The TCL Vision – Where will we be by 2020?

We have a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) at TCL, which is to say that we have a dream. A dream of what the company will become and we've set out to achieve it by 2020. It's not the only dream the company will ever have, but for now it's the priority one and it's the one that is very personal to the founders, shareholders and owners of the company.

So what does this dream look like? The short answer is that there is no short answer to that question. Like most dreams it's a little hazy when you wake up, but the outline looks something like this:

We want TCL to become a world wide, world class, centre of testing excellence. This means that we want to establish TCL as a Centre of Testing excellence which has world class solutions and we are able to deliver them to any industry in any country.

When we have reached that goal, the company will look something like this:

Our company will benefit its employees and their families. They will benefit financially, emotionally, ethically, technically and physically through the way the company is run.

Our company will be financially robust and secure. We will have sufficient alerts and contingency plans in place to ensure we can survive economic peaks and troughs whatever the root cause.

The communities in which we operate will also benefit from TCL. We will actively make efforts to be involved in those communities and the issues that are important to them. We will actively demonstrate in our social conscience and encourage it in our team and the Clients and Suppliers with whom we engage.

We will also ensure that some of our profits are given to worthwhile charities. These are charities that are important to the people in our company.

Our culture will be totally inclusive, with all levels of the organisation being informed and involved. Each person in the company will have a personal understanding and empathy with their colleagues in relationships that demonstrate integrity and respect at every juncture. There will be awards each year for long service and through this long service we will ensure a continuity of culture and corporate memory at the foundation of the company.

A team that supports and focuses on the vision will regularly introduce new ideas to keep the company aligned with the purpose, values and BHAGs and will be a proven source of information and inspiration around the company. Competition to be part of this forum will be high, and it will be necessary for the participants to undergo three month secondments to the team to get the work done.

The TCL solutions will be aligned and accredited with organisations such as ISO and the BCS. Our method SMaRT will be recognised as a management model and be used as a template and standard in blue chip organisations around the world.

Our employees will be proud to belong to TCL and will contribute to the company progression each day with energy and enthusiasm.

We will be using the latest technology and involved with the strategic decision making process with each of our clients having demonstrated consistently our ability to add value to that process.

Our reputation will be such that there will be healthy competition to join TCL, and the selection process will be rigorous to ensure that only people who display the core values and have the aptitude to support and contribute to the TCL vision are involved.

We want to take testing to a new level. A professional discipline that is consistently recognised for its value and resourced, planned and funded accordingly within all development lifecycles.

Our Research and Development capability will lead the way with innovative and intuitive solutions that are derived from the latest theory, technology and thinking across the world. We will involve and include academic research and consideration as well as commercial best practice.

Our solutions will have been benchmarked with companies in five continents and proven within more than ten industries including Defence.

We will be the testing partner of choice for Safety Critical Applications and SIL levels 3 and 4.

We will have offices on three continents and research and development capabilities at each. These will have links to Universities and we will provide some financial support and assistance to these universities in the areas of research that will further help the TCL purpose.

Our presentations at industry forums will be actively sought and solicited and our representatives praised for their credentials, innovation and inspirational style of presenting.

When a project declares that their testing will be conducted by TCL it will be perceived at all levels of an organisation that this is the best way to go and that both cost and quality will be in ideal balance for this delivery.

We will be seen for our Quality and Innovation but we will never be seen as overpriced - simply realistic for the demonstrable value we add.

Now, there are lots of things left to think about with regards to how TCL will look in 2020, and each year we challenge the dream and things become progressively clearer as to what we can achieve, what the market wants us to achieve and where things are all going. I hope from reading this article you can already see that some of the things are here now, and some are on there way - in fact you may be involved in making it happen. The spirit of the vision is alive and well. But I suspect that you might also see that some things around the company aren't quite there yet - and from reading this today you will know that we don't want them to stay like that. It just isn't our dream.

I truly believe that if you understand this dream, then you will understand the essence of what TCL is about and what the founders of the company are trying to achieve. As the "custodian" of the vision, I welcome any thoughts you have on this dream, this BHAG, of ours and warmly invite you to call or email me to discuss things. You can also take advantage of my time at roadshows, company parties and promotion days to talk to me in person.

Stewart Noakes

Chairman

Transition Consulting Limited

£2000, a qualification and a job opportunity, not bad for three sides of A4!

Ok, here goes, my name is Dan Geater, second year scholarship student from Exeter University and the "blogmaster" for TCL. Now thats a bit of a mouthful, so lets break it down:

First things first, as I said I am currently a student at Exeter University doing my second year of BSc Computer Science, and so far its going well. I first heard mention of TCL last year during my Frehser's week, when - on an introductory lecture; we get a visitor offering £2000 to anyone who could answer a question in an essay. Well one night out led to another in Fresher's week so that essay never got written. However the opportunity arose again at the end of the summer term, and this time I went for it. Choosing a question on "how much testing is enough?" I wrote my 960ish words on a subject I knew almost nothing about - however I had recently completed a legal module that pointed out some of the issues, and had books to fill me in on the rest; and submitted three nicely stapled sheets of A4 paper to the University of Exeter External Affairs office.

After that, silence for months, believing myself inadequate and unknowing enough, I resigned myself to write a better essay next year, but hey, like I said, wasn't a strong point for me anyway, so not too surprised. However on my birthday of all days a letter arrives from Exeter innovation centre saying, yep, you guessed it, I had won. A nice clap on the back for me and a nice day to receive a gift.

Well summer went by and during the first semester of this year, I was contacted by TCL asking me to meet with them informally so they could see what their prize winner was like. During a very relaxed and informal meeting with them I decided that not only are they very generous to provide these scholarships but they are also down-to-earth, genuine, friendly people.

After a couple more meetings I was offered a chance on an ISEB/ISTQB foundation course in software testing, well who am I to refuse, especially after chastising myself for not knowing enough about my essay subject. The course was a refreshing and eye-opening look at testing, coupled with a chance to meet a fellow scholarship winner, Nick. So now I have a nice prize, a new qualification and am hoping to take on a work experience placement here over the summer.

But they don't stop there. Two weeks ago I was contacted asking if I would like to work as the "blogmaster" for TCL's three major blogs, this one, the US one, and the India one. Well it seemed like a good opportunity, so here I am, having already altered colour-schemes to match the main site, and now letting the readers know what the students think of the scholarship scheme. Plus more ideas for the blogs in that little collection of grey matter I call a brain, so lets see how it all works out.

The following link points to TCL's press release regarding the scholarship students:

2008 Scholarship Students press release.

In short the scheme is a brilliant idea, from one essay, I suddenly have a much more impressive CV, I have found a job opportunity - albeit a minor one; to help me through University, and I have met some great people. Thanks guys

Dan.

2008 is here!

Its been a little while since my last

posting, and that's just not good form, so I thought I would take 5 minutes to start 2008 off right and put some updates on.

TCL has started 2008 in a very positive way. We're doing some excellent business planning right now - with the largest group ever involved in the running of the company, which shows that the continuous development and succession planning is starting to work and that is excellent.

This is also shown in our top line growth - in that we had 6 different record revenue months last year - and have started 2008 with a very similar run rate. Although we dont expect to get into the Tech Track 100 two years in a row you never can tell what might happen.

Our customer footprint is growing and becoming more diverse, with even the charitable (probono) work from our management consultancy arm growing to include St Michaels Small School in Truro. In addition to our Clients in the telco sector we have seen good growth in the Public Services sector and have started to branch out into the media arena too.

Our scholarship schemes have grown this year to include Exeter, Bristol and also Boston (USA) Universities and we have some 9 students on the scholarship programmes as well as interns coming from France, UK and hopefully the USA in 2008.

We're moving offices soon - into Phase 2 of the Innovation Centre at the University of Exeter. A much nicer building with some amazing views. Will give the R&D, Management Consultancy and Marketing teams some inspiration - as well as some more room. We've had a presence at the University since 2001 and our offices there have been getting a little cramped.

For me personally 2008 starts with a very differet look to 2007.

With Paul Bradbrook coming to the company as UK & European MD we are now seeing a different shape to things, and after just a few short months he's got settled in very well and is now taking the company forward to meet our goals and visions. I love his enthusiasm and passion for people. (If only I could get him to sing a little less in the office!)

Paul taking up the reigns of the main company gives me some lattitude with the expansion of the group, has allowed me to get more involved with our management consultancy arm and I've also just started as a Non Executive Director post with a venture capital backed software start up company.

So, 2008 is here and if it carries on like this, it could be a lot of fun :)

PEST Boston II - 18 July 2007

PEST BOSTON II - Brilliant :)

So here we are in Boston, and its PEST II at the Naked Fish restaurant.

Everyone who came last time was here, and we had some new friends too in the form of colleagues from HP Bangalore and Monstor.com.

I was very excited about coming to this PEST. Partly because I was looking forward to seeing everyone again - last time was a lot of fun, and partly because I wanted to tell everyone about our new scholarship scheme which is just starting up at Boston University. Our first outside of the UK, which will start in September this year, and have interns with us in summer '08. Its a very personal passion of mine to invest in the future of our industry, and its wonderful to see the scholarship schemes starting all over the world.

Although we still havent cracked the venue side of things - it was a bit noisy even in this seperated out area - everyone contributed well and we had some great discussions right from the start.

With such a mix of hardware/software experience along with the international flavours from the background of those attending US (7 people), India (2), UK (1), Iranian (1) we had some amazingly different view points as well as a lot of synergy.

The session started with an experience report from our own Don St Pierre, who was taking part in PEST as his last official act with TCL USA. He's off to join EMC from next week, and it was great timing that he could do this before he left.

Dons experience report focussed mainly around the experiences he documented in his white paper last October - about the need for seperation between QA and development reporting lines, and we were lucky to have Steve with us who had worked with Don on the same project and could add his ideas and recollections too.

We drew on these experiences to look at how we report from testing, and particularly how a set of metrics such as DRE can be used to create an 'apples with apples' comparison across projects. Across the group there was also a lot of experience of how metrics and measurements can hurt you as much as help - with the 'what gets measured gets done' approach that we see a lot with teams.

We also recognised that you can generate 'behaviours that exactly meet the metrics, rather than make sense' - things like if you measure a team on numbers of bugs raised then you get every little typo raised as a seperate entry and lots of time wasted.

Now as you can see I remembered my camera so we have a couple of pictures which is great!
(Watch out for this lady at the front of the table - shes a trouble maker ;) )

Don did some great prep work for this session and gave out copies of his white paper and some definitions of DRE. We also shared some best practices from TCL in terms of using the DRE metrics at gateways and to help create measurement of process maturity.

Some other things that we learnt between us across the session included:

• There is a job website called Dice which costs only $60 per posting, compared to Monster.com which is circa $360
• QA can often be mistakenly seen as the root cause of defects
• Root cause analysis on defects is very important in a continuous improvement environment. How can we set up our defect tracking to then generate suitable reports to do this? Perhaps a topic for next time.
• Common performance issues are missed when environments do not represent live in a quantifiable / scalable way
• Upper management can often try to micro manage QA - and when they do they look at things they understand rather than (perhaps) the things that are actually important
• Date and budget driven objectives that dont include quality - and particularly post live quality metrics generate very unhelpful behaviours on projects
• Bringing customer found bugs into the post implementation review and post live defect tracking is very important in a continuous learning environment
• Release specific scorecards are very useful - particularly when they track DRE
• Public vs Private metrics - what can you track and what can/should you publish. A difficult balance
• Reporting to senior managers, VPs and Presidents means finding things that both interest them and help us - you cant just talk quality, you need to talk value.

A lot of stuff came out from these discussions, and I'll be very pleased when our PEST website is up and running so that we can all share and discuss things online - and keep much better records. Hopefully that will be in September, just in time for the next PEST in Boston - week of 3rd September.

Thats about all for now, except to say:

• Im hoping to have a private room, with a round table for the next PEST Boston - probably at the naked fish restaurant again
• Steve Govednik (monster.com) and Dan Downing(Mentora) have voluntered for giving experience reports/challenges to the group next time
• Nadereh (mathworks) and Nancy (HP) have agreed to do stuff for the session after/ be alternates for the session in September
• Im going to look to bring some of the scholarship essays along for the group to have a look at - some of them have been really brilliant
• Don will be coming along to the next PEST, and has promised Matt hes going to bring a few people from EMC too!

Big thanks to everyone who came along this time, and who made it such a great event. Look forward to seeing you next time.
Stew

The point of PEST: None of us is as smart as all of us!

Boston Trip - July 2007

Well, its been a while since I posted anything on here and having negotiated the barriers placed by Google in getting to my blog I am happy to resume things!

Im out in Boston this week, visiting Matt, going to PEST Boston II and meeting with sales people etc.

Its been a good week thus far. Particularly excited about the new scholarship scheme which we are starting with Boston University. This is the first (of many) non UK scholarship schemes and a real landmark in our commitment to the future of software testing around the world.

I'll post tomorrow about how PEST Boston II goes - maybe even some pictures if I can remember my camera, unlike last time!

Stew

WOPR @ Exeter

Yesterday was a little weird and a lot brilliant!

WOPR is here in Exeter, and what was weird was walking out of my MBA study class to have lunch and realising that WOPR was taking place in the building next door. What was brilliant was meeting everyone and seeing how much they were all getting out of it.

Knowledge sharing is so important to our industry, and to our growth as a profession. It's fantastic that real practitioners want to share their experiences and to help other practitioners. Lots of new ideas come out of these types of events - and to be honest I dont think that there are enough of them.

It would be great if the organisers at SQE and Qualtech took a look at what has been going on at WOPR, LEWT and other events like PEST and aimed to incorporate elements of the approach more into StarWEST, StarEAST and EuroSTAR. It would really change the dynamic - and I think people would come out with a greater set of practical testing skills as a result. After all, Testing is about doing stuff!

Stew

Sharing Knowledge and Experience

We have a goal at TCL to become a world wide centre of testing excellence by 2020. Its a lofty goal, and one that we are perpetually seeking new ways to move towards - new ideas, experience, innovation and practices.

A big part of this is process is our knowledge sharing around the community. Its very much a two way process, but when we develop new ideas, or meet excellent people in the industry, we try to share the knowledge and experience whereever we can.

In that vein there are several events taking place in October which are particularly exciting. James Bach, known world-wide as an expert in the field of Software Testing and Rapid Software Testing techniques, is coming to Exeter University to deliver a (free) day seminar on Rapid Software testing on the 11th of October 2006. James will be discussing his experiences in Rapid Software Testing, and outlining the possibilities of Exploratory Testing.

The seminar will take place at the Xfi building of the University of Exeter - see http://www.ex.ac.uk/about/streat_large.shtml for a detailed map of the University. Places are limited, so if you would like to attend please send an email at training@transitionconsulting.co.uk.

TCL is also supporting WOPR - the Workshop on Performance and Reliability - which is taking place at the University of Exeter this year, from the 12th of October to the 14th of October. This is the first time that a WOPR conference has happened outside of the United States, and it is a prime opportunity to meet some of the best known experts in performance testing and learn in a sharing environment. For more details on WOPR, please visit http://www.performance-workshop.org

We also have people from across the company attending the SQS (ICSTEST) conference in London, StarWEST in Anaheim and later in the year we will also be EuroSTAR in Manchester.

All very exciting. Excellent opportunities for people to share and learn.

Things we can learn from History - Textiles in the 18th and 19th Centuries

As a reader of my Blog you are probably aware that I am in the middle of a part time MBA course. Its hard work, lots to balance with business and personal life commitments but its really worth it as I am learning a great deal of relevant stuff and coming up with lots of new ideas for how TCL can develop, broaden and strengthen.

In our current course we are looking at the making and integration of management. It's an interesting approach to bringing together all aspect of management with a view to understanding how we got to these approaches, why we are using them, who were the key people involved in getting us there and seeing what we can learn from them.

I found our recent short project on Textiles in the 18th and 19th Century very interesting and have copied an extract from my short paper on workforce management below. Hope you enjoy it.......


.....In the 18th century there was a manufacturing revolution within the textiles industry which brought it from ‘cottage industry’ where there were many small scale producers to a much more significant scale through the introduction of mass production. This revolution was facilitated by technological innovations in terms of the equipment that was developed to process the raw materials involved in textiles production.

Large volume production created a lower per unit cost, and thus enabled lower prices to the consumer, with better profit margins for the producer. This created mass markets which generated large profits for owners, and fuelled a period of intense competition.

Manufacturing plants brought people into unfamiliar environments which were crowded, noisy, unhygienic and in many cases unsafe. There were many issues related to staff recruitment reflective of the environment, and this was particularly seen in the countryside where a majority of mills were located.

When workforces were successfully recruited and trained they were likely to become transient, primarily in search of better wages but also in search of better working environments. They chose to suffer the individual problems of one factory for only short periods.

In the early stages of the manufacturing boom the owners and managers were faced with a very militant workforce. The harsh conditions spurred large scale demonstrations and unrest. Physical violence against managers, owners and overseers was common place and this in turn fuelled counter behaviours such as beatings and even shootings.

At the centre of a great deal of the unrest was the sentiment that this ‘new way of working’ was about concentrating capital at the expense of the labour force. It had made the owners and managers incredibly wealthy which magnified the situation, and created a social divide.

Over time things had to change. There was no way that the industry could continue in this way and in particular the owners had the following drivers:
• Factories being burnt down by militant workers caused massive disruption
• Couldn’t get workers into countryside factories
• Massively transient workforce created knowledge and skill difficulties
• Mass markets were creating large amounts of money and potentially large profits – people like Richard Arkwright were among the wealthiest people in the nation
• Heavy competition.

Recognition began to evolve that there was inherent value in the Human Component within the manufacturing process, and that as great investment was being placed in the technology of large scale manufacturing artefacts so should there be similar investment in the people.

A preliminary step forward was the offering of better wages. This is a natural market force, in that as the workforce became hard to attract the cost of those workers became higher. A plateau was soon reached on this approach though, as the market would not sustain perpetual advancement in this area.

The most consistently successful entrepreneurs were the ones that stamped their personal culture and values on the company and thus created a common unity and drive to their organisation. While not all these cultural models were utopian, they did create more ‘team working’ and generated greater efficacy from the human component of the process.

Within the more utopian models a great deal of social engineering took place, in that the companies:
• Built villages around the factories to house the workers
• Developed education and healthcare programmes
• Hired people with large families – and looked to employ most of them within the factory creating communities with the factory at the centre.

These approaches created dependencies between the workers and the company and effectively tied them to the location and to the specific factory. It also raised the standard of living for a great many people and this was something that other fields of endeavour would be unlikely to match.

There was a great diversity between the individual models used. Some seem to be derived from placing the workers at the centre of the process, others by military backgrounds or personal values. Examples of these include:
• Arkwright – A system of Industry, order and cleanliness
• Sir Robert Peel – Order, arrangement and subdivision – like a military drill
• Pollard – methods to institute and Maintain the regime – corporal punishment, fines and threats of dismissal

Towards the end of the 19th century great stock was placed in the notion that it wasn’t enough to drive the workers, but that it was more effective to motivate them. Related to this idea the concept of splitting ownership and control of companies started to carry more favour. It allowed the management to find a solution to meet the goals of the owners, without the owners themselves dictating what it should be.

In today’s working environment within the western, more knowledge based industries there are significant challenges around recruitment, staff retention, efficacy and motivation of the workforces. The solutions to these challenges seem most likely to be found within the cultural models and social frameworks which the companies themselves form.

A great deal of time and effort is expended on creating good team working. It is a firmly held belief that as organisations mature they need to continually re-invent themselves to create the right environment – and thus generate effective team working. At the root of this is that teamworking is contingent on shared goals. With Ownership and Control being increasingly differentiated under the ‘best practise’ governance around listed companies this brings us to the concept that the people within the company need to share the goals of the owners and thus ensure the longevity of the company.

Examples of this can be seen in:
• Semco – where it is run very democratically, even electing the senior management team
• TCL – where the company is run in part along the lines of a ‘mutual’ organisation, ensuring a very transparent organisation and recycling a high percentage of profits back to each employee.

I draw much inspiration from the idea brought forward by Robert Owen that:

‘managers who managed solely for pecuniary gain were destructive of the happiness of the nation and of society’.

To me, this shows us very clearly the reason as to why companies have to continually reinvent themselves and their organisations in that for only a few people, and for only a short time, will the destruction of a society or nation be tolerated and after that the people involved will force a change. This has been seen with industrial, political and civil unrest across the world and across history. Within a company if the people aren’t at the heart of the organisation and receiving value from their contributions then they will look to change it, enhance it or even destroy it.

A long term, successful company will therefore be a vehicle whereby capital is concentrated to be shared amongst those that help to concentrate it. The social and cultural frameworks put together by the company will therefore act in the best interests of the people, and thus overall for the company as a whole.

In this regard the socialist models along with the tools and methods introduced during the textiles industry revolution have a place in our thinking and management methods today. While our contemporary implementation of these models may be driven perhaps more by self interest and less for socialist reasons, the reality is that for businesses to exist and to have a long term future they must keep people at the centre of their thinking. Where they do not, they are likely to fail.

Can a benefits based testing approach be used in Safety Critical areas?

Here at TCL we have a benefits based testing approach, which we use to try and ensure that projects deliver their anticipated benefits and add strategic value to their organisations.

It’s a good technique - borne out of a very simple concept that testing, and indeed the project should be driven by a business need; that need can be expressed in terms of benefit - normally fiscal - and we should take a holistic view of the project which is led by that benefit.

This enhances and possibly even opposes the resource based logic that we would normally take through the more risk based approach.

My question today though is: Can a benefits based approach be taken to safety critical environments?

When I first started thinking about this I started to join up the idea that even in a safety critical environment there are tangible business benefits. Safety critical applications are focussed on not having defects that cause harm - and indeed that is a valuable thing to ensure is ok. Can that value be quantified though? Can it be transposed to fiscal terms? Should it be?

In the UK our culture aligns closer and closer to the US, and in so doing we see a more legal orientated approach to business. Perhaps, like Ford and their factory recall of a few years ago an evaluation could be done of the cost to make something compliant with safety critical requirements and the cost of a defect in terms of law suites? This approach doesn’t sit well with me ethically, but am I just nieve?

If we don’t take this kind of approach then I get a little lost in terms of how to quantify the business benefit of something being safety critical, how we would then link this into a business case and then in tern link to requirements. The answer is out there, but I think there is some more work for me to do before we can get this to work.

My colleague Barry is putting together a white paper on benefits based testing and if you get chance to read this it would be great to hear your thoughts on it, and indeed how benefits based testing could work in a safety critical environment.
Stew

How are we going to get Strategic Value from Testing

As the time to market for software products continues to decrease, the need to maximise the return we get for the money invested in development projects has never been greater.

As testers we are faced with a special kind of challenge - we dont write the code, we dont design the code, we dont belong to the business who will benefit from the code - so where do we fit in?

I think that we know the answer to that, but a lot of people around us dont. We need to find a way to speak their language, and transcend the barriers and perceptions between us. By approaching testing in a mature and professional way we can realise value to the teams around us, get a better product out the door and also generate unique management information on which to monitor and further refine the development processes.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently and also how I as a user of software products am becoming increasingly fault intolerant. The proliferation of systems and devices into every day life means that inherent defects can impact us in a very personal way e.g. cant get to my diary, recorded the wrong TV programme etc. I mean have you ever tried to use Salesforce.com diary facilities - there's a system with a need for some serious testing commitment.

I notice that seemingly trivial bugs frustrate a great many people and as an end user community the only real power we all have is to show our feelings by finding an alternative product - its not like my mobile phone comes with a defect tracking tool, or even a very helpful customer service portal!

With this in mind I think that significant competitive advantage can be secured for the organisations that can test their software well and thereby deliver products:
Faster – bringing them to the market first, or at least earlier than the majority of their competitors. Getting them to the front of the innovation queue.

Cheaper – perhaps increasing the efficacy of testing earlier in the lifecycle to reduce costly re-work and help improve the total cost of product development

With higher quality – being the product of choice, with a reputation for quality and resilience will ultimately secure long term market share.

At TCL we recognise that a challenge exists to find these kinds of strategic value on every project and our solutions are focussed on providing innovative, structured and professional ways to engage with organisations to meet their unique challenges. But is this enough?

Where can we get more strategic value from? Who do we need to convince that testing has more to offer than it is currently doing? Why are so many testing projects making the same old mistakes, and delivering so little value? (not ours I hasten to add!)

Difficult questions - with no short answer. I'll share my thoughts with you as they develop....
Stew

Six Sigma and Vision, Values, Goals.

Went to a fantastically interesting and enjoyable presentation as part of my MBA programme yesterday. A representative from Vodafone came to the University and presented on Vodafone strategy (the module we are doing right now is on strategy) and in particular the use of six sigma across their organisation.

Very interesting to hear about the challenges and impact of six sigma - and that they have actually succeeded in making things happen and delivering real tangible worth within 2 years of starting the programme. Also very interesting to hear about how things fit into their vision.

For anyone that came to Anaheim or has read my presentation on aligning test strategies with corporate goals you would have seen that I used Vodafone as an example of a company with Vision. In March last year I was lucky enough to attend a conference in London where Arun Sarun (CEO of Vodafone) spoke about the Vision, Values and Goals of the organisation. I felt quite inspired and impressed by his talk which is why they became my worked example.

In his talk he talked about the vision to be:

The world's mobile communications leader - enriching customers' lives, helping individuals, businesses and communities be more connected in a mobile world.

Under Values he talked about:

Passion for customers: "Our customers have chosen to trust us. In return, we must strive to anticipate and understand their needs and delight them with our service.“
Passion for our people: "Outstanding people working together make Vodafone exceptionally successful.“
Passion for results: "We are action-oriented and driven by a desire to be the best.“
Passion for the world around us: "We will help the people of the world to have fuller lives – both through the services we provide and through the impact we have on the world around us."

and under goals he talked about:

Provide superior shareholder returns
Delight our customers
Leverage global scale and scope
Expand market boundaries
Build the best global Vodafone team
Be a responsible business.

Now for me here's the interesting bit. The Six Sigma approach being used at Vodafone meets up with all of this. They are trying to drive out wasted costs, improve service, get things better understood so that they can then yield advantages of scope and scale, create bigger market share and a whole host of things on the back of the way Six Sigma will improve their operating efficiency and ways of working.

As a tester, I also gained great encouragement from the focus they have in their Voice of the Customer campaign. In essence this is one big TTRM /VCRI where they get the Grumps and Grumbles from the customer (e.g. I went into your store to buy the new whizzy bang handset to find it was out of stock. So now I am on TMobile instead!) and reviewing their systems and processes that lead to that result e.g. Stock control, marketing, logistics management. By reevaluating these, and putting the six sigma approach at the heart of the improvements they look to remove the issue.

Lots of work, lots of process, lots of Testing. All good stuff :)

As I say a very interesting presentation. If you are interested in knowing more about it or perhaps getting the contact details for the presenter so as to ask them some questions please drop me an email.

TCL Scholarship at the University of Exeter

I am really very excited to be able to tell you about our new scholarship scheme at the University of Exeter. As you will know from the previous entries in the Blog, TCL has an aspiration to become a World Wide, World Class Centre of Testing Excellence by 2020. Part of making this happen is a commitment we have made to involve academic institutions in the development of software testing as a professional discipline.

This year we have developed a scholarship scheme for undergraduates at the University of Exeter designed to encourage people with the aptitude and passion for software testing.

Details of the scheme can be found at: http://www.secam.ex.ac.uk/applicants/tclscholarship.html.

The University of Exeter has been a superb partner in our recent endeavours and we are all really excited about this new scholarship scheme.

By taking this approach, and getting involved in other things like R&D and Masters by Research projects we hope to see many expert testers of the future coming through the Exeter Degree programme. This is good for Exeter, Good for TCL and Good for software testing as a whole. A real win-win.

Very interested to hear any comments on our scheme, ideas for new innovations or from Universities that would also like to embrace software testing into their Computer Science departments.

The Future of Software Testing?

Well it’s Xmas, and there are a lot of programmes on the TV about the best of 2005 as well as people speculating about the market trends, house prices and economics of 2006. Who am I to leave a good band-wagon behind.......?

Part of my role as a Managing Director is to look forward and see what 'might be', where TCL could fit into it and where we can add value to our clients. For the last 6 years we have done relatively well in this regard, but I am posed by more of a challenge this year...in fact I would say that my answer is still a work in progress!

Primarily, my views are that the convergence of Companies, Commercial Propositions and subsequently systems is driving a lot of the IT change we are involved with. It seems to be a world wide, multi sector trend, and areas such as VoIP, Mobile, Data, Fixed line and ISP convergence is a good example of how things are unifying. Let me give you a highlight from BT. You can now take out a Mobile tariff and join it with an ISP, landline and VoIP bill. The systems you have at home enable you to have a wireless (and wired) LAN, and when you come home your mobile will act as your home (fixed line) phone - routing calls through VoIP or your fixed line as desired. It’s brilliant because its simple (almost seamless) for the user, it’s cost effective and it’s easy to buy (online).

The challenges we face as testers of this kind of technology include:
The size of it all - things are getting smaller. Usability requirements are very different. The scale of the interfaces and joined up thinking across the organisation though is much much bigger. Needing good solid design work to make it a reality rather than a travesty.
The Complexity - lots of things in the same place. To test it you have to know a lot more, about a lot more things
Time to Market - the competition is fiercer than it used to be and time to market drivers are more acute in a lot more of the sectors. A statistic I was given at a recent networking dinner was that a new software product is outdated/superseded or competitively out priced within 16 months of its launch. Projects cannot last a year or two in domains like that
Data - lots more data in even embedded systems. The performance of the systems handling this data and the security / integrity of the data in the system and more often now across the Internet is on everyone’s minds - although not necessarily in the design!
Price - Excessive pricing is no longer tolerated. Quality and Innovation may be differentiators but in markets such as mobile telcos where there is near customer saturation the cost mark (even for very innovative products) is essential to get right.

So how does this shape the future of testing? It would point towards a necessity for more Non Functional Testing, for better, quicker design and for testers that can do more and know more about a lot more things. The future of software testing therefore is rooted in proactive, professional development. Significant specialism in some areas and amazingly competent all-rounders for others.

The thing is though; there is a doubt in my mind generated by History. Love it or loathe it, you just can’t ignore history. You see when I first started in testing I was lucky enough to work in defence. We had a very mature product, in a very mature industry and the testing processes had been evolved over 20+ years to something akin to clockwork. Many of the key features brought up at today’s conferences were already common practise even then. Regression testing, testing of requirements, TTRM/VCRIs etc all sorted. So where's the new stuff? Where's our evolution? How are so many people working in 'testing' by doing exactly the same thing every day?

We thought that automation was the key to the future, and indeed I have heard that said many times in the last ten years. But look around and you see that circa 85% of all testing is still manual. So what happened? Were there no market drivers to encourage time to market initiatives, innovative approaches or change? Did no-one do this? Well a lot of us did, but why didnt it become a uniform approach?

And finally, we have all seen the need for better professional development within testing but after all this time there are still very few Universities who even mention it as part of a Computer Science Degree let alone Research and Develop it. Certification courses really are in their infancy and we spend a great deal of time reminding people that testers have to be able to test not just push paper. There isn’t an industry body, a globally accepted and common practise standard and there are commercial interests getting in the way of the true development of better tools, techniques and practises.

So if History has taught me anything its that Software Testing has been pretty much stagnant over the last 10 years (In a way like the surface of the earth seems flat from space) . An industry of silos for a long time and in fact the last 10 to 15 years haven’t really got us substantially further forward as a community.

This leads me to an interesting thought....
For me Software Testing will only have a different future from what we do now if there is a period of commercial consolidation and consistent governance/control of standardisation. This isn’t needed just in the UK, but worldwide. There is enough financial reward in software testing for this to start happening, and indeed some companies in software testing have now floated - generating capital to invest in such consolidation. When this starts to happen we might just see the merging of practices across industries and sectors generating a new level of collective competence and standards which will drive the way we work, the skills we need and the development of people that the industry needs to get on a par with other areas of IT, and perhaps start to lead the way.

The future of Software Testing in my eyes is in Unification and collective advancement. Let's see if 2006 proves me right.

Merry Xmas 2005 Everyone. I wish you all the best for 2006, and look forward to meeting up with many of you at StarEAST in May.
Stew

Certification Programmes

Well my colleagues seem to be debating the pros and cons of certification programmes at the moment, and I have a couple of views on that so here goes......

I feel that the primary reason certification programmes exist is to set a standard, and this is a good thing. Testing has historically been seen as the IT backwater - where you go if you cant do anything well, or they cant think where else to put you. This is / was a reputation that was not good for testing as a whole, and any move to systematically remove that poor perception of what we do is something I welcome.

There are three areas that I feel are a bit astray at the moment with regards to certification:

1. Practical Skills - Most importantly testing is a practical subject. It can be argued therefore that any certification programme without practical, useful, applicable skills is not really good enough. At present exams like ISEB Foundation and Practitioner don't seem to contain any 'hands on' stuff - and this diminishes the value of the qualification and thus the very standard (or 'bar') we were trying to set is perceived as lower.
2. Standards Body - Any standards body will be having a headache trying to make a one size fits all programme that incorporates aptitude, practical and theory across development methodologies, industries and even countries. The key here however is consultation and I don't know how you can get involved in influencing and changing the certification programmes for the better.
3. Commercial Interruption - My feelings on free trade and the removal of commercial barriers are very positive in general, but when it comes to certification and qualification programmes I feel that commercial interests should take a back seat. The current state of our market place, the money to be gained from training programmes and the commercial interests of some people who are involved with the certification side of things has, in my opinion corrupted areas of the usefulness of the current courses. There are areas of study within these courses devoted to commercial, trade marked methods and this goes a long way to creating an improper social construct of reality that these methods are a standard in their own right. Also for a majority of training providers the focus is on churn rather than quality of delivery and this generates content to the courses and behaviors in teaching that are improper.

So, what I would like to see happening is for the certification programmes to be more deeply routed into a more academic mind set. One where the standards would be set to achieve the right balance between Aptitude, Practical Skills and Theory - and they should link directly to / or perhaps from - qualifications such as University Degree courses. This will help to set a uniform bar without as much commercial influence.

Most importantly though, it must be time for the certification groups to extend consultation groups into centres of testing excellence and get some practical skills and measures into the programmes. Let people learn to test and show how good they are. Lets build on the idea of being an expert tester and show people how to approach anything, absolutely anything, with a testing mindset. Lets see more people adopt the tactics of James Bach, John Bach, James Lyndsay, Mark Garnett and James Whittaker in bringing people down this path and lets see some measure of this skill that shows how valuable it is. After all it isn't everyone that can do it!

In summary then, I feel that these certification programmes are a good start,
but they just aren't good enough right now. Time for a change. Time to
prove that testing is BRILLIANT and Expert Testers have a real,
valuable place in the IT landscape.

What do you think? Let me know your opinion - or take a look at the Blogs of Mark Garnett and/or James Bach to see some more opinions on this topic.

Security Testing Training - Public Course (March 2006)

Just spent the day out in Paris today, which has been good fun.

This time of year seems to agree with Paris. Lots of hussle and bussle and the Xmas lights look great.

While I have been out here I have made a provisional agreement for TCL to host a public training course in Security Testing, located in London (UK), in March 2006.

If anyone is interested then there will be something on the TCL website early next week (www.TransitionConsulting.co.uk) and if you are really keen to get involved then you can contact Katie at our Exeter office (+44 1392 262 343) to register your interest and provisionally book a place.

I am very excited about the course because it is something we are putting together as part of a joint venture, and it is the first part of our journey into the security testing space in 2006. Its an area I personally find very interesting, but dont currently have much ability in :) Hopefully I will learn something as the course will be delivered by experts!

A public course means that there will be a mixed group of people to meet with and share ideas. With a bit of luck it might feel a bit like a mini conference, over two days.

Who am I?

Here's a bit from my resume ......

Founder and now Managing Director of Transition Consulting Limited (TCL), Stewart has experience from consultancy in the Defence, Gas, Electricity, Telecoms and Media markets. After completing a Masters Degree in Physics Stewart joined GEC Marconi CIS as a Graduate on a development programme to be a tester and has thus a relatively unique background in that he has always been a tester.

TCL now has circa 50 consultants, working with clients across Europe and Stewart is leading the development of the company, training and thought leadership towards its BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) of becoming a world wide centre of testing excellence.

Stewarts first industry presentation was at StarWEST 2005 and has previously attended STAREAST and EUROSTAR.

And here's a suitably cheesy picture :)


More information on Stewart and TCL can be found at http://www.transitionconsulting.co.uk/

What Value in Values?

The StarWEST presentation on Aligning Corporate values and Test Strategies brought out some thinking in my mind about values - particularly personal values and how they fit into every day life - and in the work place.

'Society as a whole has lost its focus' – it’s a statement in a lot of MBAs and a lot of articles in places like the Harvard Business Review. They postulate that for a lot of people – particularly in the west - there is no Church to centralise their morals, values or community. Nor does the state provide this function. In fact after school age there is very little out there except the company/corporation in which we work.

Now this poses a bit of a paradox. Corporations by their nature are set up to deliver shareholder value – not necessarily value to the employees so in effect what we do (and the dollar value of that) is more important to how we do it. But if these organisations are the last bastion of social integrity then surely the how, the moral, the ethical should be much more joined up than this? When considering this idea for each CEO the question will always be ‘what value are values?’ and for each of us the question is 'How do my values fit into every day?'

A first level summary is that effective team working is contingent on shared goals, and a key part of this being an alignment of values around those goals. Sharing positive values such as truth, trust and integrity will bring with it more open dialogue and effective communications. It will also open up the team to innovate and change – hopefully for the better – and create a more evolutionary organisation.

At a higher level it is important to recognise that we are spending an increasing amount of time at work, making sacrifices and decreasing time in other parts of our lives as a result. The time spent at work should therefore be something that we want to do, not just have to do, as well as enjoy. This isn’t going to happen everywhere, and it isn’t going to always happen as a direct function of the organisation. There is a lot we can do as individuals to make it real and make it work for us.

Now there are some people out there who would question a lot of this, and talk about corporate brain washing and the effect a 'McDonalds like mantra' can have on individuals. I feel that those people have a valid point, but have missed the essence of what I am trying to convey.

For me the value of values comes from embracing the positive side of your own values and finding an organisation that shares them. Then by proactively adopting those values each day within the organisation and encouraging others do so as well we create an environment that we are all part of, want to be in, enjoy and get something out of. We will be more effective as a unit, more passionate about our work and know that each day we are contributing positive energy to the achievement of goals. This means we are making the organisation work for us, not the other way around. There is no need for a McDonalds like Mantra unless it fits to your own values and goals to have one.

The longevity of organisations both large and small is dependent on this being understood throughout the cultural programmes and by everyone in their own way making conscious decisions about how they take their values to work.

I understand Edward de Bono has done some work in this area and am off to look for his book. If you have any really interesting stuff that would be useful in my research please let me know.

The TCL Vision

Transition Consulting Limited (TCL) has been founded on a vision, which has three constituent parts:
Core Purpose
Values
BHAG

The Core Purpose of the company is: ‘To Deliver World Class solutions in software testing that are Innovative, Structured and Professional’.

The Values of the company are denoted by the T.I.G.E.R. acronym which stands for:
T- Truthful
I – Independent
G – Good Willed
E – Energetic
R – Realistic.

The Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) for the company is to become a world wide, world class centre of testing excellence by 2020. By this we mean that we want to be a centre of testing excellence that can (if required) deliver to any industry, in any country.

When the company was established, the share holders identified that true value to them was less delivered in fiscal terms but more in the work that they do and the enjoyment of the opportunities that it led to. This vision is therefore something that is very personal to the founders of the company and to maintain it during periods of growth is critical to the overall success of everyone involved.

TCL take the vision to the heart of everything that goes on in the company and to this end has set up an action team of Key Stakeholders and representatives from across the company to help define, document and action tasks that will contribute to its advancement. The team is managed by the Managing Director and output from the team is fed into an agenda item on the Management Team meetings. It is also published on the company extranet.

This Vision Key Stakeholder Team operates as a ‘think tank’ within the company with objectives as follows:

Clearly define the true meaning of the vision
Identify how T.C.L. can change
to align more closely with the vision
Run, and contribute to, internal
projects at T.C.L. to facilitate these changes
Carry the message of the
vision to each site and provide a conduit for information and feedback from
other members of T.C.L. and clients.

To understand the vision is to understand where TCL has started from, and where we intend to go. The clients we work with, the way that we set up our teams and deliver are all reflections of the vision and how well we are moving in line with it. The business plans each year reflect strategic objectives that will bring the company closer and closer to the 2020 goal. This should be defined and clearly communicated so that everyone can understand what TCL is hoping to achieve with each change and idea.

The biggest single key to the success of the TCL Vision is involvement. Information is published on the extranet, presentations are given at each party and the vision team themselves are present on site for discussions to take place. In addition to this, guests are invited to the vision meetings (monthly) so that additional feedback and contributions can be gained. More involvement is needed though and ideas are welcome from every part of TCL.

STARWEST 2005

STARWEST 2005 was brilliant.

About 900 people attended. Some for the whole week (like us) and some just for the main conference days. Everyone I met was interested in testing, open to learning and open to sharing experience, knowledge and ideas. BRILLIANT!

At this conference I was privileged to be asked to speak, and my topic was 'Aligning Test Strategies with Corporate Goals'. It was a topic close to my heart. An area I am very passionate about and it was incredibly exciting to get the opportunity to share my ideas with such a large group. I presented on first day of the main conference (Wednesday) on track W6. If you take a look at www.SQE.com you can get some details on the presentation. If you want a copy of the presentation then send me an email and I'll see what I can do.

The primary message from the presentaiton is that Organisations seeking long term success need to create good strong team working. Team working itslef is contingent on achieving shared goals between the organisation and the people involved (in the team) and to do this is difficult. In taking responsibility for our position in the organisation as testers, we can look to the company Vision, Values and Goals to shape our testing effort and gateway criteria. This helps to join up the thinking around new products and services, generates the shared goal approach and also delivers targetted strategic value to the organisation in a way that senior managers, Executives and Board members can understand.

It was my first presentation at a STAR, and there are a number of lessons learnt from the experience - not least around the logistics and set up of such a large room. There were also lessons to be learnt around the idea that to present to a STAR conference, and particularly to large audiences (like at the Key Note speaches) you need to be part entertainer as well as a subject matter expert.

You also need to be open to debate and constructive criticism about your ideas. Only by accepting all of these can you hope to achieve what I regard as success: That someone comes up to you afterwards and says 'I feel inspired by what you have said and am going to give these ideas a try'. I was lucky enough to get this response from a number of people at this, my first presentation. But dont get me wrong, I would have loved it if everyone who attended had said it.

So, what else could I do? If you were there at the conference I would be interested to hear from you on the presentation content and style. Good? Bad? Constructive feedback all warmly welcomed.

So what are we doing here?

I have just come back from STARWEST 2005 in Anaheim, and while I was there someone asked if I was blogging yet? The answer was 'no', but I had no reason as to why that was.

Then I gave it some thought and realised there were two very important reasons as to why I should be and they are as follows:

1. At TCL we have a set of values, which we hold dear and look for in everything we do. The foremost of these values is Truthful, and by opening up the thinking and discussions around the company to a public domain I can demonstrate the true commitment to this value
2. Sharing of knowledge is essential to the development of software testing as a community. I enjoy the experience of conferences like STARWEST, and wanted to ensure that the sharing, confering and learning is continuous.

So here we are.

I have set the Blog up to cover Software Testing, TCL and the vision for the company. There's a lot going on in all three of those areas and I hope that you gain value from reading about things. I also look forward to comments, ideas and sharing that come as a result of this effort.

Stew