers in an area would have a significant impact.

uTest: A few years back, you were the keynote speaker at GTAC, where you said something to the effect that “the longer I’ve been in the business, the less I know about it.” How important is it for testers and developers (and those who manage them) to maintain this student-for-life mindset?

PC: Very. When I hire people I look for folks with a “testing DNA.” These are people who are great computer scientists at their core, but also are very curious, love software, and are passionate about test engineering. People who have those characteristics tend to pursue challenges and continue to learn.

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When we published our Michael Bolton interviews earlier this week, we forgot to mention that he’ll be speaking at a bunch of  testing events/seminars in the months ahead. So if you’re in these areas and want to see Michael speak in person (as opposed to Youtube) you owe it yourself to attend.

That said, here are a few upcoming testing events:

• “Why is Testing Taking So Long?” – Michael will be giving an interactive talk on this topic at the Markham meeting for TASSQ, the Toronto Association of System and Software Quality, on Wednesday, February 10, 2010.
• The Conference on Free Testing Tools: Michael will be giving a three-day public offering of his Rapid Software Testing course, and will deliver the keynote talk. The event will be sponsored by the Norwegian Computer Society, and will be held in Trondheim, Norway, March 22-26, 2010.

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In the third and final part of the Michael Bolton trilogy, we cover advice for new testers, his hypothetical banishment from Software Land, the blogs he reads and more. Did you miss our earlier interviews? Here’s Part I and Part II.

uTest: Hypothetical: You’ve been banished from testing – nay, ALL software-related activities – for the rest of your days. What will you to earn a living?  What hobbies would you pick up to fill the intellectual void?

MB: Who knows?  For fun, I’d keep playing mandolin, probably. Teach, maybe. Write. I’ve worked in theatre stage management, been a book-keeper, tended bar, worked in a comedy club. In high school I worked in mail rooms during the summer. Whatever I’ve picked up in life, it was because something needed to be done and I was there to do it.  If it didn’t seem like much at first, I started to learn about it quickly. When you invest a little bit of effort to figure out your job, you learn how to makes it faster and better and more interesting. It turns into this great feedback loop. Any job can be more fun when you set out to master it.

uTest: Tell our testing community something about you that your most avid readers don’t know.

MB: While walking through the woods on an island near Vancouver recently, I found myself being quiet and brief, which I like from time to time. Practically nobody knows that.

Lots of people probably don’t know how much I’m eager to help people out. All of my work—courses, articles, conference presentations, this interview—comes with lifetime free technical support. Have a question? Just ask. I might not answer right away—supporting the family with paying work takes precedence over supporting the community—but I’ve never knowingly turned anybody down, so if I don’t answer right away, be persistent. James Bach makes the same offer, by the way. We’ve found that it’s a great way not only to help people, but also to explore problems and come up with solutions and learn things that can help our clients.

uTest: If you were talking to a newbie tester, what advice would you give him or her to set their professional journey off on the right foot?  How about for a 10-year veteran tester?

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In the first part of our interview with Michael Bolton, we grilled him on the emergence of the Weekend Testers, sensible metrics, Michael Bolton the pop star and a bunch of other topics. In part “deux” of our interview, we tackle the necessity of tester passion, how emotions affect testing, and the greatest threats to the profession. Check back tomorrow for the final segment.

uTest: There’s a lot of passion amongst testing thought leaders about the best way to test, or the best way to manage or train testers.  Often that passion overflows into heated debates.  How can this passion best be channeled to improve the state of testing?

MB: First of all, we should welcome debate, and we should welcome skilled argumentation as part of the art of construction and practice of persuasion. I’ve found, though, that it helps to remember that we’re exploring and challenging ideas. That means it’s good not to get too personally invested in certain ideas, because we’re always learning more, and because changes in context can mean big changes in what needs to be done.

That said, there are some ideas that seem robust for me. I believe that it’s unethical to dumb down people or the work that they do. I believe that we should focus our craft on learning, and learning how to learn rapidly. How can we improve the state of testing? By recognizing that software development is a web of people who are related in service to each other. That means putting people and social issues first. Get that right, and everything else will follow.

Suggestions are cool.  Standards are something else.  No group should be dictating to other people how they must test unless there are compelling human health and safety reasons for it. Do you really believe that the standards people know anything useful about your business? That the force of government-supported regulation, created by busybodies, should weigh on how you do your daily work? And if your answer is No, what are you going to do to get it stopped?

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We’re thrilled to have Michael Bolton as the latest victim of our Testing the Limits series. As the founder of DevelopSense, Michael has traveled the world teaching the craft of software testing to businesses and individuals alike. Since 2005, he has specialized in courses on Rapid Software Testing – which he co-authored with James Bach. Michael is also a prolific writer, and his publications include hundreds of articles, essays and columns. Aside from his blog, you can keep tabs on his latest work through Twitter.

In Part I of the “trilogy” we discuss the Weekend Testers, testing abroad, how numbers can enslave managers, and of course, his pop-star namesake.

uTest: You’ve been a thought leader in the testing space for a while now, but people still seem to get you confused with Michael Bolton (the singer) on Twitter. Ever thought about creating a tester alias? Or have you considered asking him to change his name since “he’s the one that sucks.” Assuming you (and our readers) have seen Office Space, I bet this joke never gets old.

MB: Yeah, it never gets old.  Try renting a car with this name.

A couple of things on that. First, Office Space captures very well what it’s like to have my name. Second, it’s not his real name; he changed it already. Way back when, before Office Space, I was working in tech support at Quarterdeck Canada.  American callers would occasionally turn north when there were long phone queues in Santa Monica. On one call, when I introduced myself to the customer, he laughed. “Really? That’s your real name?” “Yes, really,” I said, expecting one of the usual jokes. He said, “You know, it isn’t his real name. I used to be his bass player.”  The singer’s real name is Bolotin, but according to the bass player, there was no hope that radio DJs would ever pronounce “Bolotin” right, so he changed it.

uTest: We recently interviewed your friend and colleague James Bach, who had high praise for a group called the Weekend Testers. Can you give our readers a quick recap of what this group does, and whether or not you’re on board with their testing philosophy?

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After we re-launched our brand in May, we decided that the uTest blog needed to be more than just uTest employees talking about uTest events, uTest awards and the uTest community (see how repetitive that gets?).

Writing witty, thought-provoking content is really hard.  And we’re pretty lazy, but fortunately we know some extremely smart & funny people.  So we invented the Testing The Limits series, in which we interview leaders from the worlds of testing, software, entrepreneurship and crowdsourcing.

We’re immensely grateful to these talented, busy people, and we have much more planned for the Testing The Limits series in 2010.  But before we flip the calendar, these posts from this year are worth another look:

June: James Whittaker – Author, Professor and Testing Evangelist at Google

July: Rosie Sherry — Founder of the UK-based Software Testing Club

August: Andrew Muns — President of Software Test & Performance

September: Jack Margo — SVP of Internet Operations of Developer Shed

October: Jon Winsor — Author, Crowdsourcing Expert, and Founder of Victors & Spoils

November: Matt Heusser — Software Testing Author, Professor and Testing Manager

December: James Bach — Software Testing Author, Teacher and Speaker

We have some great guests and ideas lined up for 2010, including software execs, QA thought leaders, and famous journalists & authors.  As always, the goal of Testing The Limits will be to inform, to entertain, and above all else, to help our readers get to know these thought leaders who are worth following and listening to.

Have a suggestion for a future Testing The Limits guest?  Drop us a note or tell us in the comments section.