Music, or Testerman's Ramble

At one point in my life I played in a band that performed a variety of Irish traditional and folk music.  We also played a fair amount of Scottish traditional and folk as well, however, it seems if you play or sing a single Irish song, you are labelled "Irish" and you'll be crazy-busy in March, and pretty slow the rest of the year.  Unless you work really hard and play reasonably well.

So a side-effect of playing in a band that performs this stuff  is, when you get good enough for people to pay you money to go to their towns, cities, festivals, whatever, you will run into other folks who play the same type of music.  When schedules permit, this often devolves into a session / sessiun / wild-music-playing party.  There are certain protocols that most folks follow in these events - and the fantastic thing is that usually the level of play is quite good.  Tempos are snappy so reels drive forward and hornpipes can be lilty (and tend to run around Warp 9) and jigs are of a nature where feet rarely touch the ground. 

Now, these uber-sessions are not so different than more traditional ones held in houses or coffee-shops or bars or clubs.  The big difference is the recognition that there are no light-weight players and everyone has mastered their craft.  This is not always the case at other sessions. 

I have been out of the performing trad/folk music for several years now, and in the last year began attending some of the local sessions, just to get my feet wet.  I was a bit rusty on bodhran, the Irish hand frame drum, which I had played for 20 years on stage and in sessions.  My limited ability on penny whistle was nigh-on vanished - I remembered tunes and could call phrases from my memory to my finger tips, but I'm effectively starting over.  With crazy work and home schedule it has been hard to find time to practice , let alone become "street legal" on whistle.

So, I show up at the Sunday night sessions and play a couple of tunes on whistle when they come up.  I will also play the bodhran a bit, depending on the number of people there (it does not take many drums to become "too many" for the melody instruments - whistles, mandolins, fiddles, flutes, dulcimers and the like.) 

This last Sunday there were a fair number of players.  There were 8 or 9 "melody" players, a couple of guitars, a tenor-banjo, who played melody when he knew the tune and vamped when he did not - and me on drum (with the occaisional contribution of bones.)  Some of the players are quite experienced and I have seen around for many years.  Some are between beginner and novice.  Some are "in between" levels of experience. 

One tune in particular would have made me stop the band, if it was a "band" that was playing and have them start again.  That typically isn't done in sessions - so I did the "drummer equivalent" and simply stopped playing.  One of the mandolin players, who knew me and has also been around the block gave a little smile and he stopped as well.  We were treated to a rare sight of 6 people who were absolutely certain what the "correct" tempo was for the tune that was being played - and none of them would give an inch - or a click on the metronome.  The guitar players seemed to play along with which ever melody instrument was close to them and generally the best description was "trainwreck."

That reminded me of a projet I had worked on some time ago.  I was not on the project originally, but was brought in as part of a desperation move to fix it.  Like in the tune on Sunday, each of the participants knew what the right thing to do was.  The problem was none of them agreed on what that thing was.  "Blood on the Green" was an apt summation of that effort.  The programmers were berated for not following instructions - but how do you follow instructions when there are multiple, conflicting sets of instructions? 

Because of the "political nature" of the project, no managers or directors were willing to step up and take on some form of leadership role for fear that there would be repercussions for doing so.  The PM, BA and Dev Lead floundered without some form of direction from their respective management teams.  Information was contradictory at best. 

In the end, a Director put his foot down, asserted control and forced the issue.  Me being added to the project was part of forcing the issue.  Until that point, the uncertainty of the leadership was sapping the ability of the project group to operate as an effective team.  Like the music session last week, no one had a clear picture as to what was "right" and where the center of gravity was. 

People can urge "Best Practices," "Standards," "Process" and "Metrics" all they want.  In some contexts, that may be the right thing.  However, wiothout a clear understanding of the intent of the effort, nothing will save the project.  Ulysses S. Grant, that prescient Software Oracle (well, American General turned President) warned that indecision was worse than a wrong decision.  Wrong decisions could be countered by "right" decisions, but no decision, from leadership, leaves your group floundering looking for a center. 

Good Morning, Tester-Land!

My name is Pete Walen - Welcome to my blog!

I do software testing for my profession. I am not a "world famous testing guru." I'm just a working stiff who is a practitioner and student of software testing.

I am also a drummer. I've been learning, playing, performing and teaching drumming for far longer than I've had anything to do with software.

I started drumming when I was in elementary school. I learned the same basics that most beginners learn. Like many school-trained drummers in the US, I played with the elementary/middle school band program, I also struggled with solos - playing them for judges and the like. I played in high school band programs - concert and marching band. Somehow my parents always were able to find me a teacher for private lessons so I could improve beyond what the school did.

I migrated to drum & bugle corps in high school. And youth symphony. And collegiate music programs led me to other ideas and approaches and techniques. I played in pick-up groups playing blues and jazz and rock and.. who knows what all. I spent a semester studying in Ireland where I learned yet another form of percussion - the Irish bodhran.

Something happened along the way. When I was in college, I was asked if I would consider teaching privately. That seemed perfectly normal at the time and I could use the extra cash. What student couldn't?

What was different for me was that one of my teachers had the wisdom to know that there could be many paths to achieve the same goal. If I was not understanding something, he very patiently went through the topic from scratch - explaining it in a totally different way, following a different path. When I began teaching drumming, I remembered that lesson and applied it with my own students.

After college, shortly after I started my first "real" computer job (programming COBOL for IBM mainframes) I discovered bag pipe bands. I was too old to play in drum and bugle corps. While teaching beginners was rewarding to some extent, with pipe bands I could still drum! It was also something else to learn and master. I joined the local band and have been involved in some form of drumming with pipe bands since the early 1980's.

These many years of drumming have led me to find rhythms in interesting and unusual places. In the more "usual" places, I hear rhythms not everyone else hears. When I'm playing music, I oftentimes bring those rhythms out in my drumming.

What are rhythms? They are patterns - ideas and concepts that can be found in the expression of music. Like any form of pattern, they can be found in other places as well. Typing on a keyboard gives a specific rhythm that can be identified. Seams in the pavement while driving to work gives an audible rhythm that sometimes mixes with the windshield wipers.

I used to see patterns in code when I was writing software applications (lo, those many years ago) and now I see patterns in applications when testing. There are rhythms in the way each person works. They can be unique unto themselves or they can be shared and common rhythms across teams or groups. Muggles refer to this as "group dynamics." They really are a rhythm (don't tell the muggles.)

My intent, therefore, is to use this space to talk about testing and other topics related to software, and the patterns and rhythms I see and hear and participate in around me.