{"id":3110,"date":"2018-09-17T20:55:43","date_gmt":"2018-09-17T18:55:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asym.dk\/?p=3110"},"modified":"2018-09-17T20:55:43","modified_gmt":"2018-09-17T18:55:43","slug":"a-stage-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asym.dk\/index.php\/2018\/09\/17\/a-stage-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"A Stage Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I did a talk at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ministryoftesting.com\/events\/testbash-germany-2018\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">TestBash Germany<\/a> last week that sparked lots of positive response, but also some critique. Critique is fair: It was a 30 minute inspirational talk in which I wanted to explain why Immanuel Kant\u2019s work \u201cCritique of Pure Reason\u201d matters to testers. Quite a few people found me afterwards, asked me questions, and commented: Critique. Job well done (I\u2019m padding my own shoulder here).<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nBut, as it sometimes happens in these times of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Social_media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SoMe<\/a>, a tweet showing one of my slides, followed up by a tweet of another, both included to provoke thinking about the state of software testing, sparked a discussion which has taken a direction I feel I need to relate explicitly to. Click the tweet to read the thread:<\/p>\n<div class=\"embed-twitter\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\u201cIf you want to shoot me for this slide. Wait for the next one.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/andersdinsen?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@andersdinsen<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/CuriousNow?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#CuriousNow<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/testbash?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#testbash<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Oktobertest?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Oktobertest<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/qx7jN7Bg7k\">pic.twitter.com\/qx7jN7Bg7k<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Patrick Prill (@TestPappy) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TestPappy\/status\/1040540355849060352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 14, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<p>I was laughing on stage, and it came from my heart as what I intend to say with the slide in the talk is that all current ways to think about testing are bad, but I have the the answer. An arrogant message? Well, I\u2019m on stage for 30 minutes, honest, but performing the gig. I mean what I say, but I also asked people to judge for themselves (I\u2019m sure they did), and it was in the context of a talk intended to entertain and get people thinking at the same time.<br \/>\nI think criticizing the status quo is central if you propose something new. \u201cIf it aint broke, don\u2019t fix it,\u201d and I think there are broken things in testing. I dot it publicly regularly when I blog on social issues in Denmark on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.denoffentlige.dk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">DenOffentlige.DK<\/a>, where it\u2019s welcomed. Danish prime minister Lars L\u00f8kke Rasmussen thanked me for critique on one occasion when I <a href=\"https:\/\/www.denoffentlige.dk\/kaere-loekke-jeg-tror-paa-dig-men-ikke-paa-din-reform\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">complained about a reform<\/a> he proposed to help young people out of the educational system. I made him think, he said.<br \/>\nSo I can\u2019t claim ignorance. I feel I hadn\u2019t thought enough about this. It was a pair of good slides in the context of the conference, the stage and the talk, but definitely bad on twitter just so.<br \/>\nWhen the whole talk is published in a few weeks, I hope people will go and listen to both context and intention, and perhaps even offer me feedback on the whole thing.<br \/>\nHowever, the cat is out of the box now, so I need to explain my critique more thoroughly. I criticized the three testing &#8220;philosophies&#8221; I see out there: ISTQB, Context Driven Testing, and Agile testing. Here we go:<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>ISTQB<\/h2>\n<p>I haven\u2019t seen anything yet from these people, but that doesn\u2019t surprise me. ISTQB is pretty robust to critique. That\u2019s actually my problem with it: It\u2019s a castle. As long as it stays inside the castle, that\u2019s ok, I have no problem with it. Problem is, these people don\u2019t stay in the castle: They dominate the market for software testing.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>Context Driven Testing<\/h2>\n<p>James Bach cares about critique. I love him for that! But, James, please don\u2019t take it personally. You\u2019re one of the greatest thinkers about testing. I hope you\u2019ll dig your way though Kant\u2019s first Critique as I think you\u2019ll find it enlightening. Kant is a genius with his own pedantic style, but his philosophy is consistent.<br \/>\nWith that in place, here\u2019s my answer to the thread above: I have a philosophical (logical) problem with the principles of context driven testing, that \u2013 when I read them literally\u2013confuse me about whether testing can critique quality. Here\u2019s the argument:<br \/>\nTesting is a thing that critiques things, including things about things, e.g. quality. Critique is not just critique, it involves judgement. CDT has <a href=\"http:\/\/context-driven-testing.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">principles<\/a> and they can be used to self-evaluate whether I\u2019m context driven, so I can judge my testing, but the principles are so crafted that when read literally, they don\u2019t allow me to critique and judge my testing. Here\u2019s why: The first and second principles says this: \u201c(1) The value of any practice depends on its context. (2) There are good practices in context, but there are no best practices.\u201d The first one exclude the possibility that a practice can be valued before it\u2019s practiced in context. Since testing in context is practice, it means the value of testing can\u2019t be known a priori. The second says there are no best practices, which implies there are no worst ones either. No best or worst, even in theory? Well, if that principle is to be taken literally, then no, there are no best or worst practices, not even in theory. But if there is no best and worst, not even in theory, it means that value is not a thing: Value is, at best, a point, or an empty void, perhaps even everything. The implication of this is that every practice, even type of practice, is of unknown value (everything is a thing, but it\u2019s a thing we cannot know), even when attempted valued in context, that is a posteori. So the snake seems to be eating its own tail here: No testing in CDT can have value. This is paradoxical because testing must have value to critique as things without value have no ontology and only things with ontology can create bodies of critique, i.e. critique with ontology. The reason for this has to do with the philosophical concept of ontology, which things must have in order to critique. This gives the context driven tester a problem: When context driven (according to the principles), I can\u2019t assign a value to my work, and if I can\u2019t do that, my meaningful existence as a working tester ends. Second, it gives my stake holder a problem: If my testing is literally valueless, then the outcomes of my testing must be valueless too as the critique is without body, ontology, value. Valueless things can exist, and quantum physics shows that things happen out of nothing, but things that happen out of nothing cannot represent knowledge as knowledge depends on ontology and value. So, what is that which is something, but not knowledge? I think data is a good word for that, potentially not noise, but still not knowledge, probably not even information. In a provocative tone I&#8217;d say data is that which discriminates no testing from context driven testing. Mind blown? I tell you, I was when I realized.<br \/>\nOf course, I\u2019m overly pedantic and attacking a single principle on purely logical grounds, which is in many ways unfair since there\u2019s much more to CDT than it\u2019s first two principles, e.g. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.satisfice.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">great<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.developsense.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">people<\/a> doing awesome work <a href=\"http:\/\/www.developsense.com\/courses.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">training<\/a> important skills to testers with the aim om maximizing the outcomes of testing (my interpretation), thereby actually working to maximize the value of testing, making testing a sustainable activity, and saving the IT-world from the politics of ISTQB), CDT will survive the paradox, I\u2019m sure. But the principles are still around and read, and even though the argument above above is long and annoying (I would probably get lost in it myself, if I was reading it from someone else) it is my experience that people actually read the principles, and that the paradox \u2018gets\u2019 them intuitively, even if they can\u2019t express it.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>Agile Testing<\/h2>\n<p>I actually have only noticed a single reaction to my slides from agilists, but I\u2019d like to share my problem with agile, as it is actually much, much bigger than any of the two above, and doesn\u2019t only extend to testing. My problem with ISTQB is mostly political, whereas that of CDT is philosophical. Agile\u2019s problem is that it doesn\u2019t appreciate testing because it doesn\u2019t fundamentally desire to create value. It\u2019s secret desire is power for the developers. That\u2019s my own diagnosis, you are welcome to disagree, but here\u2019s why: There This time my problem starts with the values, for example the one that values working software over comprehensive documentation. The old rule, &#8220;no work is done before the paperwork is done&#8221; still applies, but this principle in combination with Agile\u2019s idea of continuous delivery combined with budgetary constraints (resources are always scarce in the real world) turns the principle into a choice between documentation OR software. In a resource constrained reality, the net result is therefore that there\u2019s always more important work to do delivering working software than to document what was done, and there is therefore never good documentation coming out of Agile. This is just one example of why Agile projects are never done, as the other value statements tend to collapse in the same way as soon as they are subjected to resource constraints. The result is developers working long hours, economics out of control, technical debt growth, and lots of wasted work. Agile is on steroids creating legacy, I think. And I\u2019m not done yet: Who really knows quality? At the core of Agile is not quality for customers, but for developers since they are the ones writing the software and that has been forgotten by the ones writing the principles, that contains no model for judging the core values of quality, innovation, collaboration, truth. There\u2019s a fundamentally unfair situation: Developers own the power to make the software, and the users\u2019 only power is reduced to influence in the daily collaboration. Oh yes, there\u2019s potentially also the possibility of rejecting deliverables to production \u2013 but then always at the cost of precious and expensive time, delays and hence suffering in production because of still unsolved problems: At the cost of quality. Notice, I\u2019m not looking for a silver bullet to solve this forever, because one such does not exist, but for a fairer relationship between developers and customers. Market mechanisms will not fix this, not even over iterations, retrospectives, and team learning. Why? Well Adam Smith wasn\u2019t wrong about market dynamics, but his ideas have proven themselves insufficient by far. Agile is far from demonstrating the value of self-organizing organizations. I think it is probably taking us further away from just that.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3112\" src=\"https:\/\/asymaps.files.wordpress.com\/2018\/09\/dsc_0837_12190551833358608724.jpg\" alt=\"dsc_0837_12190551833358608724.jpg\" width=\"3000\" height=\"4000\" \/><br \/>\nThere. Those are my professional opinions about the three. Meanwhile, I work in Agile, performing CDT and traditional testing. Is there a solution? I think so. For now, I work by the principle that testing is by its very intention and nature practical\/empirical and rational, rooted in knowledge <em>a priori<\/em> and drives human experience (knowledge) <em>a posteori<\/em>. But that\u2019s old news, the Stoics knew that already some 2000 years ago.<br \/>\nAnd there are great people in Agile and CDT actually trying to make things valuable for those that matter, and I listen to them a lot.<br \/>\nBut I think its time look for new models for value than those that are implied in the above testing philosophies. If you disagree, and find there&#8217;s no problem, that\u2019s ok with me, but please accept at least an honest attempt looking for a new philosophy in testing by consulting one of history&#8217;s greatest and most acknowledged philosophers, and that such work should nok be without a critique of the status quo.<\/p>\n<h2>Feedback welcome<\/h2>\n<p>I\u2019m living my life by principles like this: We don\u2019t know who we are until we see ourselves in the face of the other.<br \/>\nEven though I had the stage light in my face, I felt connected to the audience. Performing a talk starts in the speaker between the gut, heart and the intellect: Patos, ethos, and logos. But without connection to the audience, the talk may be perfect, but without effect. From my gut feeling and the feedback I received, what I said had effect.<br \/>\nFeel free to use the comments below. I&#8217;ll try to be quick approving comments, but please accept my apologies up front that replies may take a little while as I&#8217;m facing a busy time right now both privately and professionally.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3114\" src=\"https:\/\/asymaps.files.wordpress.com\/2018\/09\/dsc_0862_14561996357472331978.jpg\" alt=\"dsc_0862_14561996357472331978.jpg\" width=\"3120\" height=\"4160\" \/><br \/>\n#Testfest done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I did a talk at TestBash Germany last week that sparked lots of positive response, but also some critique. Critique is fair: It was a 30 minute inspirational talk in which I wanted to explain why Immanuel Kant\u2019s work \u201cCritique of Pure Reason\u201d matters to testers. Quite a few people found me afterwards, asked me [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[24,58,75],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asym.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3110"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asym.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asym.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asym.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asym.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asym.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asym.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asym.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asym.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asym.dk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}