Tuesday, September 15, 2015

My Meeting with James Bach

Last Saturday I had the privileged to meet with James Bach (If you are a software tester, I expect you to know him) and as you can see below I was

I asked him about Sapient Testing->Non Scripted Testing->Testing vs Checking  and how these 3 are different.

He corrected my understanding of Oracles I was thinking about it too specific from the perspective of checks by focusing on pre defined rules whereas "In testing, an “oracle” is a way to recognise a problem that appears during testing."

 We talk about check automation where he told me about this wonderful analogy that think of automated checks as a web and tester as Spider.

The spider is responsible for creating it, managing it, to find the right place and spot for it, a place where there is a greater chance to catch bugs and so on...
Spider Web

And then comes the best part when he played the Dice game with me 

Just after few minutes in the game I felt myself bit overwhelmed :)
Few of the points I took as a take away after that session:

  • Taking clear and correct (Yes correct) is extremely important
  • Simplify problem: Start with the very basic try understand the system with the very basic data
    • Don't get yourself too attached with the basic data, once you are sure how it is working for simple data - "Explore", "Randomise" and Look "Below the surface"
  • Use Focus / Defocus heuristic when in doubt use focus when frustrated Defocus, walk around, change your perspective of viewing 
While we were walking out of the coffee shop he saw me looking at his Cap (those who know me, would know why :-D I wear Cap all the time ) and then he told me he give Cap to tester who work for.

That got some responses with respect to who else has one :D

One thing which made me quite happy was that he was aware of what we Software Testers from Pakistan are doing at the moment mostly because of my dear friend @arslan0644 

I told him briefly about STEP (Software Testers Engagement Programme) an initiative which bunch of my fellow testers took to bring closer the community


2 comments:

  1. WoW!!!! This is amazing. Meeting some one like James Bach is an achievement, and you seem to have spent some time with him is even better. Thoughts around Oracles and Heuristics are good and clarified a few confusions of mine as well. Thanks for posting this!

    BTW, i would love to have that cap as well, hope to meet him soon and work for it!

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    Replies
    1. Yes Indeed. It was truly Amazing.

      About the cap, yes we need to work for it :)
      We did talk about the scene of Software Testing in Pakistan what we did in the past and what our fellow Arsaln is doing :)

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