Social Software Testing Approaches

Software teams are well aware of the need for their developers, testers, product owners and other team members to collaborate. Product backlog refinement, 3-amigos sessions and daily meetings create space for sharing planning of the work, but for much of the rest of the time, people are hunched over their own keyboards and screens, working on their own tasks. Even if developers work with each other during pair programming and code review sessions, testers often work on their own.

Let’s look at the approaches involving a more social aspect that testers can adopt in order to work together and improve their testing, as well as work better with developers. We’ll introduce experiences of traditional and strong-style pair testing, ensemble (mob) testing and bug bashes.

Social software testing approaches enable you to do better work together, moving you from co-creation to real collaboration both between testers, and testers and the other roles. Even if work could be done alone, why would the social way of doing the work make sense? It’s not about getting the most out of us, but the best out of us - avoiding the ping pong, creating ideas we would not generate alone, and sharpening our skills.

In addition to learning within the team, we can extend from learning within the team to community: testing tours applying these approaches give you hands-on experiences working with others even in other companies. And now most recently - we have a shameless version of social, pairing with genAI tools.

In software development, those who learn the fastest do best. Could social software testing approaches take our abilities to the next level by enabling learning between everyone, especially when we don't know what we don't know but can recognize it in the context of doing it, especially when we don't know what we don't know but can recognize it in the context of doing it?

Transcript

1. © 2024 CGI Inc. 1 Social Software Testing Approaches Maaret Pyhäjärvi June 2024
2. © 2024 CGI Inc. 2 Material Attribution by Maaret Pyhäjärvi is licensed under CC BY 4.0 https://github.com/maaretp/legacy/blob/main/talks/2024/SocialSoftwareTestingApproaches.pdf
3. © 2024 CGI Inc. 3 What social at work usually looks like? Doing ??? Planning PI planning Sprint planning Backlog refinement Three amigos sessions Daily meetings Hallway whiteboarding Reviews We have options! Traditional pair testing Strong-style pair testing Ensemble (mob) testing Bug bashes / exploratory testing sessions GenAI pair testing Trends: Democratization of debugging (observability); Democratization of data (genAI) Democratization of programming (low code); Democratization of computer resources (cloud); Democratization of testing (testing not testers) …
4. © 2024 CGI Inc. 4 Why? Co-generate options Choose to try, choose through doing Practice (doing) over theory (plan) Avoid ping-pong Timely feedback Build more skilled empathetic colleagues
5. © 2024 CGI Inc. 5 Tampere Goes Agile 2014 Woody Zuill / Mob Programming “A ridiculous idea - I need to experience it 1st hand”
6. © 2024 CGI Inc. 6 https://www.linkedin.com/in/maar et/ @maaretp@mas.to
7. © 2024 CGI Inc. 7
8. © 2024 CGI Inc. 8
9. © 2024 CGI Inc. 9
10. © 2024 CGI Inc. 10 https://ensembleprogramming.xyz https://strongstylepairprogramming.xyz https://exploratorytesting.xyz https://bbst.courses/blog/social-software-testing-approaches/
11. © 2024 CGI Inc. 11 Learning or Contributing There’s value in holding space for good testing to happen!
12. © 2024 CGI Inc. 12 Learning through Osmosis Osmosis is a process that does not require energy.
13. © 2024 CGI Inc. 13 Accidental Learning by being intentional about learning. Fooled by the unknown unknowns. You cannot know what you don’t know but you recognize it when you see it.
14. © 2024 CGI Inc. 14 https://www.linkedin.com/in/maar et/ @maaretp@mas.to Driver (Hands) Navigator (Brains)
15. © 2024 CGI Inc. 15 Comparison Strong Style Traditional I have an idea… Please take the keyboard I have an idea… Give me the keyboard
16. © 2024 CGI Inc. 16 Traditional pair testing
17. © 2024 CGI Inc. 17 Strong-style pair testing
18. © 2024 CGI Inc. 18 Driver (Hands) Designated Navigator (Voice) Navigators (Brains)
19. © 2024 CGI Inc. 19 6/5/24 Image from: https://conorfi.com/software- testing/guidelines-for-running-a-bug-bash/ Bug Bash / Exploratory Testing Sessions
20. © 2024 CGI Inc. 20 Making Your Choices Approach Best Used For Traditional Pair Testing Working together in an equal pair requiring little rule assistance. Strong-Style Pair Testing Working together in an unequal pair. Ensemble Testing Learning and innovating a shared way of working. Bug Bashes Seeing problems from many perspectives.
21. © 2024 CGI Inc. 21 Social software testing approaches are great for… • Larger organizations where functional silos continue to exist (Testers get together to test) • Agile teams where we need to share testing skills (Teams get together to test) • Teaching anything testing related to a group (Training group gets together to test) • Introducing testing perspectives to programming activities (Testers joining ensemble programming)
22. © 2024 CGI Inc. 22 Social Software Testing Approaches on Tour From healing my loneliness To Lisi Hocke’s testing tours To many people on tour To social media driven community learning None of this new style of deep, serendipitous learning would be possible without the social software testing approaches
23. © 2024 CGI Inc. 23 GenAI Pair Testing External imagination Confidentiality Ethical compensations Intent and productivity
24. © 2024 CGI Inc. 24 Becoming polyglot programmer / contemporary exploratory tester I had great ideas even when I did not know how to turn them into code – removing the distance is worth the struggle. Cognitive dissonance
25. © 2024 CGI Inc. 25 Insights you can act on Founded in 1976, CGI is among the largest IT and business consulting services firms in the world. We are insights-driven and outcomes-based to help accelerate returns on your investments. Across hundreds of locations worldwide, we provide comprehensive, scalable and sustainable IT and business consulting services that are informed globally and delivered locally. cgi.com