Who Needs QA? Not Yahoo!

Yahoo! likes their developers to work without a net. 
Instead of "falling to their death", Yahoo! will now refer to this as "forcing excellence into the process".

Yahoo! has been making lots of changes to their development processes. After some small changes in their processes in 2013, a larger push from mid-2014 to the first quarter of 2015 involved getting rid of quality assurance.

As part of a program Yahoo! calls Warp Drive: a shift from batch releases of code to a system of continuous delivery, software engineers at Yahoo! are no longer permitted to hand off their completed code to another team for cross checking. Instead, the code just goes live as-is. If problems occur, it will fail and shut down systems, directly affecting Yahoo!’s customers.

Yahoo views this as a success. copyrightjoestrazzere

“Doing that,” said the company’s senior vice president of science and technology Jay Rossiter, “caused a paradigm shift in how engineers thought about problems. We said ‘No more training wheels,’ and it made a huge difference. We forced excellence into the process.”

Apparently, the work QA at Yahoo! performed added human error. “It turns out,” Rossiter said, “that when you have humans everywhere, checking this, checking that, they add so much human error into the chain that, when you take them out, even if you fail sometimes, overall you are doing better.”

A year after the change, “It’s 100 percent working,” said Amotz Maimon, the company’s chief architect. “It’s amazing. Even people who didn’t think it could ever work now think it’s great, and we are applying it to everything we do in the company.”

It's not clear if "overall you are doing better" means cheaper, faster, more error-free, or something else. And it's not clear what "applying it to everything we do in the company" means.

Many folks believe another restructuring of Yahoo!'s company is coming soon, and that the company's 10,700 employees should be worrying about their job security. Indeed, CEO Marissa Mayer has promised to announce plans for a cost-cutting reorganization late in January. So maybe getting rid of QA had something to do with cheaper, rather than better. And maybe cheaper will be applied to everything they do in the company.

It will be interesting to see if this shift to "no QA" is permanent, or just another fad. Meanwhile, we'll see if Yahoo!'s quality changes for good or for bad. Or if there's anybody left who cares.

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm an experienced Quality Assurance professional. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Poor ISTQB Foundation Certification Exam Questions

A few months ago, my team was charged with preparing for, and passing the ISTQB Foundation Level Certification Exam. I retired before the team took the exam, but was present for our preparation work.

As part of the preparation, we took a series of online "practice exams". While taking the exams, I wrote down a few questions that seemed "off" to me.

Here's one:

Test cases are designed during:

1. Test recording
2. Test planning
3. Test configuration
4. Test specification

To me, this is a poor question.

When I'm testing software, I design test cases all the time. 

• I design some test cases during a dedicated session I set aside for just that purpose. 
• Some I design and prepare while I'm initially reading the requirements (if any exist). 
• Some test cases are suggested by others after reading a draft of my list of planned tests. 
• Often, while I'm creating my test automation, other tests come to mind, and I add them to my list of tests to be execute.

What do you think? Is this a good question to ask as part of a certification exam?

By the way - what do you think is the correct answer?

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 This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm an experienced Quality Assurance professional. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Would You Test Software Designed To Cheat On Tests?

Das Cheat?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Administration announced Friday that the Volkswagen AG had surreptitiously equipped its diesel vehicles with software designed to recognize when those products were being tested on a dynamometer, essentially an automotive treadmill. In such a situation, the full complement of emissions controls systems would operate at their maximum, bringing the vehicles into compliance with U.S. - and even tougher California - emissions standards.

But once the testing would be completed, according to the EPA, the vehicles would revert to a different mode, effectively allowing emissions levels to increase by as much as 40 times.

• Volkswagen AG admitted that it built “defeat device” software into its diesel cars from 2009 to 2015 that automatically cheated on U.S. air-pollution tests
• Software is built into 11 million vehicles worldwide
• It could cost VW around $7.2 billion to fix the cars
• Volkswagen's CEO resigned due to the scandal
• VW designed the software to have the 3.0-liter engine run on two modes: “temperature conditioning” – the cheating mode – and “normal mode.”
• The car reverted to normal mode “exactly one second” after the software detected that EPA testing conditions had stopped
• VW has blamed a few rogue engineers for the scheme

It's pretty hard to believe "a few rogue engineers" would concoct and execute a scheme like this that, if discovered, could have catastrophic repercussions for the company. 

Imagine you worked for VW (or were a contractor), and were assigned to test this "defeat device" code. How would you feel? And how would you feel now that it's public knowledge?

See also:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/09/22/442457697/11-million-cars-worldwide-have-emissions-problem-volkswagen-says

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/09/22/anatomy-of-volkswagons-deception-the-recall-that-never-fixed-any-cars/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-19/volkswagen-emissions-cheating-found-by-curious-clean-air-group

http://www.networkworld.com/article/2985059/software/so-you-re-a-vw-software-engineer.html

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/volkswagen-11-million-vehicles-could-have-suspect-software-emissions-scandal-n431456

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2015/09/22/volkswagen-says-11-million-its-cars-are-equipped-with-emissions-test-beating/

Update:

Apparently, VW's cheating was worse than originally reported, and extends to some Audi and Porsche models as well.

The EPA, California Air Resources Board and Environment Canada discovered the additional cheating while testing Volkswagen's vehicles. They have found nothing similar while conducting tests of other car companies.

Volkswagen engineers took a sneaky approach when fitting these vehicles with the "defeat device" software, the EPA alleged.

See Also:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/11/02/epa-diesel-suv-volkswagen-audi-porsche/75044132/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/business/some-porsche-models-found-to-have-emissions-cheating-software.html?_r=0
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-vw-action-20151102-story.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/epa-more-vw-diesels-have-defeat-device-software-110215.html

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm an experienced Quality Assurance professional. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Perhaps They Should Have Tested More - SunGard

not the actual           BNY Mellon       logo *         

Perhaps SunGard and/or BNY Mellon should have tested more

If you've been watching the Market the past few weeks, you may have been concerned by all the volatility and heavy activity occurring.

And if your funds' NAV (Net Asset Value) was reported through BNY Mellon, you may have been even more concerned to learn that the NAVs at the end of the day's trading were delayed.

That's apparently because an operating system upgrade by SunGard (which hosts the fund account platform of BNY Mellon) caused a malfunction - on both the production platform, and the backup platform!

• SunGard hosts the fund account platform of BNY Mellon
• A malfunction in this platform disrupted the net asset values (NAVs) of BNY Mellon mutual funds and exchange-traded funds
• Impacted 66 of BNY Mellon's US fund accounting clients
• For up to 1200 funds valued at over $400 billion, the reporting of the NAVs at the end of the day's trading was delayed.
• The timing was especially poor, due to the heavy market activity in the days that followed.
• The problems may have led BNY Mellon to calculate inaccurate prices during the market's volatility
• BNY Mellon's clients were likely receiving imprecise information
• Per SunGard "issue appears to have been caused by an unforeseen complication resulting from an operating system change."
• SunGard said it followed standard testing procedure for the implementation of this change, but the update still corrupted both BNY Mellon's primary and backup environments
• BNY Mellon's chairman and CEO Gerald Hassell said the full restoration of SunGard's platform "has taken far longer than any of us would have expected."
• Dozens of companies rely on Bank of New York data to determine the correct value for their funds
• Bank officials say the problem began on Aug. 24, just as U.S. markets suffered their worst single-day loss since 2011

Perhaps it was just bad timing. 

It's nice that SunGard followed their standard testing procedures, but perhaps they weren't adequate. And perhaps it's not a good idea to make changes to the Backup environment, until you are completely sure the Production environment is actually working correctly.

Perhaps SunGard (and perhaps even BNY Mellon) should have tested more.

See also:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/bny-mellon-races-to-fix-pricing-glitches-before-markets-open-monday-1440960742

http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/31/investing/wall-street-glitch-bny-mellon/

http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/news/2015/08/31/sungard-close-software-glitch-fix-bny-mellon.html

http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/news/2015/08/28/sungard-software-glitch-bny-mellon-wall-street.html

http://www.waterstechnology.com/buy-side-technology/opinion/2423964/the-nav-crash-mess-at-bny-raises-new-questions-for-big-funds-custodians-alike

http://meredith.worldnow.com/story/29927179/bank-of-ny-glitch-leads-to-data-confusion

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/31/bank-of-ny-melln-funds-idUSL4N1161RG20150831

http://www.fiercefinanceit.com/story/bny-mellon-adds-safeguards-after-sungard-glitch-lasted-longer-expected/2015-09-01

* actual BNY Mellon logo was removed per demand from BNY Mellon

"In connection to the Bank of New York Mellon Corporation’s proprietary rights over its famous trademarks we are notifying you of the following:

It has come to our attention that our trademark(s) appears as a metatag, keyword, visible or hidden text on the web site(s) located at:

http://www.allthingsquality.com/2015/09/perhaps-they-should-have-tested-more.html

without having obtained prior written authorization from The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation. This practice infringes upon our exclusive intellectual property rights."

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm an experienced Quality Assurance professional. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Perhaps They Should Have Tested More - Dilbert

http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-08-19

The "Internet of Things" is a scary place:

• New brain stimulator device had a software glitch
• Momentary homicidal mania is a side-effect
• One dead in cafeteria brawl

Perhaps Dilbert should have tested more?

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm an experienced Quality Assurance professional. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Free Web Sites Where You Can Practice Your Testing

If you miss a note, I'll whack you with this stick!

As the old joke goes: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, Practice, Practice."

And how do you get to be a good Web Tester? Practice, Practice, Practice. copyrightjoestrazzere

Here are some free web sites that might help you with your manual or automated testing.

ParkCalc Widget

http://adam.goucher.ca/parkcalc/

copyrightjoestrazzere

A copy of the parking fee calculation widget from the Gerald R. Ford International Airport.

This "application" has some serious flaws, and has been the subject of lots of exploratory testing. Often the goal is to try and attain the highest parking fee you can, and discover the features/bugs in the widget along the way.

Read more here:

http://www.shino.de/2010/06/20/parkcalc-automation-getting-started/

http://testkeis.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/a-testing-exercise-parkcalc/

http://weekendtesting.com/archives/976

http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/05/testing_challenge

http://testingdisciple.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/my-solutions-for-parkcalc-exercise/

http://www.grr.org/ParkCalc.php

Brown and Donaldson (B&D) online brokerage Web site

http://bdonline.sqe.com/

The case study featured in The Web Testing Handbook by Steven Splaine & Stefan P. Jaskiel and the SQE Web testing training seminars.

B&D is a fictitious online brokerage firm created with the specific purpose of providing you with the opportunity to practice the Web testing techniques discussed in the book and training seminars, thereby gaining real-world interactive Web testing experience.

It even includes sample Requirements and Test Plans.

The Mercury Tours Web Site

http://newtours.demoaut.com/

Used in conjunction with the tutorials for some HP (formerly Mercury Interactive) products, such as QuickTest Pro.

Altoro Mutual Web Site

http://demo.testfire.net/

The Altoro Mutual website is published by Watchfire, Inc. for the sole purpose of demonstrating the effectiveness of Watchfire products in detecting web application vulnerabilities and website defects. This site is not a real banking site. Similarities, if any, to third party products and/or websites are purely coincidental. This site is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied. Watchfire does not assume any risk in relation to your use of this website. For additional Terms of Use, please go to http://www.watchfire.com/statements/terms.aspx.

InsuranceWeb Web Site

http://demo.borland.com/InsuranceWebExtJS/index.jsf

This site is a fictitious representation of an online company for the purpose of demonstrating Borland Solutions.

Find its web services documentation here:

http://demo.borland.com/InsuranceWebExtJS/webservices.jsf

Know of any other sites used for practicing your web testing craft? Shoot me a note, and I'll add them to the list and give you all the credit!

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

The State Of Testing 2015

The State of Testing 2015

Back in January, I asked you to help my friend Joel Montvelisky and complete this year's survey he and his company PractiTest ran in association with the magazine Tea Time with Testers. 

Many of you responded, and the results are in!

It's an interesting read. You'll get location, background, experience, and salary information from respondents around the world.

You will find some results that probably aren't surprising ("Testers learn on their own") and some that could be surprising ("Testers are documenting less than in previous years").

You'll hear what Managers look for when hiring testers, and lots more.

Check it out - it's worth your time!

http://qablog.practitest.com/2015/07/the-state-of-testing-report-for-2015-is-out/

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm an experienced Quality Assurance professional. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Bruce Asks All Things

Ask All Things

Bruce asked a great question:

We have a large number of tests that we would like to automate.  However, it takes time to automate each test, and we have several thousand tests that could be automated. 

Is there an average or maximum number of tests that QA people automate using tools like Selenium or Ranorex?  Thanks for your help.

Sincerely, 

Bruce 

Nice question, Bruce! And one that many folks contemplate when they encounter a large system that needs a lot of test automation.

At one place I worked, we automated over 8,000 tests.

In that particular shop the UI and much of the underlying code was very, very stable. New functionality was added, but it was virtually always added in new instances, and seldom involved changes to existing instances. Thus automated regression tests were able to pay back the investment, and maintenance wasn't overly burdensome.

I know of no industry averages or maximums. Even if there were such averages, I don't see how it would be of much help for your individual case.

Instead, you should consider the full cost of automation in your shop (including initial setup and ongoing maintenance) against the benefits you expect to receive.

Some factors to consider: copyrightjoestrazzere

• Do you have sufficient expertise already on staff to create this automation, or will you need to go outside your organization to get it?
• Do you have time in your schedule to plan, design, develop, test (yes - your automation needs some testing!), document, and deploy your automation?
• How much ongoing maintenance will this automation need?
• How much is the current lack of automation costing your company - both in terms of bugs escaping to Production, and the cost of manual testing you must perform due to the lack of automation?

Many companies choose to start small. Automate only the parts that matter most (perhaps the riskiest or most critical parts of your system), weigh the costs versus benefits, and then decide what to automate next (if anything).

Some companies choose to plan automation for new systems, but only tactically go back and automate legacy systems as time permits.

Other companies choose to outsource the initial automation effort, then bring the maintenance portion in-house.

Let's throw this question to the readers - Do you know of an average or maximum number of tests? Do you know of other factors to consider as you think about automating a large system? Have you faced a large automation effort like this? If so, how did you handle it?

-joe




Do you have questions? Use the new "ASK ALL THINGS" widget over on the right-hand panel. Send me questions about anything:

• about the testing profession
• about test automation
• about bug tracking
• about being a Manager
• about testing and QA jobs
• about quality
• anything!

I'll read through the questions, pick some that not only interest you and me, but questions that I think will interest others. Together we can not only get you the answers you need, but we can provide others with some useful information as well.

Ask All Things!

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm an experienced Quality Assurance professional. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Perfection Is

What is Perfection?

Perfection

According to Google (and Google knows everything), perfection is..

• Perfection is the enemy of good
• Perfection is a disease of a nation
• Perfection is the enemy of progress
• Perfection is not attainable
• Perfection is in the eye of the beholder
• Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing 
• Perfection is an illusion
• Perfection is my enemy
• Perfection is attainable
• Perfection is overrated
• Perfection is not possible
• Perfection is low standard
• Perfection is boring
• Perfection is subjective
• Perfection is not enough
• Perfection is a perspective
• Perfection is a mistake
• Perfection is a myth
• Perfection is a state of mind
• Perfection is opinion
• Perfection is like chasing the horizon
• Perfection is the enemy of profitability

Can you add to the list?

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Like To Find Bugs? Like To Travel? Here's How You Can Do Both!

If you are good at hunting down bugs, you could earn travel miles from United Airlines. In fact, if you are the first to find a particular remote code execution bug, you could earn 1,000,000 miles! copyrightjoestrazzere

The program was implemented in May, and so far two testers have each found 1,000,000-mile bugs.

Jordon Wiens, a software security researcher in Florida was one. The bug he found would have allowed an attacker to execute code remotely on one of United’s systems. In addition to the remote code execution bug, Jordan found another that earned him 250,000 additional travel miles. Should he choose to do so, he can now travel from the United States to Europe about forty-one times, courtesy of United and his bug-hunting skills.

United won't reward you for finding bugs in their onboard Wi-Fi, entertainment systems or avionics. But they do offer miles to testers who find a variety of bugs on United-operated, customer-facing websites such as united.com, beta.united.com, mobile.united.com, mystatus.united.com, smartphone.continental.com as well as bugs on the United app, and other United properties.

The severity of the bug determines the reward:

Bug Bounty payout structure

Severity	Examples	Maximum payout in award miles
High	Remote code execution	1,000,000
Medium	Authentication bypass Brute-force attacks Potential for personally identifiable information (PII) disclosure Timing attacks	250,000
Low	Cross-site scripting Cross-site request forgery Third-party security bugs that affect United	50,000

So if you like to travel, read and follow the United Airlines Bug Bounty instructions, roll up your sleeves, and find some bugs. If you are skilled enough and quick enough, you could be "flying the friendly skies" soon.


Also see:

http://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/Contact/bugbounty.aspx

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/07/16/why-united-airlines-is-rewarding-hackers-with-millions-of-free-miles/

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33552195

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2015/0717/United-Airlines-awards-bug-bounty-Is-it-getting-cybersecurity-savvy

http://consumerist.com/2015/07/14/first-united-airlines-bug-bounty-payout-is-one-million-miles/

http://www.thehoopsnews.com/2015/07/19/6896/united-airlines-hackers-given-million-free-flight-miles-under-bug-bounty-program/

http://triblive.com/usworld/nation/8766543-74/united-wiens-million

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm an experienced Quality Assurance professional. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Nine Years - And That's All

Nine Years - And That's All Folks!

I recently marked my nine-year anniversary at my current company. Actually, it's now my former company. After nine years, I left.

It was a difficult decision, but for me, it was the right one. It was time to move on to the next phase of my life.

It's hard for me to believe that I was there for nine years. Yet when I look back at all we accomplished, it sometimes seems like far more:

• When I started, there was no real Quality Assurance Team. Whatever small bit of testing occurred was being performed by Product Management folks in their spare time. Since then, we created a terrific team in the US, augmented by some good contractors, and a small team in India as well. copyrightjoestrazzere
• Bugs were not being tracked in any central system. There were a few emails floating around, and an occasional spreadsheet, but no place where people could go to find the status of bugs. Most recently, we used Bugzilla, and people grew tired of me asking "Do we have a bug report for that?"
• Lots of people came and went over the past eight years. Initially, the biggest change was the prior CTO being replaced by my boss.  Since then, many other folks left.re
• We changed a significant portion of the infrastructure behind most of our applications. It became far more scalable and sustainable, although we continued to make changes.
• We formalized many of our development and testing processes, and created the necessary processes where none existed before.
• We went from fighting fires every day, to a much more stable, dependable set of systems. Where before many of our systems needed manual, hands-on attention every day, most ran in a much more automated fashion.
• The product lines changed over time. We weeded out some products that were single-customer, poorly funded products. We created some new products, and retired others.
• A few years ago, we were purchased by a much larger corporation. It wasn't all bad, and it wasn't all good. The volume of big-company administrivia started out small, but increased, and it continued to increase.
• My QA Team was reorged a few years ago. At that time, my current boss reported to someone in the corporate office, rather than the local General Manager. She also had responsibility for more than just our local division. That meant we had even less contact with my boss than before.
• As part of reporting up into corporate, we were required to use all of the formal corporate time-reporting, project management and metrics systems. For me, it was a lot of time spent on administrivia, rather than more productive work. I tried hard to minimize the impact on my team, but I couldn't eliminate all the overhead.
• We recently completed a massive project to move our production infrastructure into the corporate facility. We purchased new hardware, new software, database upgrades, etc, etc. We embraced new processes for security, administration, installation, and support. And of course we often "improved the applications" as we migrated them. With almost all the variables being changed at the same time, this was a big task for everyone involved, and a very big testing task. It was "interesting", and a huge drag on our time for building and testing revenue-producing applications.
• We experimented with a few Agile projects. They took many wrong turns, took longer than anticipated, and didn't end up in viable products. Still, we learned a lot.
• Last year, my QA Team was reorged yet again. This time, I reported directly to someone in the corporate offices in New York, rather than into the local Development group. The new boss had no real background in QA at all - he was primarily concerned with Governance. That was rather different than any other place I had ever worked. No time for any testing - for me it was basically all project management, all the time.
• Eventually, it became clear that the role of a QA Director in this company no longer fit with what I believed in or what I wanted to be doing.

Lots of work, lots of changes. All in all, it was a pretty good nine years. But now that company is behind me.

I'll really miss all of the local people I worked with over the years - they are a great bunch of smart, hardworking people who care about quality. I'm sure they will all continue to be successful.

But I won't miss the administrivia, the many processes, the long string of estimates that were required, the ever-growing number of metrics, all the purported "Best Practices", and the seemingly-endless series of reorgs.

I'm going to take a step back for a while, to relax a bit, to evaluate things, and to spend more time with my grandchildren. I have a lot of projects I want to try, a lot of reading to do, and a lot of writing ahead of me (I hope). Stay tuned!

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm an experienced Quality Assurance professional. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Leap Second Day - Will This Be The Start Of The Apocalypse?

19:59:60

On June 30, 2015 at 8:00 PM ET, an extra second will occur. This "leap second" is added sporadically to keep the earth's clocks in tune with the rotation of the Earth.

While not a big deal with most humans, extra seconds are not particularly a good thing for computers.

• A 61 second minute
• The extra second will take place at 8 p.m. ET on June 30
• Markets around the world are frantically trying to avoid a leap second that threatens to disrupt global trading on Tuesday
• There’s a chance the leap second could crash your favorite website or maybe even delay your flight.
• The previous leap second, which took place in 2012, brought down Reddit, Yelp, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Gawker and StumbleUpon, among other sites and apps. 
• Qantas' entire computer system went down for hours, forcing employees to check in passengers by hand.
• Amazon.com Inc. said it’s planning to add time to all 86,400 seconds of the day before the event so at midnight its systems will be caught up.
• Experts at Britain’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) who will officially add the second to UK time, warned that markets which are already jittery from Greece could suffer transaction delays if their software was not prepared.

So are all of your systems tested and ready for The Longest Day, 2015 Edition?

And how will you be spending your extra second? I'll be spending that time closing my eyes and coming up with a list of my all-time favorite metrics... and fending off zombies, as needed.

See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second
http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/29/technology/leap-second/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/06/29/on-tuesday-the-world-gets-a-leap-second-are-we-all-gonna-die/
http://www.livescience.com/49370-leap-second-added-2015.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-28/with-61-seconds-in-a-minute-markets-brace-for-trouble
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11706014/Clocks-to-read-115960-as-time-lords-add-leap-second.html
http://time.com/3666522/leap-second/
http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/time-technology-and-leaping-seconds.html

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

A QA Engineer Walks Into A Bar

From a friend of a friend (thanks, Mark!)

A QA Engineer walks into a bar. 

Orders a beer. 

Orders 0 beers. 

Orders 999999999 beers. 

Orders a lizard. 

Orders -1 beers. 

Orders a sfdeljknesv.

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

The Annual Easter Tradition Lives On!

The Strazzere family Easter tradition lives on.

Oh, look! 

There's that huge creature who sneaks into your room at night and leaves a basket full of things that aren't good for you. 

Why don't you go sit on its lap and smile for the camera?

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Happy Pi Day 2015!

π=

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117450284102701938521105559644622948954930381964428810975665933446128475648233786783165271201909145648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273724587006606315588174881520920962829254091715364367892590360011330530548820466521384146951941511609433057270365759591953092186117381932611793105118548074462379962749567351885752724891227938183011949129833673362440656643086021394946395224737190702179860943702770539217176293176752384674818467669405132000568127145263560827785771342757789609173637178721468440901224953430146549585371050792279689258923542019956112129021960864034418159813629774771309960518707211349999998372978049951059731732816096318595024459455346908302642522308253344685035261931188171010003137838752886587533208381420617177669147303598253490428755468731159562863882353787593751957781857780532171226806613001927876611195909216420198...

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

A Note From The Interview Guys

The Interview Guys

I recently received an email from Jeff Gillis at the "The Interview Guys" website:

Hi Joe,

I was searching for some job interview questions related resources and came across your page at http://www.allthingsquality.com/2010/04/qa-and-testing-interview-questions-and.html
Great resources! A lot of stuff I haven’t seen before…

Although, I couldn't help notice that you do list acetheinterview.com in your list of resources..

You may not be aware, but that website recently closed down.

You may want to remove their link/url from the page.

Just thought I'd give you a heads up.

My colleague and I produce a blog helping job seekers and we just recently published a pretty popular, in depth post on behavioral job interviewing over at:  http://theinterviewguys.com/behavioral-interview-questions-and-answers-101/
Might make a nice addition to the page :D

Either way, have a nice day!

Cheers,
Jeff Gillis

Thanks, Jeff! 

I looked over your website and I really like what I see so far - terrific, practical advice (in the form of both articles and videos) on all aspects of the job search and interviewing. My sense is that this is fairly a new site. Not a huge volume of content yet, but Jeff Gillis and Mike Simpson are clearly on the right track here.

And I really believe in their core lesson "Its not about you, it's about them".

Keep up the good work!

You have successfully prompted me to start updating my popular page QA and Testing Interview Questions (And Some Answers). And I'll certainly include your website in the update!

(Disclaimer: The "The Interview Guys" site offers several products for sale - Job Interview Road Map, Interview Master Guide, and Interview Master System. I have not tried any of these products yet, and so I cannot endorse any of them.)

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

A Super Bowl Win For The Ages!

Ten years in the making, but worth the wait!

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Patriots Win Again!

Kate and Maverick Strazzere are excited about the Patriots' Super Bowl win!

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

What's the State of Testing in 2015? Take this Survey!

What's the State of Testing in 2015?

My friend Joel Montvelisky has asked me to pass the word about a survey he is running in association with the magazine Tea Time with Testers. As they did last year, they are trying to discover the state of testing in the world today.

And as I did last year, I'm asking you all to pitch in and help!

As Joel says:

We all want to understand more about our testing community. And this is why we ran the first State of Testing Survey, a year ago. In that survey we asked our fellow testers about their jobs, their challenges and what they thought about their professional future. 

The response to that survey was overwhelming, and the results were really interesting. You can get the previous State of Testing Report from the QABlog site (http://qablog.practitest.com/state-of-testing/year-2013/). 

Still, we believe that it is important to see not only a snapshot of our reality but also how it evolves and progresses over time. This is why we are now running the Second State of Testing survey. We believe it will allow us to understand how our community sees its reality today, and also start plotting the path we are taking in our professional endeavour.

So, as a valued member of the professional software testing community, can you help out this worthy cause?

Go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/state_of_testing_2015 and fill out the questionnaire. I know this will be helpful not only to you, but to all software test professionals worldwide.

Thanks!

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

My Son, The Author

by Tim Strazzere

For Christmas this year, my son gave me a copy of the book he co-authored.

One proud parent here!

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.