Experience report: testing dojo with entire dev team

Last spring I worked as a test lead/quality coach for 3 teams that did their own testing. I experimented with different techniques to help them further improve their testing skills. I wrote this experience in March but I didn’t get around to publishing it then which I’m doing now.

I want to share with you another way of combining testing, learning and fun

At the Agile Testing Days in Potsdam/Berlin I accidentally ended up in a testing dojo session. For an hour, 4 pairs of testers tried their skills at a buggy piece of software and received feedback about their testing. It became immediately clear to me that this was a great opportunity to improve testing skills and I decided to try it at home with my teams.

I work as the sort of test lead who provides inspiration and encouragement for 3 teams of programmers who do their testing themselves. For our domain, web development, this works well. We have developed a testing strategy together and I also help them improve their testing skills. They are awesome, committed to continuously delivering value to our customers and eager to do a good job.

I planned a testing dojo of an hour and promised candy and laughs. The response was, to my relief, positive. I wasn’t sure that they would want to spend an hour of precious programming time doing testing. I chose an hour so that it wouldn’t be too long and it was easier to find a room and a time slot.

The preparations took a while because I needed to decide on a suitable piece of software and read up on dos and don’ts for testing dojos.

Finally, the software I picked was the one I had tested in Potsdam. It was crawling with bugs and this meant that everyone would find some. I thought this would be good for a first session to make everyone comfortable. It was also small enough to be constraining but big enough to allow people to try different areas. I also wanted to have something which no one in the teams had written themselves so that there wouldn’t be any awkward situations. This meant finding external software.

The parking rate calculator – object under test http://adam.goucher.ca/parkcalc/index.php

Format for the dojo
We had the 3 roles described in the testing dojo document. Every 5 minutes we rotated. We ended with a 10 minute debrief to discuss what we observed and what was good. http://www.testingdojo.org/tiki-index.php?page=Roles

Setting up the environment
I created a few posters which I put up on the walls. They detailed the format of dojo and the parking rates for everyone to see.

I explained carefully the purpose of the dojo. I put the emphasis on the fact the purpose was to learn from each other. This means that both observers and testers learn and we should be gentle to each other. It’s not easy to sit down a new computer and start testing in front of everyone, there needs to be humility from the audience for this. And on the other hand, active and good observers are key for learning.

How was it?
First of all, we had fun! The overwhelming buginess of the software created a lot of reactions: surprise, confusion, entertainment, frustration and joy.

The programmers were a bit overwhelmed by the amount of bugs. This is the downside of using this test object. In a normal situation I would just send it back after 2 minutes, but this isn’t a normal situation. I encourage splitting the debrief into two parts: “what did you think of the software?” and “what did you observe about the testing that we did?” or even say “let’s agree that the software is crap, but what did you observe about the testing?”.

It was clear that this was an ad hoc session. There was no plan and a lot of randomness. A few people started trying to be systematic but bugs caused them to lose focus. We tried a bit of everything, here and there.

This was a good thing though. For the group to observe this randomness was interesting. It shows well of you can spend an hour testing without knowing much more than when you started. When answering the question “what would you do differently if you did it again?” the group answered that they would be more systematic or organized. We also tried to highlight some of the things that the participants had done successfully.

What now?
We will do it again. This time I want to start with creating a plan together and see the difference in an organized approach. After this I think we’re ready for code closer to our domain or maybe even our own code.

Conclusion
I strongly recommend doing this kind of exercise with your team or your peers. It’s fun, interesting and a great opportunity to pick up new skills.