As a member of what was back then, just a three-person QA team, my heart sank when I read the title of one of our early blog posts stating that quality is job 1 to 3000+. My manager had recently transitioned into another group and his vacancy had yet to be filled. Our CTO, Sid Probstein, had recently closed Attivio's maiden blog post with a promise to expound on Attivio's deliberate approach to quality. So here it is, I thought — had I taken on an impossible task with unrealistic objectives?
Fortunately, though, thinking like a tester once again resuscitated me. The logic of abductive inference compelled me to continue reading Sid's post. While I had to hold my breath until the closing statements convinced me sufficiently that my initial interpretation had been misguided, I was relieved to discover that 3000+ was actually a reference to the number of unit tests covering 81.2% of AIE V1.2. I eyed the 81.2% assertion suspiciously...Ah, things were going to be ok (we are now on AIE V3, and actually have almost 19,000 automated unit tests covering close to 85% of the code base).
Sid's post highlighted the premium Attivio puts on product quality. With a tip of the hat to Lessons Learned in Software Testing (Cem Kaner, James Bach, Bret Pettichord), I'd like to introduce another dynamic and indexable facet of our approach to quality at Attivio: Exploratory Testing.
AIE, Attivio's unified information access platform is incredibly flexible, configurable, and extensible. You can feed multi-language documents into sophisticated workflows via custom clients, command line connectors and in-process configured connectors. You may want your timely insight that matters pushed to an active dashboard, prefer searching/exploring your unified information store via a custom GUI, or perhaps have occasion when only a sick multi-level SQL join will suffice. Of course, it goes without saying that all of this must be secure, stable, scalable, performant, highly available and fault-tolerant.
While we continue to review, expand, and augment the unit tests that are the foundation of our quality strategy, our now fully-staffed QA team has also formally embarked on an exploratory voyage. More than tourists, like C.T. Granville setting sail on a whale watch, Attivio QA is on a quest, a never-ending journey to boldly go where no test or tester has gone before. Everything is fair game: stories, requirements, design, usability and documentation. We delve into all of it, bringing our own experience, curiosity, and skepticism to bear. Most importantly, we take inspiration from our customers who are constantly finding new and interesting ways to deploy our platform, challenging us to look at things from an entirely new perspective.
Recently, a friend sent me a Slate article about two studies that appeared in Cognition, an international journal that publishes theoretical and experimental papers on the study of the mind, which focused on how children learn. The article's author, Alison Gopnik, a professor at UC-Berkeley, who conducted one of the studies, says the studies "provide scientific support for the intuitions many teachers have had all along: Direct instruction really can limit young children's learning. Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific...But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to draw unexpected conclusions."
I think this assertion has relevance to people of any age. In the province of software testing, it's reasonable to equate 'direct instruction' with test scripts, whether manual or automated. There is significant value in them (e.g., regression, smoke, and config testing). However, they have the potential to hamstring a tester's most valuable assets: creativity, curiosity, and judgment.
At Attivio, we strive to take full advantage of those assets. The effort produces benefits beyond simply identifying additional defects and regressions. It augments our culture of communication, collaboration, and continuous learning/discovery and enables fresh and deep insight. That this is commensurate with AIE's capabilities is only fitting.
Author Bio
John McEleney is a senior member of the Attivio QA team and has been with Attivio for over three years. Prior to Attivio, John worked on and managed teams at BEA and Plumtree.
