So a curious thing happened to me while in the Dialogues session at Star West this year. As mentioned in the write-up, I was in the Getting Started group and by nature of being seated next to the easel, I took the marker to become the Secretary for the group.
I think there were about a dozen people in this particular group and at the risk of sounding overly pompous I was the only person who had succeeded with automation. Which makes sense if you think about it as groups were self organizing — those who didn’t need to talk about getting started went to more advanced / specific topics. I only went to this group as Star West was part of a year-long experiment on going to conferences as marketing. (I’m actually writing this on the plane to STPCON.)
The latter half of the conversation focuses around tools and tooling. And as I remarked on Twitter later, Selenium doesn’t have to do much marketing to keep growing as there is a lot of dissatisfaction in the market around QTP if this sample is any indication.
With full disclosure given that I work on and with Selenium, I gave general consultant-y sounding answers around tools. Some of which made it to The Relationship of Testing Tools to Economics & Freedom. To me, using QTP to test web applications is a darn near unethical waste of company resources (cash). Yes, there are times when you might need to use it. For instance, when I was in the WinRunner world there were plugins for driving terminal emulators and powerbuilder applications and I wouldn’t be shocked if QTP wasn’t the best thing in those categories.
My argument against QTP aside from the cost goes something like this…
- It’s closed source (so you can’t build your own lightsaber)
- It doesn’t have a ‘real’ scripting language. Where real means cross-platform and where skills learned in it an be transposed to others as well. VBScript might as well be Vendor Script in automation.
- It is Windows only — and there are increasingly more and more non-windows consumers of web applications every day. If you have a public web application that doesn’t care about the increasing Mac (or even Linux) market, let me know and I’ll create a clone to target it.
All three of these were brought up during the session and even though I repeatedly said “I could take this over quite easily, but don’t want to” it became somewhat Q & A.
Unbeknownst to me though there was a ‘mole’ [used tounge-in-cheek] in the group who did not enjoy my providing an alternate view to QTP being ‘all that’. This person did two things after the session that significantly changed my Star West experience.
First they wrote a long, and scathing comment on the back of the feedback form about my ‘bashing’ of QTP. Feedback forms are very important to the Star conferences and are used as input for whether speakers are invited back and to use it to comment on another session participant would be an un-necessary blight against the actual session coordinators which is unfair. And frankly cowardly. Whomever you are, you’ve lost my respect.
I’m extrapolating on that the second event is related to the same person, but during the break I was still in the room talking to a few remaining people when two people from HP’s booth approached and introduced themselves. Someone had come up to their booth and was told that I was ‘bashing’ (same word as on the feedback form) on QTP and informed that HP, as a sponsor ‘was not allowed to bash Selenium so I should stop bashing QTP’
Let’s pause for a second for context.
I was not at Star West as a sponsor.
I was not at Star West as a speaker.
I was there as a volunteer.
My badge said ‘Delegate’.
Now, I did get comp’ed entrance into the conference by volunteering as a track host. This meant I didn’t get to pick which sessions I went to as I had to be in all the ones I was hosting — so though no money was exchanged a price was paid. The job of the track host is to help the speaker get their laptop working on the screen, mic’ed up, introduce them and then thank them at the end. And be a gopher if needed. But other than that you are just another session participant. It is not a paid position and the person does not assume any representation of SQE (the organizer of the Star events).
So I, a delegate, was told to be quiet by a vendor/sponsor. Ummm, ya, HP — your money didn’t buy you that. Or shouldn’t have at any rate.
Now, if I was either of those things then the rules would be different. Star prides itself on not having marketing sessions and playing fair-ish on the trade show could be seen as just good etiquette. Remember though, that I was a delegate.
I’m pretty pissed that those two from the HP booth had the nerve to try to censor me. The proper thing they should have done is to ask to talk to me and see if they could try to address my concerns about their product. They’re not going to win me as a convert, but at least they would know what I was saying and the reasons for it. But instead they sent down the goon squad.
And for that, I think I’m owed apology — from HP.
Three final points.
First, when recounting this to Rob Sabourin (whose session I missed as I was doing my volunteer duties) later he suggested that listening to a recording of what I actually said and how I said it might be useful. There are a couple people in the testing community that when get onto passionate subjects can come across stronger than intended. I concede that this might be such a situation. Alas, no such recording exists (to my knowledge).
Volunteers at Agile all wear shirts emblazoned with ‘VOLUNTEER’ on them so noone can accidentally assume they are anything but during their shifts. All conferences, including Star should pickup on this model if not with shirts then buttons or ribbons or something else. I fear that because I was seen in all the automation sessions more was assumed about my status that it really was. (Though ironically my session hosting duties for this particular one were limited to cleaning the room in-between and after the session.)
And finally, a sincere apology to Dot and Mieke on any possible repercussions from the feedback you might have received. And to Lee Copeland (program chair of Star West) who had his morning ruined by having HP track him down so as to have to track me down to have a chat (though I think the right answer should have been to tell HP I was neither a speaker nor sponsor so HP can’t complain).
I don’t understand the problem, Adam.
They say “…so you should stop bashing QTP.”
You should reply, “Ha ha ha ha ha! What? Get out of here you knuckleheads. Make a better product and I won’t be forced to tell unpleasant truths about it! Hey James, come over here. Get this. These booth bums or whoever they are think they can control public discourse about their tools! Isn’t that funny? Let’s laugh together over this. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
…or words to that affect.
I don’t see a problem here. Don’t demand an apology. Just make them pay the price for attempted meddling.
— James
Hey Adam (and James),
I was one of the HP employees to tried to politely and professionally ask that Adam discontinue negative remarks about *any* vendor products. I believe my exact words were: “Dude, that’s just not cool.” Please understand that my colleague and I did not get a tip from the HP booth – it was another delegate who said something to us about your comments. It was only then that Gal and I approached you – with full disclosure. (I was wearing a shirt with a huge HP logo on it, eh?)
As a sponsor for SQE StarWest, we felt that HP has a responsibility to uphold and honor the policies and intentions of vendor neutrality at the conference. Whether we are sponsors, vendors, speakers or delegates – HP does not engage in bashing anyone else’s products, including Selenium.
We attempt to share only the helpful recommendations on how to conduct testing with our solutions and what new challenges testers might face in using the solutions. HP testing tools aren’t flawless, we can admit that. But we don’t help any customer by negatively criticizing other vendors’ solutions. Bashing each other’s tools is non-productive in the eyes of every STAR conference delegate.
And that’s the root of the issue, for me. Perhaps due to the latent perceptions of overly aggressive testing tool sales teams, now we can find no common ground in the intentions for every test automation tool; that is, to aide software testers in all forms across the industry. In my opinion, we testing tool vendors might spend too much time fighting with each other – and not enough time fighting to support the greater cause of software quality.
In that spirit, I personally apologize if our approaching you resulted in you feeling censored. That was absolutely not our intention. We simply wanted to encourage you to see that a positive discourse about the strengths of the Selenium would serve the community of delegates better than tearing down other tools.
I hope you’ll understand my logic here and I hope to see Selenium getting stronger, for the betterment of testers who need it. Just like our tools will try, also.
Sincerely,
Mark Tomlinson
LoadRunner Product Manager
HP Software
Dear Mark…
I was one of the HP employees to tried to politely and professionally ask that Adam discontinue negative remarks about *any* vendor products.
Because…?
Bashing each other’s tools is non-productive in the eyes of every STAR conference delegate.
When, in your point of view, does “bashing” stop and Analysis and Review (the A and R in “STAR”), honest and open criticism, begin? I’m asking that question quite seriously. It is of the essence of testing that we report and discuss unpleasant truths as well as pleasant ones. It is a hallmark of any community of honest, skilled testers that we welcome challenges and criticism, any time. As I’ve said in another forum recently, a knife should have no reason to fear the sharpening steel.
The absolute best defense against what you call “bashing” is to make products that are unassailable, such that anyone who tries to bash them is laughed off whatever platform he’s standing on.
—Michael B.
Michael asked: “When, in your point of view, does “bashing” stop and Analysis and Review (the A and R in “STAR”), honest and open criticism, begin?”
Bashing = “Oh you use QuickTest Professional?? That tool is crap!” (We were told by a delegate that these where almost the exact words used by Adam during the session.)
Analysis and Review = “Let’s look at QuickTest Professional’s scripting language, vbscript. What do we know about vbscript? It’s an older language which can be difficult to use and may soon be unsupported. I think that’s a fair criticism.”
As a software tester, you obviously know that no software will ever be unassailable. Just as Jerry Weinberg states that no software will ever be perfect…because maybe perfection isn’t required to live a happy life and succeed and prosper.
My suggestion is that raise the maturity and sophistication in our discourse (upwards, from “bashing” remarks) if anyone in the world were to decide again to take software testers seriously.
If we only fight each other in battles over testing tools, we all lose the war over software quality.
-mt
My 2 cents.
I agree with everyone’s point of view. Everybody has the right to voice their opinions. Hopefully the criticism towards QTP will fire up HP to make it better and, in turn, HP would contribute/share more to the open source community.
Ultimately, we want users to be happy because the software we create is solving their problems.
Regards,
Thanou Thirakul
I have read every word of the article and the 5 responses and I can see everybody’s point of view on this. I won’t say where my allegience lies (*cough* Selenium *cough*) but I do find myself agreeing with Mark’s sentiment about not fighting each other over tools. Constructive criticism is fine and should always be accepted, welcomed in fact by whomever it is aimed at; destructive criticism on the other hand is not cool.
So come on people, let’s all work together and make the world a better place (I draw the line at hugging or holding hands though :-). After all, isn’t “making things better” at the heart of every tester? (contructive, not destructive)
BTW: Big up to Michael who I had the privilege of listening to at a small gathering of testers in a pub in London on Tuesday evening. Michael, you are one of the most inspiration and entertaining speakers I have heard, and I’ve been telling anyone who will listen to me exactly that. I look forward to meeting anf hearing you again sometime.
I once did an open source tools talk at the tools expo in the UK which didn’t go down very well with the vendors of commercial tools.
No vendor spoke to me directly about it, and I did get feedback from the organiser about the amount of complaints they received from the vendors.
The organisers laughed it off and were always happy to see me at their event, and allowed me to to another session at a later expo.
So I doubt this minor event had any impact on your (Adam’s) standing at Star West.
Adam,
good to see you are making a lot of new friends !
I have to say man.. Mark is right, if you go to a conference ..free… and pretty much take over a “group”. When you don’t play with an “objective mind set” a persons intent becomes extremely obvious. Meaning. you might as well have been a sponsor. It sounds like you weren’t very objective in your responses and you were touting Selenium b/c of your financial ties to it. (I mean did you give your group full disclosure that you make the bain of your finances off Selenium gigs?).
In the world of automated testing,, there is a lot of crap software out there. QTP and Selenium both have strong points and both have weaknesses. (Yes Selenium has huge weaknesses). Quite frankly, I’m surprised you didn’t get thrown out.
Take it easy buddy.. careful with the matches when around bridges..
Mike V
Selenium User Group Owner -Linkedin
AND Certified QTP