XtremeDreamers: Bottom-Up Innovation Strategy

This blog is so close to my heart as this is the only post that am writing which is so relevant to the purpose of why this blog is created. As an ‘Xtreme Dreamer’ I tend to have this ‘’Innovations urge” and when my organization conducted a fabulous “Innovation Summit”, the volcano erupted. We are renewing our CMMI certification and L5 orgs should bring in process/business/technological innovations within their scope of market so as to be eligible for the renewal and this is why the org was on fire to do things differently. But as I always had this spark, which was turned into a huge firestorm, when everything around me had a tag that said “Innovations” in it, I intend to write this post. I know it'll be hard to gaze through the entire post but believe me the frustration has always had a witty end!

There was an interesting topic in my org’s community forum wherein the AVP has posted a thought about ‘Bottom Up’ Innovation strategy. The below crap of @#%$% followed is my reply to the thought process that was initiated.

I would like to throw some light on both “Top down” as well as “Bottom up” and the S curve that relates to three phases of an organization.

Whenever an organization enters into market it has got 3 phases in it growth:

• Formation
• Growth
• Renewal

During the formation phase we set strategies to grow wherein leaders bring in innovative plans to implement and we will have grand designs in place to reap success. Once the formula for success is known, we will be following the formula and continue to grow in all aspects till success becomes our habit. We will be in a routine using the formula and we will constrain ourselves into a box which we feel is safe. Thus we sustain doing repeated things and then we soon hit downfall as the market we face is a rapid changing one and doing the same thing is never enough for our customers where in it comes to a ‘reinvent or die’ situation. This is where we enter into the phase of renewal where in we change ourselves being back in phase 1 revisiting all our strategies and start to grow again.

In a “Top Down” approach, the contribution in all 3 phases as listed above will only be from the top/senior level managers who decide and people under them act. People in an organization will always need 4 vital things as they grow along – Direction, Coaching, Support and Delegation. “Top Down” approach is a management driven solution, which is so apt for people in organizations who need direction/coaching.

“Bottom up” innovation is the most matured level of strategy as this can only be applied when the people being demise of it should be so mature and ready enough to adopt and apply ideas thereby evolve to bring in growth to the organization that grows them. In this approach as all mentioned, we need to get ideas from the root and start nurturing the dream in the DNA of our associates – I totally agree. But are we matured enough to nurture dreams? The answer never depends on the ‘Associate Innovation Index’ rather the associates’ attitude towards these contributions. To frame a good “Bottom up” innovation strategy, I have came up with 3 vitamins that we need and as one of our associates mentioned in the debate during Innovation strategy meet – “We need Vitamins! Not Pain Killers!”

VITAMIN “A” doption: Adopting technologies and adopting already available tools was the main point that was stressed on ‘Managing Innovations’. We must start using all available resources before we invent. We should adopt existing ideas and consider them before making our own ideas into picture. The culture of inheriting what we have, should spread and then people should think on what we need. Somebody in this post mentioned of developing an effective forum like “FB” and am sorry to ask this – What more you require from this c2mash UI? Start exploring and you’ll find what you need before you start reinventing the wheel.

VITAMIN “C” ommunications: Effective/Improved communications makes the exploration lot easier. Communication models can be closely coupled or as loose as units confined to them. The idea is to effectively communicate within the group. Throw out problems to a larger audience instead of trying to solve it in your desktop. Share it with your unit or across the floor and soon you will hear solutions even WebBot would’ve never thought of.

VITAMIN “D” riving Passion: Every leader has a problem of motivating the members within, make them matured enough to think in a different way, come out with breakthrough ideas and invent something new. To all leaders who think “Oh Yeah! You hit the bull’s eye. This is where I stuck up” – the problem is not the team anymore it could be you. Every leader is the motivating factor of the team and every member will join you if you still have the verge of ideating, improvising and innovating. Leaders should start ideating and put it across, creating boundaries for them to think. Let us make the team to think inside the box first and make them eventually to think outside. This creates passion within the team and soon you’ll find the team buzzing all you with their innovative ideas. Rewards and recognition plays a vital role in this. Hear every idea; never leave any even though it sounds absurd. Recognize the best and reward them periodically which would create the “Wah” factor and this would help to sustain the momentum within.

Relating this with the ‘S’ curve as I discussed earlier, in bottom up approach there will be a group of bottom up innovators doing an excellent job in phase 1 (Formation) and the rate at which the organization enters into phase 2 (Growth) will be phenomenal. But remember what happens when we are reaching phase 3 (Renewal) – everything around just looks great! The sales figure would be high, org will be rapidly growing and its success stories all over. Then there’s a downfall that await us and if we don’t readopt ourselves then no wonder an iceberg could do a shipwreck! This is where “Top Down” helps. The top-level management should drive from front, closely followed by the army of innovating leaders, which would help us grow without hitting the roof, rather I would say grow beyond the roof. Thus a right mixture of both the approaches would constitute in our case.

Please refer: http://bottomupinnovation.blogspot.com/2009/07/bottom-up-innovation-and-s-curve.html to know more on bottom up approach and “S” curve. My thoughts were projected clearly agreeing to the author of the post mentioned.

After a post that is this big which am definitely sure none of them could go through and me still anticipating getting comments on my thought, I hereby post this to a larger audience so that "pirkaala sandhadhiyinar idha padichu pathu therinjikatume!” :D

Is Testing, a boredom?

I am writing this blog because I’ve been dragged by a post in the Google testing blog that has this same topic. I believe I am the right person to write this because I currently pass through the phase what the blog discusses on with a 2+ years of budding experience in the software testing field.

June 4, 2007 – The corporate world gave me a red carpet welcome and I was honored as an IT professional by my current employer. After a week of rigorous training on process and products the firm holds, the day that decided my destiny came. I was given the choice of red and blue pill as Neo had it. I was asked to choose my path in the whole SDLC cycle by my HR, though they clearly knew, the first two phases in it required a lot of domain and technical expertise relatively. I chose the red pill – testing and am here before you writing the experiences in these two years of my choice.

Software testing is always a fantasy for me as I loved spotting faults in others works. Yes, I just loved them like a gambler in Vegas trying to hit a jackpot by counting cards! But then I realized it was not about finding faults but finding facts. Testing is something I chose for my career. Thank god! I atleast had that option open for my life. I was put into product testing when I first entered the job where I had the greatest guru of all my time to teach me what and what not in testing and sometimes in real life too. I’ve been an enthusiastic tester then, trying to figure out what is the purpose behind my choice. Almost a year passed by, on just thinking about the choice I made. I literally felt “Testing is boring”, may be this is not my cup of tea. Hence I tried learning development and satisfied my entire quest to do more and do new. But still it is testing I chose and I am not a guy who want to move away from the choice that I made though I regret for what I’ve taken.

March 6, 2008 - This is the time where I had a call for Automation testing. Automation seemed to be an oasis for me in a dry desert of repeating the same process of preparing test plans to fight with developers on Sev1 issues. All these recurring events passed through the dawns and dusks of my life and now I feel like I am reincarnated to do something that is new and something that could persuade my point of holding my choice. I was like a kid who got his first bicycle on his 7^th birthday (I think I got mine then!). I took this bicycle out, learnt cycling after so many bruises and became a master, that I drove it leaving hands one day.

During this golden period of my era in Automation testing, I was ruled by a king whom I admired a lot. He is the one who molded out a mature mind in me. “I was like a crazy dog running behind cars” then. He made me to stabilize and focus in what I need. He is the one for whom I dedicate all my articles even this one and he is the one who wanted me to write.That’s the man I just want to become and I always wanted to be with. As they say “Every dog has its day!” and as the saying goes, the dark day came. He was plugged out of the organization and now am alone in this world of miseries.This is where I got my enlightenment of my path with all his words still with me. Passing all those happenings in my corporate life for two years I realized the fact that “Testing is not truly boring!” It is the simple psychology of human to consider something boredom if it becomes a routine in his life. I just made it up to change my routine and I understood it’s not that I have to change the whole job, but it’s that I need to change the routine am in. Like a rejuvenated knight, am back on track to do this job and I still love my choice.

After all it is my call and I believe I’ll live it up to the moment to see and write “Testing – My choice and My life!!!”

S-Ox Testing unveiled!

S-Ox

I suppose this is the buzz word around us recently and everyone believe that this is the best procedure in town to implement and of course increase the productivity and reduce the cost. This article will speak on what this buzz word is all about and how does it differ from others, what we normally gaze through and work on.

S-Ox Testing:

S-Ox is a famous auditing procedure named after Sarbanes Oxley, which talks about financial controls of an organization. The S-Ox auditing procedure covers various sections and obliges the organization to follow the control measures for managing the financial aspects of the organization.

So how is it related to IT?

Though the term relies on the act of financial reporting, IT being the backbone of an Organization’s finance at present, has to be addressed with this. Under S-Ox, the audit process extends into areas that have a pervasive effect on the ability of the company to perform accounting and financial reporting. Since most business processes are supported by IT directly or indirectly, your project team will make the decision whether or not to create documentation integrated with the business processes or separate documentation for IT. Either way, IT processes that support the applications will also need to be documented. Thus S-Ox plays a role and this article will explain the implementation of S-Ox into IT.

S-Ox relies on control objectives and continuously monitors the activities that are needed in meeting the same. Hence understanding S-Ox is so simple. The motto behind S-Ox testing is that are we performing all that are needed in meeting what is required. I hope this is the motto of all testing and only the implementation varies. So how S-Ox testing is implemented?

Implementing S-Ox Testing:

S-Ox testing as any other testing process can easily be implemented and will yield you a great outcome of what is being developed. Once the documentation as stated above is done, team will have to work on “Control objectives” of the complete project. The real purpose, the basic requirement well drilled down, the objective of a product in various dimensions is called a control objective.

Now after framing a control objective, control activities are identified. Control activities are so simple, the activities that are required to address the objective and possess the risk by which the objective won’t be met. I believe the complexity of this can be reduced with this example:

Say, the control objective is “no unauthorized access”. Now the ‘control activity’ has to address what if there is a breach? What time frame would it take to identify it? This could be the risk and counter measures are to be identified. Then we go for implementing the test plan thereby knowing what the risk is and how do we address it. This will eventually increase the scope as well as coverage of testing which obviously will improvise the quality of the product and that too in low cost.

This article is referred from unrecognizable web pages at many parts which helped me out actually to understand this, which was in a typical auditor language.

XtremeDreamers: Test Automation – When and when not!!!!

“Test Automation is not our silver bullet, but it can help us solving our problems.” 

- Couldn’t recall the reference

If it isn’t a silver bullet then what is it? 

Test Automation is the key to solve our major problems related timed delivery, but that cannot replace manual testing. Manual testing is unavoidable, but should be minimized, whose part is carried over by Test Automation. Thus test automation is just a monkey wrench of your garage and it can never replace the skilled mechanic who does all your jobs. Automating the test cases nowadays is misunderstood to assumptions like

• We will be able to automate all testing! 
• Test automation will increase productivity so much that we’ll be able to do all the testing with fewer people (eliminate staff). 
• Test automation is so easy that we won’t need to do any training. 
• Automation will reduce our whole testing workload. 
• We won’t need to do any test planning. 
• That time-intensive test design effort will no longer be necessary. 

When a manager has perceptions like these, he/she is strictly warned in not planning for automating the process.

So where does test automation fits in? As I said earlier, it is just a tool in the toolbox which will assist us, but not take over the whole job a manual tester can do and that doesn’t mean we can automate all testing!

Automation is the concept which is applicable for highly redundant/recursive tasks or scenarios in a routine which may tend to cause human error, tasks that are repetitive and in need to reduce the effort and costs involved and focus on more testing than regressing things. These should be the motive behind automating things and not ROI alone.

Automation means less effort on regressing things and more effort on testing…