Month: April 2010

On Google Insights, Indians and testing

On Google Insights, Indians and testing

I have been playing around with Google Insights for Search lately. It’s a nifty tool that allows you to compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. The search results are presented in a textual manner, but there is also a map representation allowing you to drill down on regions and countries.

An explorer’s and system thinker’s walhalla! It didn’t take long before I found myself throwing some testing-related lingo at it:

I wonder what happens when “Software testing” is thrown into the mix?

Mmm… and what about “Agile testing”?

 wOOt! “Testing conference”?

 This can’t be. Let’s try ISTQB…

 Same old, same old. Is this some kind of caching problem? Let’s park the testing stuff and throw in Alaska’s finest, “Sarah Palin”.

 Okay, this actually makes sense. Let’s zoom in on the US. Drill baby, drill!

 And sure enough, the top number of searches comes from the place she could see Russia from on a clear day.

Google Insights wasn’t messing with me. It’s real. The highest search volumes of almost all software testing-related terms seem to come out of India. Look who’s on a quest for knowledge.

Are Indian testers heavier google-users than the average Westerner? Is that because other sources of testing-related information are lacking? I’d love to hear the opinion of Indian testers on this.

Although this trend is remarkable, it’s not surprising. If the nature of many Indian testing blogs is something to go by, a lot of Indian testers *are* inquisitive and critical. It’s the birthplace of Weekend Testing, too. And the sapient tester virus is spreading rapidly: if you take a look at the blogs of Ajay Balamuragadas, Dhanasekar S, Parimala Shankaraiah, Pradeep Soundararajan, Shrini Kulkarni, Manoj Nair, Debasis Pradhan, Santhosh Tuppad, Sharath Byregowda, Mohit Verma, Jaswinder Kaur Nagi, Santosh Shukla, Nandagopal and Madhukar Jain, their enthousiasm and sheer passion for the craft are contagious.

I like the way many of them are taking skill development into their own hands. Bhārat, the home of continuous learning and improvement! 

I wonder how long it would take to put Belgium on that Google Insights testing map. I’m afraid this won’t be happening anytime soon – but I’m pretty confident that we will get the term “governmental crisis” up there in a heartbeat.

Volcanic systems thinking

General systems thinking and the effects of a volcano outburst

I believe testing is about looking at things from as many perspectives as you can. Testing is also about relating things to one another, seeing things in a greater context.  In that sense you could say that testing is applied systems thinking. 

Years ago, Michael Bolton pointed me to the amazing book “Introduction to general systems thinking” by Jerry Weinberg. Actually, he pointed me to practically every publication by Jerry Weinberg – I’m still trying to prioritise my reading list. The book taught me that taking a holistic view of a system within its environment, may enable us to see patterns of behavior/actions and recognize interactions and interdependencies among its components. That way, we can better understand the system, maybe even predict how it will evolve over time.

The recent volcanic eruptions of the Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland provide a great example of (and also an exercise in) real-life general systems thinking and how several systems are possibly interconnected. I started wondering… What can the possible consequences of the recent volcanic eruption be, worldwide? There is a fair chance that other volcanoes nearby will erupt too. Scientists say history has proven that when the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupts, the Katla volcano follows — the only question is how soon. And Katla, located under the massive Myrdalsjokull icecap, threatens disastrous flooding and explosive blasts when it blows.

If we can rely on history repeating itself, we’re onto something big. Let’s look at a true story. In June 1783, the eruption of the Icelandic Laki volcano was the start of a chain of unlikely events that affected everyone’s lives:

The immediate impact was catastrophic: around 25% of the Icelandic population died in the famine and fluorine poisoning after the eruptions ceased. Around 80% of sheep, 50% of cattle and 50% of horses died because of dental and skeletal fluorosis.

The rest of Europe soon followed:

  • A thick, poisonous smog cloud floated across the jet stream, resulting in many thousands of deaths throughout 1783 and the winter of 1784. Inhaling sulfur dioxide gas caused victims to choke. 
  • The thick fog caused boats to stay in port, unable to navigate.
  • Weather patterns started changing across western Europe:
    • The summer of 1783 was the hottest on record at that time. 
    • Severe thunderstorms with hailstones even killed cattle.
    • In 1784, a most severe winter caused 8,000 deaths in the UK.
    • During the melting that followed in spring, all of Europe reported severe flood damage.

And these were only the short term effects. The meteorological impact of the Laki eruption resonated on, contributing significantly to several years of extreme weather in Europe and the rest of the world:

  • In New Orleans, the Mississipi river froze, and ice started appearing in the gulf of Mexico.
  • African and Indian monsoon circulations weakened, leading to precipitation anomalies over the Sahel that resulted in low flow in the river Nile.
  • In France, a surplus harvest in 1785 caused poverty for rural workers.
  • For years afterwards, severe droughts followed. There were a series of bad winters and summers, including a violent hailstorm in 1788 that destroyed crops.
  • All this contributed significantly to the build up of poverty and famine that eventually triggered the French Revolution in 1789.

Wow. Time-out. Really? Could it be that the eruption of an Icelandic volcano lies at the basis of the French revolution, six years later? Since all these seemingly independent systems (meteorological, economic, agricultural and sociological) *are* connected, that’s perfectly plausible. Apparently, the indirect and long-term consequences of the eruption have greater impact than the initial effects of the event. Even art was affected. The most beautiful sunsets started appearing in late 18th-century paintings.

And what were the effects of the French revolution again? The abolition of Feudalism, for starters. The creation of a new order based on the famous ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man’. The main theme of the French Revolution, ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’, later became one of the most famous political dogmas across the world. You could say that the Revolution paved the way for democracy. It brought about a lot of economic and social reforms, not only in France, but across Europe. Culture was also affected, at least in the short term, with the revolution permeating every creative endeavour. It changed the face of Europe: national identities joined forces, everywhere. In short: the revolution helped shape the future course of the world.

If we now think about the current eruptions of that rather friendly tongue-twister called Eyjafjallajökull, we notice that there are many more systems in play than there were in 1783. There’s commercial aviation and worldwide travel now; both of them fuel our economies and came to an abrupt stop. Airline stocks dropped rapidly. All this resulted in massive economic losses and temporary unemployment.  Several events are being cancelled because people cannot get there in time. People are trapped abroad or forced to stay at home. And these are only the short-term effects. I wonder what this year’s summer will be like. I already look forward to walking or skating across the channel to visit London. Or maybe throw a snowball or two at the gendarmes of Saint-Tropez.

And that’s just Eyjafjallajökull. Not Katla, not Laki. Just sayin’.

Failure is always an option – part 2 (wartime failures)

Wartime failures

In my search for information on failed software development projects, I was frequently reminded of the fact that it’s not always software projects that fail. In many cases, I even wondered why these projects were even started in the first place. Some of them seem to come straight from a Monty Python movie – downright absurd. Needless to say that their eventual cost far outweighed the benefits, if any.

I discovered* that wartime was a true breeding ground for many beautiful and poetic failures. Anything goes when there’s an enemy waiting to be crushed in the most creative ways possible:

  •  The Acoustic Kitty project:
    A CIA project in the 1960s attempting to use cats in spy missions. A battery and a microphone were implanted into a cat and an antenna into its tail. Due to problems with distraction, the cat’s sense of hunger had to be addressed in another operation. Surgical and training expenses are thought to have amounted to over $20 million. The cat’s first mission was eavesdropping on two men in a park. The cat was released nearby, but was hit and killed by a taxi almost immediately. Shortly thereafter the project was considered a failure and declared to be a total loss.
  • Operation Cornflakes:
    A World War II mission in 1944 and 1945 which involved tricking the German postal service Deutsche Reichspost into inadvertently delivering anti-Nazi propaganda to German citizens through mail. The operation involved special planes that were instructed to airdrop bags of false, but properly addressed mail in the vicinity of bombed mail trains. When recovering the mail during clean-up of the wreck, the postal service would hopefully confuse the false mail for the real thing and deliver it to the various addresses. The content was mainly anti-Nazi-propaganda. In addition, the postage stamps used were subtly designed to resemble the standard stamp with Adolf Hitler’s face, but a close examination would reveal that his face is made to look like an exposed skull or similarly unflattering imagery. The first mission of Operation Cornflakes took place in February 1945, when a mail train to Linz was bombed. Bags containing a total of about 3800 propaganda letters were then dropped at the site of the wreck, which were subsequently picked up and delivered to Germans by the postal service. Not too sure how many German families were converted by these letters.
  • The Bat Bomb project:
    Bat bombs were bomb-shaped casings with numerous compartments, each containing a Mexican bat with a small timed incendiary bomb attached. Dropped from a bomber at dawn, the casings would deploy a parachute in mid-flight and open to release the bats which would then roost in eaves and attics. The incendiaries would start fires in inaccessible places in the largely wood and paper construction of the Japanese cities that were the weapon’s intended target. Eventually, the program was cancelled it became clear that wouldn’ t be combat ready until mid-1945. By that time it was estimated that $2 million had been spent on the project. It is thought that development of the bat bomb was moving too slowly, and was overtaken in the race for a quick end to the war by the atomic bomb project.
  • Project Pigeon: .
    During World War II, Project Pigeon was B.F. Skinner‘s attempt to develop a pigeon-guided missile. The control system involved a lens at the front of the missile projecting an image of the target to a screen inside, while a pigeon trained to recognize the target pecked at it. As long as the pecks remained in the center of the screen, the missile would fly straight, but pecks off-center would cause the screen to tilt, which would then, via a connection to the missile’s flight controls, cause the missile to change course. Although skeptical of the idea, the National Defense Research Committee nevertheless contributed $25,000 to the research. Skinner’s plan to use pigeons in Pelican missiles was considered too eccentric and impractical; although he had some success with the training, he could not get his idea taken seriously. The program was canceled on October 8, 1944, because the military believed that “further prosecution of this project would seriously delay others which in the minds of the Division have more immediate promise of combat application.”

It’s probably no coincidence that the majority of these projects involved animals. In that case, failure is certainly an option – I heard that working with animals is highly unpredictable, hard to manage and time-consuming.

Strange, isn’t that what they say about software development too?

*source: wikipedia

Failure is always an option – part 1 (chaos)

About the Chaos report

One of the most popular reports people use to showcase failure of software development is the chaos report from The Standish Group. The Standish Group collects information on project failures in the software development industry in an attempt to assess the state of the industry. 

In 1994, they reported a shocking 16 percent project success rate, another 53 percent of the projects were challenged (not on time, over budget and with fewer functions than originally specified), and 31 percent failed outright.  Although the newer reports show better numbers, the overall results still paint a dire picture:

  1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2009
Successful   16%   27%   26%   28%   34%   29%   35%   32%
Challenged   53%   33%   46%   49%   51%   53%   46%   44%
Failed   31%   40%   28%   23%  15%   18%   19%   24%

There aren’t a whole lot of other statistics out there on this topic, so obviously these numbers get big play. Guilty as charged, your honor. I have used them myself, in a presentation or two.

I won’t be doing that again.

I realized that I have some serious problems with these metrics. They measure a project’s success by solely looking at whether the projects were completed on time, on budget and with required features and functions. But what they do not take into account are things like quality, risk and customer satisfaction. Could it be that an extremely unstable, unusable and frustrating piece of sofware that was delivered on time and on budget qualifies as a success? I beg to differ.

The Standish Group’s methods are not fully disclosed, and the bits that are disclosed are apparently deeply flawed. Their figures are misleading, one-sided and meaningless – the results are completely unreliable. They present their figures as absolute facts, but I lack clear context. The most famous sceptics of the report are Jørgensen and Moløkken. They emphasize its unreliability and question the claim of a “software crisis”:

” Even the definition of challenged projects is not easy to interpret. It is defined as “The project is completed and operational but over budget, over the time estimated, and offers fewer features and functions than originally specified.” The problem here is the use of “and” instead of “or”, combined with the following definition of successful projects: “The project is completed on-time and on-budget, with all features and functions as initially specified.” Consider a project that is on-time, and onbudget, but not with all specified functionality. Is this project to be categorized as challenged or successful? Our guess is that it would be categorized as challenged, but this is not consistent with the provided definition of challenged projects. ” 

In the comments section of an interview with The Standish Group’s Jim Johnson, Jørgensen brought up his critique of the CHAOS report and asked Johnson two very fair questions. Johnson’s reply is pretty enlightening, to say the least. Here are a few excerpts:

…We are an advisory research firm much like a Gartner or Forrester. Neither they nor we can afford to give our opinions away for free. We have facilities, utilities, and personnel and we must, the same as you, be able to pay our bills. Just because someone asks a question, does not mean we will respond with an answer. In fact, we most likely will not…

…Our current standard answer to a CHAOS inquiry is, first: please purchase our new book, ”My Life is Failure” in our online store. If that does not satisfy you, then you need to join CHAOS University. If you do not find your answer or answers there then you need to purchase our inquiry services. Then we will work to answer your questions…

…It is strange that Jørgensen has never applied or professed interest in joining us. Some answers can be found if you join us at CHAOS University 2007 or one of the many outreach events. So you can contribute to the CHAOS research by providing funding or sweat, but short of that you will and must be ignored by design…

Don’t get me wrong. I think there *are* lots of failing software development projects, but in other numbers and for other reasons than the ones Standish brings forth: deliveries that do not bring any value to its users, software that was poorly tested or poorly designed, resulting in failures in production.

The problem I have with the Chaos Report is that they claim to be some kind of “industry standard”, projecting a false image of the dire state of the software industry, based on poor metrics. And I certainly don’t believe in the “quality is dead” mantra that resonates from their reports. Sure, there’s plenty of chaos out there, but I like what Henry Miller said about that : “Chaos is the score upon which reality is written”.

I’m with Henry on this one.