Party Tricks of Testing

Growing up to be the tester I have become by now, I had two defining experiences of failing at job interviews. First was having to introduce myself to an audience, and I realized my fear of public speaking was not a limitation I can accept. Second was having to tell a joke, and I am still struggling with the idea of being intentionally funny. 

With a few talks under my belt to practice to overcome my first limitation, I realized that audiences sometimes do laugh when I speak. I like to think they laugh with me, with the space I sometimes manage to create for a bit of lighthearted insight. I still can’t crack a joke for the life of me, so I have learned to replace this with party tricks of testing. 

Party tricks are packaged responses to things we in testing often need to illustrate. For me they come in three forms, and I have a collection to share these days. 

1. Little exercises that create a shared experience

2. Stories with an educational point

3. Testing proverbs (avoid name) and quotes (drop a name)

I have found these to be useful from stages, in educating colleagues about testing perspectives and driving through essential lessons, and leaving something to remember. I will give a few of my go-favorites in the first category. We may come back with another post on the two others later.

Little exercises

Exercises that create a shared experience and drive an essential insight through it are community treasures. Finding them takes a bit of mining, and I have mined mine in conferences, open spaces, and online communities. While the original exercise is created by someone, they may come to me from someone else, and they may be reshaped with what I do with them from their original purpose. 

1. Raster Reveal by James Lyndsay, Workroom Productions
   https://www.workroom-productions.com/raster-reveal/
   
   Raster Reveal is a party trick you take out when your manager is wondering why the test you are doing takes so long - after all, they could get that done in 5 minutes, and you have already used 5 hours!
   
   In Raster Reveal, you move your mouse over an image that takes shape as more movement creates more precision. You can jump to conclusions of a unicorn, you may in fact add more detail before making conclusive judgments. In writing this, I finally concluded: not a unicorn, a white horse. Not a horn, just an ear. And finding the picture original confirms it.
   
   For any tech-minded testers reading the picture from the source, James has included a wealth of layers of FUN while you try to get to the answers.

2. Monkey Business Illusion by Daniel Simons via Cem Kaner
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY
   
   Tell people they have a test case: white to white player in the video, the ball is passed 14 times, and they report the status in their favorite testing tool as either pass, fail, or inconclusive. And now they test! For some, it’s a pass, others a fail. Pause the video where it says that the correct amount was 16. Oops, my test case had incorrect expected results. But do you have anything else to report? The gorilla? What gorilla?!? What about the curtains changing color, or the player leaving the field?
   
   When you drive, your speed is something you select. When you want to see all the flowers, maybe pass by more often, and go slow.
   
   I often do a collection of four party tricks I call “testing mathematics”, which is a set of three numbers that has nothing to do with the mathematical formula my old professors wanted me to be able to build for turning specs to test cases. Both this and 20 questions to show why we should not write all test cases when we search for the unknown are my absolute go-to, all the time. And both came to me from meeting the esteemed Cem Kaner, now retired.

3. Gilded Rose by Emily Bache
   https://github.com/emilybache/GildedRose-Refactoring-Kata
   
   It comes with requirements and code. And if it is changed as it needs to, it needs to be tested. It’s a brilliant illustration of specification vs. “works as implemented” as a test oracle helping us decide what matters and its impacts on our time and efforts, but also my favorite party trick to go to when wanting to show manual testing that looks awfully much like automation.
   
   For a longer version of this party trick, I wrote an instructor’s manual.

4. E-Primer by Alan Richardson, Evil Tester
   http://exploratorytestingacademy.com/app/ 
   
   E-Primer is a minuscule implementation of a domain that no one knows (except those who take this exercise) and a target-rich yet surprisingly complicated “how would you test a text field” exercise. You can’t answer in platitudes when you have an actual application. What would you do? Testing is like being given a blank paper with information others may not know of but care, and for this particular one, I can tell I have written 38 things down.
   
   Sometimes my trick is to show all the rabbit holes people get stuck in. Sometimes it is to illustrate how S(tructure) F(unction) D(ata) P(latform) O(perations) T(ime) leads you to better chances at finding things. Sometimes it is to show that we should see the positive basics to recognize what does not work and is reasonable. Starting with special characters may be a common choice, but it is most certainly not a great approach on an application you don’t even understand.

5. No Vehicles in the Park by someone via Elizabeth Zagroba
   https://novehiclesinthepark.com/
   
   Testing is about boundaries, and boundaries are fuzzy. What makes a vehicle? If we can’t define this, why do we think we can have definite specifications and pretend that a fuzzy world can be put in definite terms when examples are a great way of creating a common understanding.
   
   This exercise is at its best when facilitated by Elizabeth, because unlike me, Elizabeth is funny. And brilliant.

Remember, these are party tricks. They help illustrate a perspective. You can run through them fast, or a little slower, but still faster than any of our real applications. They may illustrate what we do in testing, but they are not all we do in testing. While testing is a party, it extends further in delivering information collaborations that matter. Any proposals on how you keep the party going, fun, and focused? Anyone up for pairing on the two other categories, the stories we tell and the bits of wisdom we pass around? Together it’s more fun. Let us know.

Maaret Pyhäjärvi is Director of Testing Services at CGI Finland. Regardless of fancy titles, she is just a tester,  if anyone ever is just anything. To support her testing, she is a polyglot programmer, conference designer, and community facilitator. She has delivered 700 talks and trainings in 28 countries on the side of her hands-on job in changing testing from within, and made it to the top-100 ICT list in Finland for 6 consecutive years, as well as been awarded by two major testing communities: Agile Testing Days Most Influential Testing Professional and EuroSTAR Testing Excellence Award.