Thoughts – Random Thoughts

Always Advocate for the Customer

May 31, 2021 Patrick

The role of a software quality assurance professional is kind of an interesting thing. It is hard for a lot of people, even those we work with, to really understand the position. It can even be hard for us. I often used to find myself defining the job by saying what we aren’t.

We aren’t usually software engineers, but most of us can (and should) do some basic programming and understand simple algorithms.

We aren’t on the business side of things, even though our role very much affects the bottom line, both in terms of cost and revenue generation.

We aren’t the product owner or primary stakeholder, but our decisions affect the direction our products take.

Sometimes it seems from the outside that we don’t really do anything, but we are responsible for everything.

Before I go any further I want to give you a couple of definitions so my point doesn’t get lost in semantics (as so often happens on the internet). You don’t have to agree with these definition, but it will hopefully give you some context for where I am coming from:

An advocate is one who supports or promotes the interest of a cause or group.

A customer, as I am going to define it for the purposes of these articles, is someone who gets value from the products we design and build.

Everyone in the company/organization should have a focus. The focus for the business side of the company is usually to generate ideas which bring in value and revenue for the company. The software development side is focused on turning those ideas into a “product”. An app, an api, a service, whatever. The quality team’s focus should always be on the value this product brings to the customer’s life.

We get pressure from the business to roll out this new feature in order to meet a deadline, the devs are anxious for their code to be in production, sales really wants to sell it. In a fast-paced agile environment it’s really easy to fall into the routine of just being “AC-Checkbot”. Verifying the acceptance criteria is absolutely an important function of the job, but it should really just be the starting point. Hopefully your devs made sure that the ACs were met, at least in their own local environment. Proper QA is expensive, both in terms of time and resources and your organization might not always willing to fully invest in it unless you prove the value of being a customer advocate.

“I’m sold!” you might be saying now. “How do I become that advocate?” Well, read on and I will give you a few things you can start on right away.

First up, get involved as early as possible in the process. QA typically comes near the end of the SDLC. Ask to be invited to some of the earlier meetings. If you can get in before development has even begun that is the best time to start asking questions on behalf of the customer. While the devs/architect will be asking the how questions on the implementation of it, you should consider asking some of the why questions. Understanding these will really help when it comes to the actual testing. “Why are we changing this?” “Will it save time?” “Will it save money?” “Does this actually help the customer or is it just something we are doing because company X is doing it?” Some of these questions from the customer’s POV might be uncomfortable to ask, but you need to do it anyway. You can’t advocate by being silent. This doesn’t mean you should be rude – remember that literally everyone at the company is ultimately YOUR customer.

Next up, I’d recommend coming up with customer personas if your company doesn’t use them. If they do, then always strive to keep them in mind when doing your testing. There are some great resources out there on creating the persona, and I would recommend you do some research. To get you started if you have never seen these, I would recommend the following as a bare minimum.

They should have a name. It can be helpful if you think about. There should be an idea of how often they use your product. You should have an idea of their level of technical expertise. You should know what their desire in using your product is. It shouldn’t take too long to create this basic skeleton. I’ll drop a couple of hypothetical examples for a customer for a blog creator and if there is interest I can go more into this in a future article.

Customer persona: Jo is a twenty-four year old college dropout who wants to start blogging. She’s used computers her whole life but isn’t a programmer nor does she want to. She wants to make money selling her cat hat crochet.

Customer persona: DeShawn has been a php developer for the last three years. He wants to build up an online community of competitive dart players.

Understanding these basic customers you can identify what is important to them from the app. When you are in those early product meetings and there is talk about maybe rolling out a new shopping cart option you can start thinking about what would be important to Jo and ask questions on her behalf. “How many steps is it going to take to set up the cart?” “How are we going to make sure the payments are secure?” “Are we going to collect shipping information?” “Why are we changing this?”

All businesses exist to provide value the the customer. Often product implementation decisions are made solely for ease of development, and not for the customer. You need to stand up for the customer in these cases. Sometimes the value of dev ease will be take priority and know when to acquiesce, but do so knowing that at least the question was asked and a decision was made. So many times things happen because of inertia more than intention.

I’ve gone on longer than I expected to for this article but I really think this is the most important part of the job. As software quality professionals we need to think of ourselves as a customer first and the first customer.

Next up I will be writing about the importance of being organized (which is something I have been terrible about personally).

(all images in this article are free use from clipartmax.com)

March Update

March 25, 2021 Patrick

Let’s just call March a month of learning through failure.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not being mopey about it. I tried some intentional changes with my bullet journal, with my eating, personal workflow for side projects, and with my fitness (my knee is jacked, so it was necessary – or at least a very convenient excuse), and let’s just say I learned 10,000 ways not to do any of those things. Oh yeah, and my Lent has basically been a bit of failure too.

That being said, I don’t really feel too bad about much of it, because what is life if not learning what works and what doesn’t? Let’s start this one out with what did work over the last month or so, because really the list is a lot shorter (though also arguably more important so that is good).

My new job is going well. I am really enjoying the new challenges and learning a ton. The people I work with are great and we provide a service that I really believe in. I really like working from home.

I have been working hard to be more present for my kids. That means putting down the electronics and focusing on them. That has been going pretty well, but there are times it could be better.

I am not only trying to be more present for my kids, but also my wife and, well, basically everything. ADHD convinces us that we are really good at multi-tasking, but research has shown again and again that it just isn’t true. The truth is that we are really good at half-assing things and convincing ourselves that we are rocking it. We are really good at realizing “oh crap! this deadline is like, now” and then getting it done.

I fail on this some, but meditation is helping. Speaking of meditation, I had an 80 day streak and was doing awesome, then missed one day and that was enough to get me to ignore doing it. I am not sure why, and I have discussed this with both my priest and therapist, but haven’t come up with a satisfying answer yet. That isn’t the same as just shrugging and giving up. This is something I have struggled with for a really long time. Some people can get habits and they just go, but for some reason they just don’t stick with me. And that isn’t just good habits, fortunately for me. I do still bite my fingernails though, so maybe I am just being awesome at lying to myself again.

Okay onto the failures. Let’s start out with bullet journaling because that was a habit that I felt pretty strongly that I had established. I decided to try out a digital bullet journal. Yes, I know that part of it is the tactile act of writing and creating, but I am not a barbarian and have an Apple Pencil with my iPad. I really like the combo, by the way, it just turned out not great for the Bullet Journaling. I found some great templates that I liked, the searchability was great (I use Good Notes and love it and will probably write about that in the future).

The problem (at least for me) is that it is too easy to get distracted. I turned off all notifications, but my dog-mind will think “hey, music would help” then I spend 45 minutes finding just the right music and have run out of time to journal. The actual act of writing on the iPad is just fine with the Apple Pencil – something I have really come to enjoy actually. In fact, my “game journal” for the Warhammer 40k Crusade Campaign I am playing in is on it and is perfect, as is the notebook for the Python programming class I am taking.

Fitness is kind of terrible. As I mentioned before, I hurt my knee back in December and am going through the VA system for it since the original injury was while I was stationed in Alaska. Overall the VA (at least in Los Angeles and for my particular issues) has been pretty decent, but also very slow. I actually made an appointment to see the orthopedic doctor back in November for pain and the appointment wasn’t until March. She recommends PT before surgery (which I am fine with) but I won’t be getting in to that until May. So basically, six months from first contact for this. Luckily I have been living with pain for a long time and it isn’t life-threatening.

On that front, I have also gotten lazy about tracking my food and water intake. It makes sense with the injury and inability to exercise just generally being mildly depressed about it, but it definitely hasn’t help. The combination of the two issues above have me up about 4 pounds for the month. “If you don’t track it, you can’t change it,” right?

I have been spending a lot of time learning new things for my job, and being a husband and a father which hasn’t left much time for writing or creating. I need to work on balance (which is a refrain in my life). On the plus side here, I have been getting some cool ideas and jotting them down on my iPad.

Anyway, here’s to doing better in April – and see if you can find the hawk eating the crow in this picture! I am sure there’s some deeper meaning to this thing I saw, but it eludes me.

The 49th State of the Self

August 17, 2020 Patrick5 Comments

Today is my birthday, which is always a time to both look back at the year that was and to look forward to the year to come. I decided to spend a bit more time than usual in introspection and to share it here on my blog that I am planning on using much more regularly for a variety of topics on a regular schedule. Intrigued? Keep reading. Also be warned, this blog post will most definitely be TLDR for most.

A lot has happened over the course of my last trip around the sun. I am going to touch slightly on these at the beginning just for context. Some of it has been great, much of it not so much. The biggest thing is obviously the death of my mom, which has eclipsed all else. I still think of her almost daily, and miss her the same. That being said, some other craziness (COVID-19, mass protests, and currently an early fire season and record setting heat, among other things) has had a major effect on most everyone, and I am no exception.

These states are not in order of priority, but they are in an order which will hopefully flow into each of the other states. That is my intention, anyway. Feel free to let me know whether I succeeded or failed.

Professional State

Like many people today I consider myself to have more than one profession. Call it diversification of revenue, side hustle, or passion project if you prefer. I am going to address each of those in time, starting with the “day job”.

Most of you know that I have worked for Ticketmaster for long time (just hit 10 years on this boomerang there). It is a good company, with great people and fantastic mission. Simply put, we help fans connect with their passion for live entertainment. Whether it be sports, music, theater, monster trucks or whatever, we help it happen. I know lots of people have a knee-jerk dislike for us and that hurts my feelings sometimes because most of the people I know and work with are great people with a shared love for live – myself included.

When my mom’s condition turned for the worst, I talked with my direct supervisor and there was never a question as to what to do. It was “go.” There was no pressure for outstanding work, no checking of available vacation days. No hemming or hawing. Simply support, and for that I will forever be grateful. I got to be with my mom for the last days of her life – both when she was lucid and when she wasn’t. There aren’t a lot of companies with leaders like we have.

Speaking of our leadership, when COVID-19 was just a thing on the news happening overseas, our management was taking a hard look at things to come. They had us working from home a couple of weeks before it was mandated. They didn’t have to do this but they did.

We are an industry that is entirely dependent upon people coming together in large crowds. When you talk about the economy taking a dive, consider the live entertainment market. Almost overnight we went from being on target for a record year, to zero revenue. Our leadership all the way up to the president of Live Nation has been pretty frugal to begin with and there were hopes of a short disruption that we could weather. Unfortunately, we ended up having furloughs and pay cuts for those who remained. While I myself was not furloughed, many of my good friends were. And this hurt a lot and has caused (and continues to cause) some level of anxiety.

The company has worked to be both open and transparent about the future challenges we face as an industry and company. They also recognized that this so-called “new normal” was anything but. They have provided a number of services such as regular twice weekly meditation by zoom and support for parents to help keep their kids engaged and growing.

Overall I am concerned about the future, but I also still enjoy the work and am grateful to work with some of the most talented and decent human beings I have ever known. That being said, I am currently enrolled in a class for a security certification as it is something that interests me in the field as well as being a valuable skill set to develop.

On to my other professional passion – writing. I am not going to sugar coat it – writing has been really hard since my mom died. She gave me my love of reading, and some part of me drove me to be a writer to make her proud of me. I feel like I let her down by not achieving greater success.

I did a lot of work on book 2 of the Nash Vegas supernatural series, and that focused on some Civil War era spirits, and in light of the last few months it just feels like this is not the moment to do this book. It will come out at some point, and will be very reworked. I have been working on book 3 of the vampire series – and am very excited for this one. It should be out this fall.

Writing has always been something that I have done for myself first. I enjoy it and process various ideas and characters. Since my mom died, writing has been hard. It hasn’t come easy, and hasn’t even been fun. I expect that to eventually change but it is rough right now.

Mental and Emotional State

I am very much an introvert. As a result the 2020 lockdowns haven’t been terrible for me. I’ve loved spending extra time with my family and having a built in excuse to not have to leave. That being said, we live in a small two bedroom apartment and it is easy to get grouchy with each other.

A few years back I was diagnosed with ADHD. The surprise for most who know me was that I wasn’t diagnosed previously. In reality, it was both a shock and a relief. I spent a while coming to terms with that diagnosis and the treatment options, and this last year I feel like I really hit my stride on how to be a functioning neurodiverse person. The combination of medication and BCT and new skills such as meditation and using a bullet journal have been life changing for me both in terms of getting stuff done and in giving myself some compassion for my (many) failures earlier in life. I am trying to carry this compassion and understanding over into helping my own children with their challenges.

Something else that really helped my mental and emotional state was that during this period I read a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear . This book is amazing, and has made such a difference in my life. ADHD gives me a tendency to go all or nothing. Reading the case studies on how small changes add up over time much in the same was compound interest does has really had a positive effect on so many aspects of my life, and gave me the faith that I didn’t have to change a million things at once, or turn a dial from three up to ten.

As mentioned above, my work has given us access to regular meditation and I have tried a few different apps to help out. I absolutely loved Whil, but as a cost-cutting measure my company doesn’t subscribe to it, and it is a b2b thing only. That being said, Headspace is decent and I have been using both it and Hallow. I prefer Hallow overall, but we do meditation at bed with the kids and the prayer structure and closing by crossing ourselves disturbs and wakes them up and kind of counters the point. That being said, meditation was super hard for someone with ADHD but a couple of things that really helped me were starting out with very short three minute meditations. Also, one of the meditations I followed said something along the lines of “when you catch your mind wandering, congratulate yourself because of this mindfulness”. That was a big breakthrough for me.

Even as an introvert I really get a lot of mental and emotional value out of hanging out with my friends and playing miniature games. This is something I have done for years, and is something that really matters to me. I have used the extra time at home to put a little bit of paint on models at break and lunch during work and as a result have been knocking out some models. I am very happy with how they are looking and those rare opportunities I have had to play games with them have been a blast. Obviously I would like to get more time to paint and play, but I am grateful for what I have and this is one of the very visible places that Atomic Habits have yielded fantastic results.

In terms of an area for improvement here, now that the kids are getting older, I need to make more an effort to play these games with them, and the games that interest them. We play family games a lot, Uno, Boggle, various board games, but they ask questions and love the models I am painting, so I will try and be more inviting to them and willing to play “my” games with them.

This year has also seen me really reconnecting with my catholic faith in a deeper manner. For Lent 2019 I added this image as my phone lock screen.

A nun designed it and it is laden with symbolism. Death is something we catholics should think about. It would be easy to think the this rough year has shaken my faith, but in actuality it has strengthened it. By facing death – my mom’s, and then thinking about my own as a result, has had the paradoxical effect of a much broader and longer view of things. A decade is not much compared to a century and the century is short when viewed through a millennial lens. My life may be short in comparison, but it is the time I have and what I do and who I am echos down through my children, and then through theirs, and so on. This knowledge of my own ephemeral existence has made me feel connected me to a greater, more lasting one.

Finally, during lockdown I made the conscious decision and put in the effort to get fit. While this has definitely had an emotional effect, I am going to talk about it more detail below.

Physical State

Based on some of the early things I read regarding COVID-19 I was concerned for my safety. I have a bit of extra weight, I had pneumonia as a kid and then a few times as an adult, and also some exercise induced asthma as a kid and just general weak cardio system. I have always thought of myself built more for strength. My mom had recently died, and I didn’t want to do that to my kids. It also seemed to me that being inside all the time would lead to vitamin D deficiency which would make me even more at risk. So I started to take things seriously. I have tried in the past and have had a tendency to jump right in, push myself too hard, and end up with a fairly severe injury. I didn’t want to do this, so I sought out a mentor for health. Luckily for me, I didn’t have to look too far.

Last fall, before the stuff with my mom, I was talking with my friend Ryan, who has lost not only a great amount of weight, but also successfully implemented a number of lifestyle changes that have him in better shape than when he was in high school. He was (and is continuing to be) generous enough to share with me the things that worked for him, and the things that didn’t. One of the first, and most important, things was to track every single thing that goes into your mouth. Overall I never really thought I was eating “bad” but really started keeping track of everything with an app called MyFitnessPal. The first few months the idea was to change nothing at all, just kind of get a baseline and identify. An interesting effect of this was that I found that I cut out beers and sodas almost immediately. I always knew they were basically empty calories, but actually having to enter it and see it just made it not really wroth it. I also started making other changes for the same reason. Anyway, once I had that baseline and the habit of tracking the food, we started playing with the macros (increasing protein, cutting down on processed sugar, etc). Again, just minor tweaks rather than a major change.

I was also not supposed to start exercising anything extra at this point, but for reasons listed above, I decided to start a walking plan which was on the MyFitnessPal blog.

Also, this was pretty early in the US phase of the pandemic so I was able to get a kettlebell which is something I had wanted to get and keep in my car with the idea that I would workout at the parking lot for my work. Fortunately I was able to find one. The recommended weight for males starting is 25-30 pounds, but as I mentioned, I have had a tendency to overdo it in the past so just went with a 20 pounder. In hindsight I wish I would have bought both the 25 and 30 pounders at the time, because they have become very hard to find for a decent price, but live and learn.

After completing the 6 week walking plan, I have continued to walk on a daily basis. Also once I had completed it, I started a very basic kettlebell workout plan from Greg Brookes – his 4 minute circuits were short enough that even I could not come up with a valid excuse not to do it and I was able to turn that into a habit.

Overall I have lost nearly 35 pounds since February and am seeing big changes in how my clothes are fitting on me. And these are with just minor but intentional changes – remember Atomic Habits above? Yeah, I have worked really hard to keep that in mind in every aspect of my life.

Friends, Allies, and Acquaintances

2020 has been a challenging year. It has also been a year that I have begun to realize that I need to redefine my relationship with social media. ADHD often has addictive behavior components and I have struggled with addiction to video games and, more recently, social media and online in general. Maybe it is FOMO, maybe it is hyper focus. In any event, along with my mindfulness practice it has started to become clear to me that I allow what people write to affect me too much, and in a negative way.

Again, I have to credit and thank Ryan for the following bit of insight as well. People haven’t really changed over the last 30 years and somehow we managed to get on just fine with people. All of those opinions weren’t just in your face all the time. Basically Social Media has made many daily interactions into that awkward Thanksgiving with the family jerk after a few too many drinks. It has a tendency toward bellicosity and offense. And it turns out that I would rather just like people and give them the benefit of the doubt. My dad, who also died way too young, was a very blunt and often crude guy, who said things to shock people. To be fair, that really helped the things he said stick. Anyway, if you are of a delicate humor, I apologize in advance. He used to say “opinions were like assholes. Everybody has one, and they all stink.” Something about social media makes people think that everyone else wants to see their assholes, er, sorry, hear their opinions. And frankly, I’d rather not.

To that end, I am going to be cutting back on my social media use – particularly Facebook and Twitter, although Instagram as well to a lesser degree. I am still working out the exact schedules and details so watch this space.

Holistic Overview and what the future holds.

So that is where I am at right now. I think it is a pretty fair representation of the last year, and I am happy with the areas I have grown. I believe that there is no true homeostasis in life; that you are either growing or you are dying and that is largely a matter of inertia and choice, and your inertia is determined by your choices. I have often failed to live up to this ideal, but there is value in striving.

I have a lot that I want to say about my mom. She was an amazing, strong, and loving person. She was chronically late and yesterday (the 16th) I felt very out of sorts. I eventually came to the realization that I was expecting a text message from her saying that my birthday card would be late, but that she would get it out. I cried when I realized that, and now writing this, I am crying again. I will be sharing more on her in the future. I often took her for granted and am so ashamed about that. I had to set a monthly reminder to call her, because I would get so caught up in the grind of daily life that I would forget to call her for a few months. I regret all the times that I blew her off because I was “too busy”. Expect this blog to become a place of memories about her, and my own childhood, because I realize I have a terrible memory when I try to recall but sometimes things bubble up and I don’t want to forget them. Or her.

She continues to teach me even with her passing, because she was young. I always thought I would have another year, or ten, or twenty, with her and there would be time and the truth of the matter is that tomorrow is never guaranteed for anyone. She has left an amazing legacy in me and in my own kids. She was kind and wise in ways I am just now beginning to understand.

In closing, allow me to say simply, that in 2020 the state of the Self is strong.

Mea Culpa

March 13, 2019 PatrickLeave a comment

Well, honestly, I figured I’d make it a full week before failing on my daily posts. What can I say, I am an optimist and full of hope. ADHD definitely has it’s “pros”.

I could make lots of excuses about how busy I have been, how my back hurts, and how you should really pity poor me. In reality, I just chose to do other things. (I deleted that line about a ten times and rewrote it because it kind of hurts to look at it in this way. Some of the things I chose were more worthy than forcing out a post – working diligently at my job, making it to Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, washing the dishes after dinner so my wife wouldn’t have to, writing on a Vampire story, and laying with daughter when she was scared from a bad dream. Some of them weren’t so noble – watching several episodes of The Dragon Prince (but y’all – that is SO good!), I absolutely HAD to draw this really cool picture of a thing that was in my mind. Watched a few episodes of Father Brown (quite possibly the best cop show on TV – and those costumes are always amazing). Oh and I had to redo a 500 point army list a million times, even though 500 points is too small for a real game and it is just going to be a silly exercise in throwing dice and having laughs with a few friends. So yeah, let’s just say I definitely missed the mark here.

I’ll try to do better.

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Hello Again Again

March 6, 2019 PatrickLeave a comment

This time it will stick. I am sure. I hope. One of my Lenten observations this year is not bury my talents (see Matthew 25:14-30). This post is kind of a re-introduction and a first step on my journey to do better, and be better.

It is important to me to tell you a few things about what this blog isn’t, as I think that helps to define it as much as what it is. This will help you discern whether you want to stick around for the ride or if you want to close this window now and be done with it. No hard feelings either way, I assure you.

This blog is going to be a lot of reflections and thoughts, mostly, with the occasionally self-indulgent pitch for something. While I am restarting this during a deeply important time for my Catholic faith it isn’t going to be a Catholic blog, although there will clearly be posts from me as a Catholic exploring ideas, talking, seeking, it isn’t going to be the main focus. There will also be posts about my kids, my miniatures wargaming hobby, my writing, and my daily struggles as an individual with ADHD. And while the previous sentence was entirely my my my and me me me there may even occasionally be posts about something other than me.

So, I’ve talked about the “why now” so what about the “why at all?” As I mentioned at the opening, one of my observations is to not bury my talent. I have been struggling with writing for the last couple of years (a future post will delve deeper into this) but ultimately, one of my talents is writing. And out of many fears and much indecision and second-guessing myself I have buried this talent to keep it safe, rather than growing it as it was entrusted to me to do. I firmly believe that all writers must write daily. I used to be very good at it, I am not now for any number of excuses (and you know what they say about excuses). My Lenten Intention around this is to post daily. This is me digging up the coin, you might say. I’m sure I will miss the mark, but I’ll keep trying.

I’m setting this up to auto-share on my social media as a way of reaching out to my family and friends both real and virtual and inviting them to go with me on this journey, but I am fasting from Facebook for Lent. I mention these two facts because I want to set the expectation of someone who sees this on Facebook and then leaves a comment and is disappointed or hurt that I didn’t respond to them. Likewise, I am blessed to have friends from a wide variety of faiths and across the political spectrum. It seems to me that comments are the modern equivalent of the Coliseum and I implore you, though you have the best intentions, please don’t fight amongst each other in the comments.

Finally, no doubt someone(s) out there is saying “Matthew 6:5, bro, don’t tell us about your fasting and prayer. Go into a closet and shut the door”. My response beyond what I have already stated above is that ultimately this is for me, this blog is my closet and my journey.

(sorry if this double posted, I am trying to fix something)

Hello Again for the first Time

March 6, 2019 PatrickLeave a comment