BILL SHANER: Hi.
I'm Bill Shaner from Cisco Systems. I'll be attempting to
go through a pile of slides really fast. Lots of fun.
So one warning.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
My graphics are worth about two.
So a little background about what we do for Cisco.
We test that giant cloud in the middle, you know between
your app and your users, and hopefully they're
happy in the end.
If not, we're screwed.
So testing can be frightening to a lot of different people
for a lot of different reasons.
So you yourself have the power to make it less frightening
for three distinct classes of people: new testers,
non-testers, developers.
You just need to figure out what they're thinking and put
yourself in their shoes.
So this is you, the tester.
As you can see, my three word worth diagram there.
So you are the font of testing knowledge.
We're going to assume that for the purpose of
this dialogue here.
So you still need to be a people person.
You still need to go around, talk with these people, see
what they're thinking, see what their problems are.
If you don't know who you're talking with, what their
problems are, what their perspectives are, your
proposed solutions are going to like this.
You're going to have users looking at you, going K unit,
X unit, what the heck are you talking about?
I've never heard of this crap before.
I just want to get the project done.
A couple of classes of folks.
You've got your new testers, your little eggs.
Now I didn't get a chance to copy the little Google
Noodler, with the beanie and thing.
So sorry.
So new testers are yours to nurture.
You're the ones that are going to be their first contact in
the world of testing.
Are you going to nurture them, or are you going to crush them
into little bits, just to prove that you know more about
testing than they do?
You can.
It's not very much fun, though.
So new testers are not necessarily new engineers.
They're not dumb, they're not stupid.
They just haven't been exposed to your processes, your tools,
the way your organization and testing works.
They want to make a difference, but they don't
know how, because they're frightened of this giant thing
called the Land of Automated Testing Stuff that they know
nothing about.
And the one graphic in there I didn't create, you can
obviously tell from the rest. Yes.
So when you're introducing people to these things, you
have to keep this in mind.
This is that whole mindset thing.
So you have your non-testers.
These are your sales folks, your managers, your project
managers, your janitors, your mom, your cousin, whoever
you're explaining these things to.
And what non-testers want is quality.
They don't care how, they don't care why; whatever it
means, they want it.
They heard about it.
It's great.
They really prefer it cost very much.
They sometimes know the industry standard buzz words,
they don't know what they mean.
But you know, they control your project, your schedule,
and your budget.
So you run into the ROI chicken and egg thing.
Show me the money!
What the heck are you talking about?
I want ROI.
Well, we just started researching this, I heard
about this at a conference.
No project for you, so sorry.
So developers have stuff to design and build.
So that means they're normally busy.
You walk by and they're busy playing Guitar Hero--
I mean, they're busy developing code.
[LAUGHTER]
One of the things is they like to hear, hey, your stuff isn't
broken, it's working great.
They love that stuff.
Ask them how often they hear that.
It's not as often as they'd like.
So they end up under the gun for deadlines.
They don't often have enough time for unit testing.
They don't have the time or experience for automated
testing, even if they do have time for unit testing.
And sometimes, they don't want to be testers.
That stigma has changed, but it's still there.
So when you try and share the load, you say, hey, try this
automated testing, he's over there like, can't do it, too
many projects.
And they fall over.
So you know, when you're choosing your audience, you
have to pick your words very carefully.
You have to know who you're going to talk about ROI and
quality to, who you're going to talk about speed and less
annoyance in testing to, and who you're going to talk about
GUIs and other weird things that make life easy.
So understand three things about your audience.
The mindset, their work flow, and the problems
that they're facing.
Not your problems, not the technology you want to
explain, but what they're trying to solve.
Tailor you solutions to meet them.
Don't dumb it down, just make it work for them.
Remove their barriers to automation.
You want to put them on the slippery slope to automation.
Get them using something, it'll be easier to get them
using something else.
And before they know it, they're
doing automated testing.
Isn't that fun?
So just like the motto here at Google, don't be afraid of
failure or success.
You want to try things out.
It's not going to work all the time.
But that's just like any other test. You're testing via
social engineering.
So a real world example, we've got a crap load
of testers at Cisco.
I mean, we're talking thousands of testers in
different organizations.
One common test is we do things with
routers all the time.
And so we piled in a tool that would basically say, you know
this will do different things for different people.
Yup.
So we put all this in different contexts.
So basically the results of the pilot,
prepare your weapons!
For those of you at home, there's lots of people with
balls waiting to shoot them at me, and I'm using up valuable
time telling you this.
[LAUGHTER]
So, each category of user likes different
things about the tool.
There was no work flow impact for developers, a minimal
learning curve, language independent,
all that good crap.
You can see it on the slide.
I don't have much time to tell you.
One important result.
We converted several manual-only shops to
automation.
So remember these things.
You have important knowledge, know how to share it.
Remember how to present your
information to those it effects.
Consider all the solutions, and share your ideas and
experience with others.
Just like this conference.
Thank you.