Software Quality Assurance Adventures

Balloons and Y2K New Year's

2010-02-20T12:50:00.000-08:00

This week I went to the party store and bought a dozen some balloons for a birthday. As I bought them at the register, I contemplated how I was going to get the balloons into an already stocked car. It means lots of stuffing and not seeing out the windows actually. This reminded me of a new year's eve party I was responsible for over 10 years ago in 1999.

I somehow got roped into throwing the Y2K new year's eve celebration for the technical application team at Limited Brands. The new year's eve party was actually thrown in July, because on the actual new year's eve, we would all be working, right? On New Year's Eve in 1999, most techies were huddled into small war rooms holding their breath (and bored) or "on call" and contemplating the demise of their career. Nothing happened and it was a wasted party night, but for our team of 150 or more, once we finished our projects we partied mid July.

The celebration was held at a saloon/bar party room. The bar had games (think skeet ball and video old school) but also room for a catered dinner and microphone. And alcohol of course. I strangely became the party planner for a few big events like this. I guess because I didn't suck at it and I could be spared. Anyway, I did have help for this particular event since it was so large. One of the ideas in decorating the party room was to have balloons tied to each chair, to fill the large ceiling tent with a festive look. So I ordered 250 silver balloons at the local party store and showed up clueless what this actually meant.

In hindsight it's comical to recall stuffing around 30 balloons into a Honda Civic and making 9 trips back and forth to the venue. Somehow it got done, and balloons were tied to chairs. It ended up looking nice, but frantic and over it I was. I have long been known for doing things the hard and slow way! This got me thinking that it's been 10 years since 2000, and I was wondering "How much has changed, and how much has stayed the same?"

In January of this year, I must have been paying attention to other news because ComputerWorld and other techie publications ran articles sounding like "Y2K: Ten Years Later" target audience moi http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/331221/y2k_10_years_later/?fpid=2. Obviously, the hype of a disastrous non-computer world did not happen and it was a non-event. But what it did bring into focus for those of us in the IT field, was that our technical skills gave us powers which were transferable. We went to the highest bidder. We expected "packages" and to be treated well. It also launched the global effort to contract associates with technical skills. This contract work world would have happened in time, but Y2K jet set it to take place rather quickly. That's because developers were making so much money, and once on the corporate payroll, upper-management strategized how to reduce the cost immediately.

The ballooning of the housing market, and the balloon events of Y2K in my personal life, seem to be an analogy, a fable, for this IT market-place. A market inflating too quickly is going to burst. Many of us counted on the exponential growth in the value of our homes, and many of us counted on salary growth as well. But when the competition for your jobs goes to H1B/international workers for 1/2 your hourly rate, then the bubble bursts. Refer to this article http://community.dice.com/t5/Tech-Market-Conditions/Have-U-S-Workers-Priced-Themselves-Out-of-the-Job-Market-Join/td-p/146574.

Bottom line, it's better to rent the tank and blow them up at the venue. Or have them delivered. If you are chasing the wave, or riding the bubble, that is fine, but don't count on it, know it's going to bust and don't bank of that salary hike, or home equity for retirement. This is sooooo better said than done, right?

Tangible

2010-02-12T07:58:00.001-08:00

I like tangible things. You know, getting my hands on something and holding it. Even better is molding or creating something. In my line of work; this tangible factor is getting harder and harder to find. For example, when I first started working as on software development testing, I still touched the scanner, plugged in the peripheral, and had one masterful binder for each project. I once worked at a pharmaceutical company, where a large project was converting all the medical case files from paper to digital. Blacking out the sensitive information was done with a marker. The symbolism of going from paper to electronic was real to me with a start and an end. This lack of tangibility has moved to a more personal level as well.

Recently, I find I can hardly get a face to face with 80% of my team. Even if the developers are in the same continent (or "gasp" building), they like to multi-task through meetings by sitting at their desk. That is if they work in the office at home. Rare are the days when all-hands stand up meetings took place in the lab at the start and end of the day. Here are the days when tangible labs, or face-to-face meetings are the exception. I can no longer use strategies based on bagels or cookies, or the water cooler. Those were real project management strategies I assure you. Learning how to manage and guide without tangibility is a challenge. Obviously, I don't have three bullet points below.

I think this is why there was a scrap booking boom. As photography went from tangible pieces of paper to electronic mediums, those nostalgic of us turned to meaningful tangible objects. We created and decorated our way through meaningful pieces of paper. I collect pieces of ephemera from my great and grandparents, and sit beside my teenage daughter who prints out a collection of photos once a year but takes 10 digital's once a day. I belong to that generation whose parents made things for a living and children who will produce ideas. This younger generation has a desire for connections and has found a way to do that electronically. They have desired flexibility and have found a way to work electronically. So I wonder if this now young generation will get's nostalgic for something tangible.

Recently, I happened upon an unemployment uptown workshop for the displaced worker. This particular workshop was in an art studio and focused on the 3 figure salary finance manager having recently been displaced by recession fall-out and acquisition re-org. From the website it appeared the artists led the dis-placed managers through tangible creative projects to revive and encourage them. Would this only work for us Gen X work force that still longs for tangible things?

Will Gen Y value antique furniture when they embrace sparse?
Will Gen Y pay for conferences in order to have face-to-face when it is rare?

Although it's interesting to think about the marketing and business growth opportunities for Gen Y's; I am more perplexed when I consider the project management strategies that work with them. If a younger generation doesn't value year-end bonuses or bagels how to I negotiate?

Giftcards

2009-12-03T12:23:00.000-08:00

When I first started working in the lab at Limited Brands, there was no such thing as gift cards. Really, these essential gift items have not been around all that long. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), in 2009 the average person will spend $139.91 on gift cards during the holidays. This is actually less than 2008's comps which were $147.33. Gift card spending is projected to be $23.63 billion this holiday season. Gift cards are good business for retailers for a number of reasons - one being receivers will spend more than the gift card value in the store, and second the receivers may not use them at all - which is excellent return!

One of the first brands to roll-out gift cards at the Limited was Victoria Secret Stores (VSS). I guess if your boyfriend wants you to wear sexy lingerie, but is too intimidated to go into the stores and feels it's too risky to pick it out himself, this can be an excellent choice. Testing gift cards in the lab proved to be a large task. First off selling gift cards - the scan to sell, then swipe to activate process was completely new. Completely new to all retailers mainly. Our scripts for activating corporate or brand credit cards would not work and selling merchandise that could come in any dollar amount (10, 20, 50, 100, 500) was a new concept. Also, there were special things we had to work out with provider of the cards - namely test cards. Lastly you have to add a new tender type - you know cash, check, debit, credit card and gift card with declining balances.

Credit cards and gift cards balances are verified and checked with a third party vendors. These third party vendors handled all our corporate credit cards. But we had different vendors for giftcards and another for check verification. So getting a group of test giftcards was part of the project and was a scramble in the end. The test cards had to end up being sold or activated in our test lab and then turned around and used for tendering. It was a slew of test scenarios - all new functional and manual testing.

After Victoria's Secret rolled their gift cards out, then of course all the other brands had similar projects. Our second generation of a gift card project was being able to use a Victoria's Secret gift card at Express, or an Express at Bath & Body works and the like. This Gen II GC project opened up a new slew of scenarios, because the retail math used at each of the brands was very different according to that brands business model. For example, does the cashier get "credit" for selling gift cards (answer: no) and do associate discount's work with gift cards (yes). Working out those intricacies and business rules was altogether new and fun.

Back of the corporate level there were new ways (and regulations) of reporting sales and usage of the giftcards. It was exciting new territory for us in store systems and newly created some bonds with merchandising management systems and loss prevention.

The main thing that sticks in my mind about the gift card project was a situation that occurred at Bath & Body Works. We received a slew of test gift cards and spent months testing them. In the final phases we finally were able to see what marketing had picked out as the image that was going to be on the card. It turned out that image was licensed or copyrighted. So after rolling out the cards to the pilot stores, corporate ended up having to get all their BBW gift cards reprinted with a different image. Of course this became a mad dash right before the Christmas season.

Credit card verification, gift cards and those learning's became a substantial part of my career path later. Now when I stand in line to buy my gift cards, I chuckle inside at the cashier's attempts to scan, ring and swipe for verification.

The Binder and the Application

2009-12-02T06:11:00.000-08:00

Twelve years ago when I started testing in the store systems lab at Limited Brands, we relied on the printed page to conduct our tests. Our scripts, or step by step instructions for specific business scenarios, were written in MS Word. They started with 1. Boot up the server and ended with 101. Shut down the server. The scripts were kept in large binders above the machines and when we needed to run a scenario or group of them, we got the binder down, turned to the page and started. This was as manual and functional as it get's I suppose.

At the time we were testing or supporting about 8 different brands such as Victoria Secret, Bath & Body Works, Express and the Limited. Each brand had its own binder. When a new scenario was needed for the brand, one of the team would create a new script in word, print it out and place it in the binder. After a while, these binders would accumulate notes and edits right on the page. These changes would take place in our down time. Early in our maturity we were not capturing actual results or marking the scripts when something unexpected occurred. After time, we began to see the need to keep testing proof of results (SOX), track our defects by system/tester/script, and assign the executed script to a specific project even if it was basic regression testing. At that time we assigned the script a unique id (such as VSS A.1) and on a cover sheet mark the system we were using, who was testing, the date - etc. That one page would be used to track results and end up in a big file box as a project artifact.

Obviously, in this testing organization we did not have a separate testing application such as Mercury/HP Quality Center. But, the way things developed in this primitive setting taught me much about Quality Center and prepared me to understand it in a basic way. For example in Quality Center you have the module Test Plan where the scripts are written and edited. This is comparable to the Word or Excel documented script. In the QC module Test Lab, the scripts are assigned an environment, a tester, a test phase and notes from execution are captured. This is comparable to the printed out version of the script or the cover page we created.

As the team matured, a few things took place. First we came up with a basic set of scripts that were applicable to all the brands. These were basic things that had to occur at the store - or critical to quality (CTQ) items - such as sales can be rung up. Then brand specific scripts were put into sections. So you would finish base section A, then insert brand specific section B, then move onto base section C. Secondly, the Word script became an Excel script. This made it easier to move or reuse components or sections of scripts to be used across brands (think future automation opportunities). Also Excel became an excellent tool for verifying calculations.

Excel is an amazing application. One of my colleagues and I spend 3 months of holiday down time recreating the base script in Excel. We were able to recreate the store and the management calculations which targeted some inconsistencies in how tax was calculated. The NCR registers rounded in a different way for tax that the management's reports were. A small thing, but multiplied by 200 stores or 300 days in the years, a significant delta. There was some complex retail math involved in other areas such as store productivity reporting and Excel helped us validate our results when combined at a regional level. Mainly the Excel script writing helped us get the company ready and focused for future efforts towards test automation work.

Welcome to the Black Box

2009-12-01T07:06:00.000-08:00

When I started on my career path, I conducted black box testing. This is a test strategy where the person testing knows nothing about the internal workings, logic or code structure of the application. A tester who knows nothing can be extremely useful in many ways. They can help perfect your test scripts and they give honest feedback about their experiences to name a few pluses. Since then much has changed, both my own knowledge and the industry itself. I now know a bit more about the software applications I test and the processes that get us to the "lab" which no longer exists. I am on the white side now. This blog is a capture of some of those learning's because although things have changed, a whole lot has remained the same.

I started testing back in 1997 in a professional sense. Not too long ago really; but the dark ages to some. At the time I was working at a major retailer in their corporate offices and had the luxury of a lab. You know a room where the actual systems "lived" and we would visit them. Poor computers were in cages stacked three high and dust was a major issue. We would often have to find working keyboards or other peripherals in order to get started for the day. I knew nothing about software development at the time and would have to write down the DOS commands so I'd remember how to boot up or back up. The backup was on floppies and that was a luxury compared to tapes. Some of the old-timers there remembered punch cards. When the monitors lit up they were black and the letters in green! Today there is no lab and even mouse clicking is old school.

The kind of testing I did at that time was on registers and back office systems. I worked with a lot of hardware. From stacks of Cisco switches to scanners. During end-user acceptance testing we would bring in cashiers or sales associates from the local stores. One project we brought in distribution associates from the warehouse and had them test. We had large binders with the test scripts in them. Some of the steps in the scripts required pictures. During one holiday break, I took pictures of the back of the computer to show the end-users how to properly plug in the parallel ports. Really, I was one of them; nothing more than a glorified cashier getting paid good money to ring up sales 9-5 in the corporate office. But I embraced that and really enjoyed making our lab time very productive and organized. By the time I left there post Y2K, that store systems lab was a well oiled machine and our scripts were well on their was to automation.