I think it?s been a year since How We Test Software at Microsoft made its way to store shelves (and amazon). For the first few months, I watched the amazon sales ranking multiple times a day. I took a screenshot last December 18th that shows one of the few times we hit the #1 testing book. The book actually made up in the 7k range overall once, but apparently I didn?t take a snapshot.
Since then, the Chinese version was released, and the Korean version is imminent, and I?ve traded writing on weekends and evenings for more time with my family (and occasionally, more time for work). When I finished writing the book, writing another was the farthest thing from my mind, but since then, I wrote a chapter for Beautiful Testing, and have at least entertained the idea of writing something else?someday.
In hindsight, there are many things I?d like to redo with the book, but it is what it is, and I can live with that.It?s a book full of information and stories about how testers at Microsoft do their job. It?s a book about people, approaches, and some tools. It talks about when and why we automate tests, but covers a wide range of other topics as well, and I?m happy with the story it tells.
I think the book has sold somewhere around 5-6k copies (I haven?t looked at numbers in 6 months, but I?ll update this post if I do). That?s certainly not a huge number as far as books go, but it?s still amazing to me. My thanks go out to everyone who bought a copy (and more thanks to those who actually read it).
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Thanks to everyone who attended my talk today. Feel free to fire more questions here if you have them.
Slides are available here.
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I am excited to see that the Chinese version of HWTSAM is out (and soon to be followed by a Korean translation).
You can find information here:
http://www.china-pub.com/196002
and on Amazon.
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My talk is over - I've received a lot of positive feedback (although the people who hate my talks never track me down).
I did have fun though, so at least one person in the room had a great time. My slides (which are nothing like the slides I submitted) are here if you'd like to take a look.
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On request from Adam Goucher – another excerpt from How We Test Software at Microsoft. BTW – Adam wrote a review of HWTSAM here – although Linda Wilkinson beat him to the clever title.
This is from a section on quality in chapter 16. It’s something I believe strongly in and would love to hear your comments.
Many years ago when I would ask the question, “who owns quality,” the answer would nearly always be “The test team owns quality.” Today, when I ask this question, the answer is customarily “Everyone owns quality.” While this may be a better answer to some, W. Mark Manduke of SEI has written: “When quality is declared to be everyone’s responsibility, no one is truly designated to be responsible for it, and quality issues fade into the chaos of the crisis du jour.” He concluded that “…when management truly commits to a quality culture, everyone will, indeed, be responsible for quality.”[1] A system where everyone truly owns quality requires a culture of quality. Without such a culture, all teams will make sacrifices against quality. Development teams may skip code reviews to save time, program management may cut corners on a specification, or fudge a definition of “done”, and test teams may change their goals on test pass or coverage rates deep in the product cycle. Despite many efforts to put quality assurance processes into place, it is a common practice among engineering teams to make exceptions in quality practices to meet deadlines or other goals. While it’s certainly important to be flexible in order to meet ship dates or other deadlines, quality often suffers because of a lack of a true quality owner.
Entire test teams may own facets of quality assurance, but they are rarely in the best position to champion or influence the adoption of a quality culture. Senior managers could be the quality champion, but their focus is justly on the business of managing the team, shipping the product, and running a successful business. While they may have quality goals in mind, they are rarely the champion for a culture of quality. Management leadership teams (typically the organization leaders of Development, Test, and Program Management) bear the weight of quality ownership for most teams. These leaders own and drive the engineering processes for the team, and are in the prime organizational position for evaluating, assessing, and implementing quality based engineering practices. Unfortunately, it seems that quality software and quality software engineering practices are rarely their chief concerns throughout any product engineering cycle.
Senior management support for a quality culture isn’t entirely enough. In a quality culture, every employee can have an impact on quality. Many of the most important quality improvements in manufacturing have come from suggestions by the workers. In the auto industry, for example, the average Japanese autoworker provides 28 suggestions per year, and 80% of those suggestions are implemented[2].
Ideally within Microsoft engineers from all disciplines are making suggestions to improve quality. Where a team does not have a culture of quality, the suggestions are few and precious few of those suggestions are implemented. Cultural apathy for quality will then lead to other challenges with passion and commitment among team members.
[1] STQE Magazine. Nov/Dec 2003 (Vol. 5, Issue 6)
[2] The Visionary Leader, Wall, Solum, and Sobul
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My travel always comes in flurries, and October is the flurry month for this year. Immediately following a personal trip (brother in-law's wedding), I'll be heading to STAR. (btw - if you're thinking of attending, you can use the promo code SKWS when you register to save some dough).
While I'm in sunny socal, I'll be visiting DatAllegro and talking with their testers (they're a sort-of-recent Microsoft acquisition about 30 miles from Disneyland). I always enjoy visiting Microsoft sites, so I'm really looking forward to it.
Finally, I'll be heading to PNSQC at the end of October. I'm excited about this conference for a few reasons - one, is that it's close, and that I may even take the train. It's also my first time at pnsqc, so I get to see if it's as good as I've heard. Finally, there are a bunch of testers attending and presenting that I'd really like to meet. (if you want to attend and save a bit of money on the registration, you can drop my name! - the promo code FOA - Alan Page will save you some money. I hope to see you there.
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I guest-posted on the MSPress blog today. Check it out for an article on test patterns.
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Ken and Bj and I are back with another video recap of a chapter from hwtsam. Take a look and let us know what you think. (I do have to warn you that Ken experimented with a green screen on this video, and I?m not exactly sure what he put in the background).
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This one is a recap of chapter 2. We've filmed though chapter 8, but we're a little behind on production. We hope to catch up by end of summer.
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Work on the Korean version of HWTSAM is wrapping up, and we're looking for a few more of what the editors like to call "praise quotes". These are the nice things people say about the book that either go on the back cover or on the inside pages.
If you've read the book and want to add your words to the Korean version of hwtsam, just send me email (alan dot page at microsoft dot com).
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