Author Archives: Martijn de Vrieze

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October 6, 2011

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Systems Thinking

While reading Weinbergs “Introduction to General System Thinking” I started doing a bit of research on the web on it and stumbled onto a few entertaining videos giving a (very) basic introduction to what you can consider system thinking.

Since I quite liked this short series I thought I might as well share it with the world here. These are not my video’s I just ran across them on Youtube.

As the uploader of the videos states “Systems thinking is a way of appreciating complex social problems also known as wicked or messy problems”. I hope this collection of videos will help more people get interested in Systems Thinking.

Introduction:

Stakeholder analysis:

T, O and P syntesis:

Problem Picturing:

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September 23, 2011

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Anything can be a testtool

Last night we had a meeting at Polteq where Test tooling was at the center of attention. Interestingly most participants consider test tooling immediately to be related to test automation, I think that with a little creative thinking most testers can get a lot more out of tools than just mere test automation. I see tools as just about anything I use in my work as a tester to get my work done. This may be an application like notepad++ to keep track of what I have done or quickly find and replace a word or phrase in several places;  Selenium WebDriver to remove a lot of repetitive work in testing; Excel to create data which can be inserted into DB directly from excel.

One of the things that I realized over the course of the conversation is that, not only are there a lot of different ideas on what tools might be, but there is also confusion about how to use tools.

I have always tried to be creative in my use of tools, in other words, abuse a tool, apparently not everyone thinks like that.

An idea was posed that we compile a list of tools and in what situations these tools can be used, which is an interesting idea, I am just not convinced this is the right approach. A list of tools can of course come in extremely handy, but will we be able to come up with a more useful or complete list than for example on opensourcetesting.org ? Plus, will this stimulate those testers that think tools are directly related to test automation to go look at the list? I am not sure.

I therefore proposed to come up with a list, of 10 or so, tools that are either by default installed on a Windows PC  or are easy to find and download and give some ideas of how you can make these tools work for you in a slightly unorthodox way.

While writing this post I realized how difficult it is to just think up ideas how to (mis)use tools. Generally my ideas for how to make life easier while testing come to me kind of naturally. For example when doing a major refactoring in FitNesse of the testcases, we tried at first to use the Refactor functionality within FitNesse.

This is a fairly simple regular expression find/replace. Works well enough when you do not really care what you are replacing. However when you need to know what you are replacing this refactor function is not good enough, it doesn’t give you any control since it just goes off and does the replace.

What we needed was a slightly more sophisticated way of doing the search and replace. That is where Notepad++ came knocking. This basic text editor is capable of searching within multiple files in a set of directories and showing you the results for this search, it is also capable of replacing all occurrences of these keywords in one big bang, while still showing you what it is doing.

When kicking off our current project, we needed some way to quickly build a hierarchical overview of the applications under test. We first thought of using the sitemap xml, importing that into Excel and using that. This would however, not give us the opportunity to play with it and use it as an inspiration to base the custom fixture on. We ended up using an extremely easy way to build a hierarchical overview, where all nodes can be moved, linked, collapsed and expanded at will: a mind mapping tool. We used Freemind, it is a wonderful little tool, easy to use and free to download!

There probably are an unfathomable amount of other tools that can be abused in this way.  Please share them with me!

Tools are there to do stuff for you, to make life easier. Nobody is stopping you from abusing a tool to your advantage!

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September 21, 2011

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Are we building shelf-ware or a useful test automation tool?

Frustration and astonishment inspired this post. There currently is a big regression testing cycle going on within the organization, over the past 4 months we have worked hard with testers to establish a sizable base of automated tests, however the moment regression started everyone seemed to drop the automation tools and revert back into what they have always done: open excel and check the check-boxes of the scripted tests.

Considering that we have already setup a solid base with a custom fixture enabling the tests, or checks if you will, to do exactly what the tester wants them to do and do what a tester would do manually whilst following the prescribed scripts, and having written out, in FitNesse, a fair share of these prescribed scripts, what is stopping them from using this setup?

Are we automating for the sake of automating?

While working on this, extremely flexible, setup with FitNesse and Selenium WebDriver and White as the drivers I have started wondering more and more why we are automating in this organization. The people responsible for testing do not seem to be picking up on the concept of test automation, they are all stating loudly that it is needed and that it is great that we are doing it, but when regression starts they immediately go back to manual checks. I say manual checks on purpose since the majority of testing here is done fully scripted, most of these scripts do not leave anything to the testers imagination, resulting in these tests being checks rather than tests. Checks we can execute automatically, repeatedly and consistently with tools such as FitNesse.

How do you make testers aware that a lot of the scripted tests should not be done manually?

Let me be clear on this, I am a firm believer in both manual and automated testing. They both have their value and should be used together, automated testing is not here to take away the manual testing, rather it is here to support the testers in their work. Automated testing should be complimentary to manual testing. Thus far in this organization, I have seen manual testing happening and I have seen (and experienced) a lot of effort being put into writing out the automated tests in FitNesse. However there has not been a clear cooperation between the two, despite the people writing the automated tests being the same individuals who also are responsible for executing the manual tests (which they have rewritten into FitNesse in order to build automated tests).

We have tried coaching on the job, we have tried dojos, but alas, I still see a hell of a lot of manual checks happening instead of FitNesse doing these checks for them. What is it that makes people not realize the potential of an automation tool? Thus far I have come up with several possible causes

  • In our test-dojos we mainly focused on how to write tests in FitNesse rather than focusing on what you can achieve with test automation. This has led me to the idea that we rapidly need to organize another workshop or dojo in which the focus should be on what the advantages of automated tests are.
  • Another reason could be that test automation was not initiated by this team, it was put upon this team as a responsibility. The team we are currently creating this fixture for is a typical end-of-the-line-bottom-of-the-testing-chain team, everything they get to test is thrown over a wall and left to them to see if it works appropriately. Most of them do not seem to have consciously chosen to be testers, instead they have accidentally rolled into the software testing field. Some of them have adapted very well to this and clearly show affinity and aptitude for testing, others however would, in my opinion, be better of choosing a different occupation. It is exactly the latter group that needs to be pulling this test automation effort currently going on.
There are more reasons I could go into here, but I believe these two to be the main issues at hand here which can actually be addressed.

So what will make people use automation tools properly?

The moment I can answer this one in a general rule-of-thumb I will sell it to the highest bidder. For within this organization however there doesn’t really seem to be a simple solution just yet. As I have written before, there is not yet one sole ambassador for test automation in this organisation. Even if there is, we will need to cause a shift in the general mindset of the testers. Rather than just walking through their predefined set of instructions in excel, they need to consider for themselves what has already gotten covered in the automated tests, how can I supplement these tests with manual testing?

We will need to find a way to get the testers to step out of their comfort-zone and learn how to utilize tools other than Excel and MS Word. Maybe organizing a testing competition will work, see who can cover the most tests in the shortest time and with the highest accuracy?

I am not a great believer in measuring things in testing, but maybe inventing some nice measurements will help the testers see the light. For example “How often can you test the same flow with different input in a certain timeframe?”.

Did we build shelf-ware or did we add value to the testing chain?

At the moment I often ask myself whether I am building shelf-ware or actually am building a useful automation tool (trying to stay away from terms like framework, since that might only increase the distance between the tool and the testers). Whenever I play around with the FitNesse/WebDriver/White setup we currently have running I see an incredibly versatile test automation tool which can be used to make life a lot easier for those who have to test the software regularly and repeatedly (not just testers, but also developers, product owners etc. can easily use this setup).

It is completely environment agnostic, if needed we can (and have in the past) run the same tests we run in a test environment also in production. It is easy to build new test cases/scripts or scenarios (I seem to have lost track what would be the safe option here to choose, they all have their own subconscious connotations) since it is a wiki. All tests are human readable, if you can read an excel sheet, reading the tests in FitNesse with Slim the way we built it, should be child-play.

Despite all these great advantages, the people that should be using it are not.

Reading all this back makes me consider one more thing; we started off building this setup with these tools based on a request from higher management. The tool selection was done by the managers (or team leads if you will) and not by the team themselves. Did we miss out on the one thing the IT industry has taught us? Did we build something we all want, but not what our customer wants and needs? I hope not, for one thing, I am quite sure this is what they need, an easy to use tool to automate all tedious, repetitive check work.

Question that remains: is this what our customer, or to be more exact, our customers’ end user, the tester, wants?

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September 16, 2011

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Test automation ambassador needed

I need to define the role of a test automation ambassador.

What would a true, organization, test automation ambassador look like? Should it be a person with lots of experience, especially in the automation field, or can it also be a rookie, fresh out of college?

I guess it all depends on the organisation, right?

Imagine a sizable technology organization where several IT departments live, they all have their own product owners, their own business owners, their own development teams and thus also for a big part their own codebase.

Where does this all come from? We work with separate teams within the IT departments, these teams are completely separated. They have their own product owners, their own business owners, their own development teams and thus also for a big part their own codebase.

From the test automation side we have a unique position within the organisation, we have a helicopter view. We are separated from all these other departments and have our own thing todo: open up all the pieces of the platform to enable test automation with FitNesse and whatever drivers we need. This position creates a lot of perks, such as the freedom to work independently from any of the teams, we get to work first with new tools and toys since we are seen as a bit of a playground.

It of course also poses a potential problem. We are implementing test automation as externals, we are there to help, not to own. Where do we now place the ownership of test automation, and of the FitNesse part in particular, needs to have a place. In my view test automation ownership should not be laying within any of these separate teams, it should be outside of those.

Why does the ownership need to lay outside of the teams?

For one, the teams are competing for resources, another problem would be that they all have different agendas and deem their own part of work the most important contribution to the IT landscape within the company, in other words, their own piece of the automation pie will be well maintained, the rest will be neglected. Most importantly however, non of these teams have a clear overview of what the entire platform, i.e. all components together, look like from a functional point of view.

The owner of the FitNesse side of test automation needs to have this overview. This same owner however, also needs to clearly have some weight to put in the scales to ensure that all teams

  • use test automation effectively
  • maintain their part of the test suite (FitNesse test cases)
  • maintain and add their part of the custom fixture
  • do not break the overall regression, or smoke test or end-to-end test

Logically the owner of test automation would be within the group responsible for regression testing. This is exactly where the challenge is however. The team responsible for regression (let’s call them the regression team), is understaffed and fairly inexperienced, completely inexperienced when it comes to test  automation and how to successfully roll that out over an entire tech organization. The separate team members all have their own strengths and as a team do a very solid job in manually executing regression or smoke tests, but there does not seem to be one person strong enough to pull the automation effort beyond writing the testcases.

Ideally the ambassador of test automation (in this organization at least), and thus the owner of both the FitNesse fixture and the FitNesse testcases resides outside of all teams that have a use for test automation. This opens up the road to continuous development and maintenance on the automation suite, it will ensure independence of other teams and thus the ambassador will be able to make clear decisions based on what is good for the automation program first and think about the teams second, the individual teams are contributing to both the Fixture and the regression suite anyway, so their needs will be covered within sprint or roadmap.

I fear we will have to apply the polder-model here however, and find a way to make it work. What we have built thus far, both as a custom fixture and in terms of testcases, can already be of huge added value to the organization.

However I still hope we can find the prospect ambassador and coach, shape and train this person to have both the knowledge, skills and mental strength to take the next steps needed to get this organization closer to continuous testing.

Awareness of what test automation can do however is holding people back from using it.

– Edit –

So what skills should this ambassador at least possess ?

  • Affinity with testing and test automation in particular
  • Solid understanding of what can be tested automatically and more importantly what should and should not be tested automatically
  • Capability of explaining  to all levels within the organization what we can achieve with test automation
  • Presence and charisma to not just sell test automation within the organization to sceptics, but convince them and show them the added value of it and make them want to use it
  • Insight in how to maintain test scripts across the teams, how to deal with the inheritence from several teams into regression and how to organize this all into a solid, robust, trusted automated regression set
  • At least a base knowledge of programming in order to help maintain the FitNesse fixture and to be able to help new test engineers get started with the inner workings of the fixture
  • Know and understand how the organization works together and how you can get the several teams to contribute effectively to the test automation effort
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September 6, 2011

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FitNesse – Test automation in a wiki

the assignment
When I started working at my current assignment I got told that the tools for automation had already been chosen, one of the tools being FitNesse. The way the tools were chosen is not my preferred way of picking a tool, the fact that the assignment was to “implement test automation across the organization through the use of the chosen tools” made me slightly worried whether or not FitNesse and the rest would indeed turn out to be the right choice.

Prior to this assignment I had heard a lot about FitNesse but had never had any hands-on experience with it, nor did I know anyone with hands-on experience with it.
Having worked with FitNesse for a few months now i feel the time has come to share my thoughts on it, what do I like, what do I believe is up for improvement, how is it working for me for now etc.

learning curve
Getting started with FitNesse was not all too intuitive. Getting it started is easy enough, but once you have it running it is not clear where to start and where to go from the FrontPage. Since we were not planning to use the standard fixtures but instead were planning to create our own we started on the fixture side rather than with FitNesse itself directly. Having created a generic login functionality in the fixture translating actions back int FitNesse became a lot more intuitive.

possibilities
The base fixtures such as the DoFixture, WebFixture etc. are very powerful in itself, I however feel they somewhat miss the point of automating in clear text: the tests are not easy to read, logical to follow or intuitive to write. We chose to work with SLIM rather than with FIT since FIT gives too much flexibility in usage of (almost) psuedo-code. Examples as used in the acceptance test in FitNesse are not clear enough for our purpose at this client. The test team is, to say the least, not very technically inclined and examples such as below do not really help them very much:

This is still somewhat readable

!|Response Examiner.|
|type  |pattern|matches?|contents?|
|contents|Location: LinkingPage\?properties|true||

A while loop implemented in FitNesse however quickly turns into black-magic in the hands of the technically less inclined:

|While|i=0|i<5|i++|
|put book in the cart|i|
|confirm selection|i|

With our custom implementation we now have test cases that can be read by most people within the organization and will be quite well understood, for example the below scenario for transferring money from one account to another:

|Scenario|Transfer Money|amount|From Account|accountFrom|To Account|accountTo|With Description|desc|
|Start               |TransferMoney |
|Go To|
|Select Van Rekening |@accountFrom |From Dropdown|
|Select Naar Rekening|@accountTo|From Dropdown|
|Enter Bedrag        |@amount|In Textbox|
|Enter Omschrijving  |@desc|In Textbox|
|Click On Verwerken|
|Select Content Frame|
|Is Text             |Het effect van deze overboeking op uw vrije bestedingsruimte is|Present|
|Click On Verwerken|
|Start               |CurrentAccount|
|go to|
|check               |Get data from column|Bedrag|3|

flexibility
Having started with Selenium as the driver below FitNesse enabled us to quickly build out quite a lot of test cases for the web applications. Part of the beauty of FitNesse in my opinion is that it is driver agnostic. In other words, it doesn’t really care what the system under test is, be it a website, a JavaApplet, a database or desktop applications. We are currently starting to work on TIBCO interfaces and will soon have to move over to Delphi and C# desktop applications. With quite some traditional test-automation-frameworks this would force us to start working either with a different tool or at least in quite a different way. The great thing about FitNesse is that it is so flexible that we can not only test desktop applications, we can also test across several parts of the platform. For example start executing some functions on the web application, verify these actions directly in the database, start a management desktop application and approve the actions initiated from the web application, all within one test case. A test case that big would make the test fragile, but the great thing is, it is possible if you really would want to.

refactoring
Quite some of the tests currently in FitNesse have been built up based on a functional mapping we initially made of the system, rather than the flows through the application. This is not quite ideal when running the tests, let alone when trying to sort through them and building up a suite for a particular type of flow or functionality.
Refactoring in FitNesse is probably the part where I believe a lot of improvements can be made. The current functionality, based on regular expression search is fairly crude.
FitNesse being a wiki, does have a wonderful different perk when needing to execute some bigger refactoring or moving around of test cases. All tests are text files within directories in the filesystem of your PC. In other words, if the built-in refactor function is too crude, a tool like Notepad++ or TextPad can be of immense value. These can search through files across directory structures and do a big part of the refactoring work for you. If you need to move whole folder structures, again you can copy them around directly on the file system.

judgement
My feeling regarding FitNesse so far is that it is a great tool which thus far seems to be underestimated out there in the world of test automation. Even when working directly with the standard fixtures FitNesse makes for easy to use, simple and quick to implement test automation. The main challenge is the initial learning curve, getting started with it and making the right choice in whether to go with Fit or Slim are for the newcomer the main hurdles.