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Elfriede Dustin is author of various books on testing - "Automated Software Testing," "Quality
Web Systems," and her latest book "Effective Software
Testing."
Her website
www.effectivesoftwaretesting.com was created to create a community of
software professionals in the Washington DC area.
If you want to ask her more questions or you want to
send any
feedback on this interview, please send it to webmaster @
whatistesting.com
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Q1. Elfriede please tell us
something
about yourself, your interests and things that you do in your free
time.
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Originally I am from
Germany where I’ve received my business degree and then went on
to get a Computer Science degree at KSU. In 1984 at
one of my first jobs working at a US Government law center, we received
a number of Wang computers and I lead the automation of the claims
processes. Ever since then I have been hooked on computers,
automation, and testing. Having lived in the suburbs of Washington, DC
over a decade, I am now a naturalized American citizen. I enjoy
spending any of my free time getting smarter in my chosen field of
testing. Additionally, I enjoy spending time with my two daughters
Jackie and Erika.
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Q2. What prompted you to write the books that you wrote? What
kind of response do you think these books have received?
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In 1997 at a
Rational users conference I presented the topic "Introducing Automated
Testing to your Project." After the presentation I received uncountable
repetitive inquiries from numerous sources throughout the world (even
Belgium) about this same topic. It made me realize that there is a need
for a book to put out this information and it prompted me to write the
book "Automated Software Testing," together with my co-authors and
former co-workers Jeff Rashka and John Paul. The books have been very
well received, for example the book "Automated Software Testing" is in
its 9th printing and has been translated into German, Russian,
Japanese, Chinese, and is also available as a less expensive version
for the testing audience in India.
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Q3. What were
your sources of experience that your book "Effective Software Testing"
drew on?
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"Effective
Software Testing" is based on my many years of testing experience
combined with the many years of software development experience of my
former co-worker Douglas McDiarmid. The book also draws on the
experiences of my former co-workers and co-authors Jeff Rashka, Program
Manager, and John Paul, Developer and now CEO, as it also draws
on the content of our books "Automated Software Testing" and
"Quality Web Systems.”
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Q4. Are
you working on any other book?
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I am in the process of writing a
book
on Security Testing for QA professionals, published by Symantec Press,
written with two Symantec security experts. I feel there is
a need for such a book that's specifically geared towards the testing
and QA professionals. Not enough is known about how to approach
security testing as a QA professional, often it's just a band-aid and
too late in the development life-cycle.
My
latest article Teamwork Tackles the Quality Goal was
written for Software Test and Performance magazine, see www.stpmag.com
for a free download. A summary of
one of my five “Software Test and Performance
conference” (see www.stpcon.com) presentations “Introducing
Automated Software Testing” recently appeared in the SDMagazine
newsletter. I am also preparing for a presentation at the ICSTest
(see www.icstest.com) conference in Duesseldorf, Germany in April,
while working full-time as an employee, i.e. an internal SQA consultant
to
GSS, Symantec. (Please note all opinions expressed here are my own and
not those of my employer.)
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Q5. Do you think there is a gap between what testing
consultants and trainers teach and what the testers and test managers
in the trenches face in their daily work? In what ways?
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Yes,
I definitely see a gap in what testing consultants and trainers teach
and what testers and test managers face in the trenches. Theories are
nice to have, but some theories are just not realistic and too time
consuming or expensive to implement. In the trenches we constantly face
ever shrinking budgets and schedules, and go-live dates and production
deadlines which can’t be moved, and often the development
schedule slips and cuts into the testing time.
In the trenches, so much depends on the developers’ skills. The
most efficient and knowledgeable testers cannot succeed if developers
implement bad software and/or ineffective software development
life-cycles and processes are in place. If testing is the only quality
phase implemented as part of a QA realm, it can at most be considered a
band-aid often too late in the system development lifecycle to make
much of a quality difference. Testing is only one piece of the Quality
puzzle.
I don't see this here
at Symantec, but I have seen it at other companies where there
is still this general confusion by some management about what
testers do. The one side of the management camp thinks that
“anyone” can do the testing and no special skills are
required and the other side of the management camp expects testers to
“test quality into a system” and blames the tester if a
defect makes it into production. When it comes to testing salaries and
job requirements, generally a tester is paid less and technically less
is expected of him. Generally there is still a gap between
testers’ technical knowledge vs. the developer technical
knowledge. This gap also rears itself in still little or no respect for
the tester profession and testing still often being seen as the
underdog and necessary evil. Based on this
general mindset, I wrote my article Teamwork
Tackles the Quality Goal on
“integrating the “independent” testing team
where I make the point that the tester has to be every bit
as technical as the developer, working integrated with the development
team, while maintaining the independent testing frame of mind. The
testing profession has so much to offer, but so little about how it can
really effectively be implemented is known or used. |
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Who in the testing community has influenced your thinking most?
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Actually,
my Computer Science professor Dr. Gustafson at Kansas State University
has influenced my thinking about testing and quality in general. I took
his graduate level course on "Quality software engineering processes"
which peaked my interest in Quality and testing and I learned about
great quality concepts and influential thinkers such as Tom DeMarco,
Capers Jones, Boris Beizer, and Gerald Weinberg.
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Q7.
According to you what are top three things that one should
learn/practice/be good at to be an effective and efficient software
tester?
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To be an efficient
software tester the person really has to enjoy testing, have a knack
for it, be
analytical, detail oriented, and be versatile, such as a) be technically
savvy, b) understand
the business, and c) never stop learning and improving on the testing
efforts
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Q8. What
do you think is the current state of automation? Where do you see
automation heading towards? Do you think a paradigm shift is required
in order to have more automation? Do you think there are other areas
where tool vendors need to focus in addition to what they focus on
right now?
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Current
state of automation. During a recent presentation at the Software Test
and Performance conference (www.stpcon.com) I surveyed and learned that
50 percent of my audience had test automation tools that have become
"shelf-ware." Those people are now tasked with resurrecting the
automation tools and efforts, which can be an exercise in futility for
many reasons. They will have to keep in mind whether the tool is still
compatible with the technology being used, i.e. has the technology
changed
since the tool was purchased. Also, if the automation didn't succeed in
the first go around did they note the reason for failure and have those
"lessons learned" been evaluated so they wouldn't be repeated on the
second automation attempt, etc.
This inofficial survey result is just another example that shows not
much progress is being made with the use of vendor provided automated
testing tools, an issue we've already discussed in our book "Automated
Software Testing" published in 1999, "When inefficient automated
testing implementation hasn't shown significant ROI, and budget
pressures materialize, planned expenditures for test tool licenses and
related tool support may be scratched. Often the tools end up as
shelf-ware."
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Where do you see automation heading towards?
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Granted
vendor provided tools continue to improve, vendors still have and will
continue to have a difficult time to keep up with all the latest and
greatest technologies and third party controls and widgets, which are
usually the source for the biggest compatibility issues and user
frustrations. People will continue to struggle with the vendor provided
tools, others will turn to in-house developed automation efforts or to
automation freeware. Here are some important tips before "jumping on
the test automation bandwagon."
• Know the types of tools available along with the problem they
are trying to solve. There is no one best tool on the market.
• Safeguard the integrity of the automated test scripts by using
a configuration management tool to baseline them.
• Consider that automated testing is software development.
• Educate stakeholders about the test automation efforts,
especially developers who need to understand the impact any code
changes could have on it.
• Manage the expectations by not overselling test automation's
return on investment.
• Do not let automated testing become a "side activity" to work
on when time allows; ideally use technical testing talent whose
sole focus is on test automation.
• Not all testers need to be "automators," since development
expertise is required.
• Decide whether to buy or build a tool or whether to use freeware
(or all of the above)
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| Q10. Do
you think a paradigm shift is required in order to have more automation? |
Unit
test automation is the most effective defect detection/test automation
technique. Too many companies still focus all of their test automation
efforts on system testing without realizing that unit test
automation can have the most ROI. Wishful thinking: Wouldn't it be nice
if self-testable development languages existed, such as components are
developed automated related unit tests were automatically
self-generated.
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Q11. In absence of licenses most
people can’t learn using tools from most of the tool vendors. But
employers generally want tools knowledge. How do you think testers can
break this vicious circle and gain automation knowledge?
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I
think employers need to be educated to understand that someone with a
development background can easily pick up any automated testing tool,
no matter which one. When I hire automated testers and they can show
extensive experience in one tool's scripting language or any scripting
language for that matter, chances are they will be able to pick up and
learn another tool's scripting language. Testers need to remember that
automation is software development, and it is important to have
experience in one or more programming or scripting languages.
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