A Decade in Software Testing - ISST

Doing it all wrong

What I was doing it wrong all these years is to not really build a colleague network outside India. I am fortunate to have a great network in India, I receive a lot of support and love for my work here. But I didn’t really reach out to global colleagues. It’s wonderful to interact with people from diverse cultures as it’ll help towards building broader perspectives about the world.

I had to just get out and collaborate with testers at a global level. I started having skype sessions with great leaders like Anne-Marie, Carsten and reached out to Maria Kedemo, Johanna Rothman, Steven Smith, Lisa Crispin for reviews. It’s been a great learning. All these people helped me recognize my blind spots, challenged me on my skills without insulting me and were willing to help again. People like Jean Ann Harrison and Teri Charles amaze me with their openness to appreciate good work. And all this without charging a penny. For the love of the profession. In One, we are truly One.

I have got a lot from the testing community since 2009. It was time to give back. I have given back by sharing what I know and also coaching/consulting testers who reach out to me [Not many know I have been consulting testers for last six months and helping some of them crack difficult puzzles at work.]  

When Iain contacted me to be a founding member of International Society for Software Testing (ISST), I found it as a great opportunity to learn more about the international testing community and also contribute in my own way. I asked very few questions, because I knew the kind of people who were going to be on the board.  So far, the discussions with the ISST group have been mind boggling. The kind of arguments testers in this group throw at each other, challenge it, the firmness and the Big Heady Audacious Goals that the group has are – Top Class!

Bhavya Siddappa, an android evangelist in Bangalore and an awesome women speaker I know recently chatted with me on how there are very few testing communities unlike Android groups, Mac forums and Python communities.  After speaking to Bhavya, one question kept troubling me. How do we make non-testers like her know more about testing communities? How do we let people from leadership teams in Development and Business know about testing? How do we make sure that more and more testers make it to CIO or CXO positions to ensure testing is taken seriously? Our profession has always got its due respects. It’s just that we don’t have enough big guys at the top (CIOs, CXOs, Directors) who can educate business stakeholders. This in turn made me think about reaching out to CXO’s/CIOs in some way. I did that in my own style by attending 2 non-testing conferences this year where I met several VPs and CIOs who are decision makers. I was happy that I spread the fragrance of testing to some of them. As testers, we need to be reaching out to C-level leaders and educate them about testing even before we move on to lower levels because most of the decisions happen at C-level. ISST has big plans here. Watch twitter space with handle @intsst for announcements.

About ISST

Website: http://commonsensetesting.org/mission/

Mission:

To promote an approach to software testing that emphasizes value and the role that skilled testers play in its delivery.

Objectives:

1.  Advocate for the adoption of the principles of context driven testing.

2. Encourage and support the development of testing skills, and of an international community of skilled testers.

3.  Oppose practices that are wasteful or that seek to dehumanize testing.

With this mission, ISST is set out on a journey to make a positive impact on Software Testing globally by bringing more decision makers to the testing forums and challenging them to make the profession better. Individually, many companies, testers, consultants have been fighting this war for a long time. What ISST will be doing is to bring a large chunk of this group together to fight common causes as a single team.

Why should you join ISST?

If you are a passionate tester and want to contribute and benefit from the global community, ISST membership may be a good option (purely personal view). If you want to spread awareness on testing, ISST could become one of the forums. ISST is very young right now and is setting things up. It will take a while until many people outside this group recognize the benefits. Let’s face it – any new group/entity will have its challenges setting up – it’s like building a startup.

You have to be at your work while the world is going to say a whole bunch of things about you. The good thing is you are too busy setting up that you hardly give an ear to it except for constructive criticism which is important.

Would you sign up for ISST?

My respect for Stephen Blower grew after reading his article around ISST here. He raises great points while he also has limited information on few other things which is why he has his doubts to pay the membership fees. Fair enough. I am sure a lot of testers out there have the same set of doubts, most of which will be answered in one form or the other by ISST – through its work, not just words. Some of the founding members themselves have been asking a lot of tough questions to the board. Discussions are going on. Processes are being set up. Things are being sorted. A cool set of webinars have started. Check out the first one in the series by Ben Kelly here. Some really cool things are gonna come. ISST is here to stay and rock the testing world.

Why did I pay?

I have invested a large part of my life and resources on two things – one is self-education, two is people. I believe that investing in these two are the biggest investments one can ever make in one’s lifetime. I bet Warren Buffet can’t deny that!

I paid to be part of a great team of founding members. I paid to learn from this team. I paid so I could be a significant part of a movement that gets to change the world for the better. I paid to give back to the community. I paid to take all the awesome stuff I create as an individual to a larger group who can critique, challenge and make it harder for me to excel. I paid because I needed to become a ‘BETTER ME’.

Do you want to be a part of this journey to change the world? I Dare You.Oh Yeah, I Dare You!

Wanna Join? Come on up here!

Regards,

Pari

A Decade in Software Testing - Community Gang Wars

Indian CDT

Indian Context Driven Community has been awesome in recent years to say the least. Long before Weekend Testing was born, there were testers who were context driven in their own small world. Pradeep Soundararajan is one of the pioneers in driving CDT in India. He is also the only biggest inspiration for all of us who founded Weekend Testing. We all know where Weekend Testing is today. People from different parts of the world continue to run it with passion despite some of us co-founders who moved on to greater objectives.

It was the passion for testing that brought testers in India together and not the money. We live and breathe testing – so much that I am writing this blog post while on a vacation in a tiny town in Tamil Nadu. Working with like-minded testers only makes us stronger in vision and values. Today, a large number of Indian testers are a strong team of individuals who raise the bar quite often and consistently. We have our fair share of challenges. We are doing great so far and will continue to do so.

Two Context Driven Communities from India & Community Gang Wars

At Let’s Test 2013, at least three people who I respect asked me about “Two Context Driven Communities” in India. I have lived in India and haven’t know about TWO communities all along. How dumb of me? I was playing SET game with a super-cool tester when he brought up this topic again. I asked him to elaborate which he did. James Bach had told something similar in this keynote the same day. It was shocking to see how the global testing community was perceiving Indian Testing Community.

The first question that came to my mind is this – “Wont’ people in same community argue, fight, disagree and in worst cases go separate ways?” How would it become two communities? It would still be one community, but with different goals.   Oh, different goals don’t make ONE community! Really?

I have one question to the global testing community – “Are you on good terms with every tester in your country or continent or even testing companies in your region?” I have witnessed a lot of back biting happen at conferences about some people who have done real cool work, but have an evil side to their personality. What’s the big deal? Each one has an evil side. The good ones are good only because they have been smart enough to hide their evil side. As simple as that. My point is every region, community, country, continent has a good mix of great testers and not so great testers. Even amongst great testers, some people don’t see eye to eye. It’s a personal struggle between thosepeople. Why make it a national sensation? Why break the community? Why see it as two different communities?

The gigantine task will be to figure out how to proceed from there and what actions to take. Sometimes, some struggles take years to settle down. However, if the involved parties have the same vision for the Community, someday they are going to share the same podium. On that day, the world will know who was caring for the community and who wasn’t. On that day, the world will know who stuck to the vision and who gave up. Until then, we must wait. This wait, I am sure is worth it. Until then, let them be. If world was such an ideal place, World Wars would have never happened.

The Silent Rainmakers

While there are people talking about broken testing communities, while there are people like me who write blog posts on the topic, there are some great testers who are quietly stuck to their vision, testing their heart out without worrying about what the world thinks about them or their work. These people constantly push themselves to excel without worrying about how many times they will be ‘retweeted’ or ‘facebooked’ or get written about in blog posts/articles.

The good thing about these people is that they are trying to bring in a great change in the system there are in, early on – even before they head to change a bigger world. Someday, a hero or a shero will emerge under the tutorship of these rainmakers who will go on to change the world on a massive scale. Even then, these rainmakers will continue to bring in a change quietly – just like the HULK was living doing his own thing. Every time, I get talked about or get a mention in the web world, I think of all those people who haven’t got any credits despite knowing that many don’t work for credits. Tell me one thing, how many of you have really heard about Ross Collard? Oh, you are running to Google. That says it all!

Work for yourself, not for credits. Credits will follow if you do great work anyway! As for the community – there are still lot of great people in this world who can carry the community torch higher! In short, there is hope and hope is the most beautiful thing in this world.

Regards,

Pari

A Decade in Software Testing - My Tryst with Speaking Engagements

I often wondered why musicians and artists travel all over the world to showcase their work. While money appears to lure them, it’s hard to believe that these people live between suitcases only for money. There is something else that drives them beyond money. What is it?

Immortality

Many humans want to remain immortal through their work. They want to leave their footprints before they move on from this world to another. They want to feel useful and needed to mankind (or womankind J). They want to be known for their work long after they are gone.

Passionate Humans believe in something bigger than their own self

Conferring

In 2009, I went to a testing conference in Bangalore. The conference was driven by tools, technologies and processes. No one really seemed to worry about skills and values. After attending few sessions, I thought I could do better as a speaker. I brimmed with over-confidence.

In subsequent years, I submitted abstracts to many conferences where the jury asked me to take part in regional rounds, requested me to send detailed slide decks and even answer questions on email. My abstracts got rejected several times. Conference chairs hardly saw meat in my sessions during regional rounds. My storytelling ability was too weak.

At times, I was apprehensive of the jury partly because they valued topics like ‘Global Trends in Testing’ or ‘Future Trends in Testing’ more than ‘Emerging Need for Test Leadership’ or ‘Test Strategy for Web Apps’. I also thought that conferences were driven by “what the audience paid for” rather than what could help create a better world. There is a proverb in Hindi, ‘Nach Na Jaane, Aangan Tedi’ – meaning there used to be a dancer who blamed that the floor is not good and hence his dancing was bad. I was in that dancer’s state of mind, perhaps.

In 2013, I told myself that I will build on my speaking skill. It was one of the important goals for this year. I actively applied to conferences as a speaker. I started to practice writing abstracts and/or proposals seriously. I spent time learning how to make impressive slide decks (long way to go). I even sent abstracts to many conferences outside India. My testing heroes/sheroes Pradeep Soundararajan, Lisa Crispin, Carsten Fielberg and Maria Kedemo helped a great deal this year by reviewing my abstracts and provided detailed inputs. I appreciate their patience and support. It’s heartwarming to have colleagues who are so helpful. I got rejected again and again and again and again this year. As I write this post, an email arrived rejecting two more proposalsL. It’s painful to get rejected even after putting so much effort. And then, I was reminded of this proverb:

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you’re a good person is like expecting a bull not to attack you because you’re a vegetarian ~ Dennis Whole

Invited Speaker

I recently presented at Chennai on ‘Testing Mobile Apps using Heuristic Test Model COP FLUNG GUN’. It made me very happy. This was my First speaking invitation ever (without the hassles of abstract, regional rounds or selection process). I believe this invite came only because the program chair of this conference had seen me present during one of the regional rounds for a testing conference in Bangalore. Of course, my paper for Bangalore conference was rejected for political reasons [Quoting Jerry Weinberg, “All decisions are emotional and political”]. However, the same team invited me to present at their Chennai conference. I rehearsed well. My talk went really well. I pulled my phone out and made my talk highly interactive. Heads and Directors of many testing companies were glued to their seats. I received great feedback for my talk afterwards.

Catch-22

This  left me wondering. How is it that my abstracts get rejected, but some people think I am worthy to be invited to talk? How is it that people like my talk?  I have spoken at Aditi, BlrTmm, Bug DeBug and WCNGT Chennai and the feedback I received was positive.

Here is what I think. Many program chairs must have heard you speak somewhere or received great feedback about your talk or interacted with you (and believe you have great ideas) in order to offer speaking engagements. People like me need speaking engagements to be able to speak so I can become a better speaker with each attempt. It’s a Catch 22 situation.

The Spirit of Fighting Back

I believe I have great stories to tell. I have my fair share of experiences which I have learned and can help others. I see a large number of testers in Academy at Moolya benefit from what I coach on while I learn along with them. I am confident I can do better in speaking. I continue to practice. I observe other good speakers speak. I listen to YouTube videos. Hey, I plan to attend a storytelling workshop too!

Pradeep recently sent me a link to UXIndia which I registered. He nudged me to apply and I did, without any help from anyone – all on my own. I got selected for a 10 minute Rapid Fire Talk. I had a blast presenting at UX India 2013. This experience has boosted my confidence by many levels. Thanks to Pradeep for the nudge!

Presenting at UX India 2013 to an audience of UI/UX designers

Until two months ago, I was very desperate to speak at conferences. Very very desperate! I wanted to do anything possible to make it to conferences. I guess I was focusing my energies in the wrong place. I am no longer desperate. I decided I won’t worry about getting rejected anymore. It’s a waste of my time. I will continue to try, but won’t feel bad or sad as I used to. Instead, I’ll wear each rejection as a badge of honor for the effort I am putting in. At least, I am trying. It keeps me calm and grounded. There are many things that are under our control and lot many more that are not under our control.

The best way to deal with it is to get better at what is under our control and let of what is not under our control.

By the way, it’s not been all that bad. Here are my speaking engagements so far. Two talks this year is decent progress.

1. Test Estimation – BLRTMM, Bangalore, April 2010 [Invited]
2. Myths of Test Estimation – Aditi Technologies, Bangalore, November 2010
3. Heuristics of Usability – BugDebug, Chennai, March 2012
4. Testing Mobile Apps, WCNGT, Chennai, August 2013 [Invited]
5. Heuristics for User Experience (Rapid Fire Talk) – A Testers Perspective – UXIndia, Bangalore, October 2013 
6. Lunch Talk – A Retail Company, Bangalore, 2014 [Invited]
7. Ecommerce Testing – A services company, Bangalore, 2014 [Invited]
8. Heuristics for User Experience, India Testing Week 2013, Bangalore, December 2013 
9. Testing, Learning and Inspiration - SAP Labs, Bangalore, December 2013 [Invited]

Someday, you’ll hear me speak at TED!

I bet!

Regards,

Parimala Hariprasad

Addendum on 16th Jan 2014 
Hey! I am already invited for 4 conferences this year, 3 in India and 1 in US. The seeds I sowed last year seem to be sprouting already ;).

A Decade in Software Testing – Writing, A Mental Therapy

I gave life to this blog on 6^th Feb 2009 and it has been giving life to me ever since. Although the blog was created on 6th Feb 2009, I didn’t know what to write for a long time. I then read a blog post by Pradeep Soundararajan on five tips for bloggers. I had just finished reading the blog post when an email arrived from him. It read something like, ‘I saw your blog with nothing posted on it. I suggest you to write something and get going’. I was happy to know at least one person would be interested to read my blog! I wrote my first blog post on 6^th March 2009. First comment on my blog was from Pradeep :) I credit most of my accomplishments to this blog – Curious Tester. 

Writing first few blog posts was a roller coaster ride. While I was decent in verbal and written communication, it was hard to put all my thoughts into writing. I improved over time. I hardly read books those days, which meant my vocabulary wasn’t great. I would wait excitedly for weekends so I could blog about something I learned during that week.

Writing on Curious Tester blog has always been fun. It’s like that 2 yo who shows his/her accomplishments to the grandparents. Grandparents, because they are more appreciative most of the time compared to parents. My writing capacity went down in 2011 and 2012. Every 3 months, I would show up with a blog post and disappear after that. I had become a guest writer for my own blog. I felt bad, but I was busy with my children and my work.

Terrible Mistakes

I have made some terrible mistakes. I was invited to write for a popular crowdsourcing blog, but they backed out after reading my blog post. I didn't hear from them after that. I also released my own e-book on 'Web Accessibility'. I consider this a failure because I made a checklist and called it an e-book. At that time, I enjoyed doing it and was happy about it. Now, I know it was low quality work. Even now, I fail often. The good thing is I recover quickly most of the times. Rephrasing Don Shula's 24 hour rule 

"Celebrate Success or Sulk in Failure for 24 hours after which you must get back to work." 

Not everyone likes what I write
Many professional/prolific writers find my Indian – English irritating. The good news is many friends who know me have told me that my writing is bad or not engaging directly to me instead of cursing my work in my back.

I was hurt to hear that my writing is bad especially when it came from people who I deeply respect and love. Two years fast forward, I have made great progress. You cannot please everyone with every piece of writing you create. Seth Godin talks about three classes of readers and how your writing will strike a chord with very few readers of each of these classes. In worst cases, it will hardly inspire someone. As a writer, do you care?

I care! I do care that people like my writing when I have done something new or cool and I think it will benefit a larger audience. I wouldn’t care if it's something I wrote for myself, like these ‘A Decade in Software Testing’ series of blog posts. Irrespective of whether people like or not, there is definitely one person who is deeply inspired at the end of every writing effort – and that’s ME. 

In recent past, I took to writing very seriously and started to reach out to many global friends like Jari Laakso, Johanna Rothman, Steven Smith for reviewing articles. Each time, I go to a  different person for reviews. I got one reviewed by my 6 yo recently. She found a few areas confusing and I knew what to fix in that article at the end of that discussion. Despite these efforts, there will be attempts which end up in duds. Well, Welcome to the Journey called Life!

"Nothing works all the time"

At the end of the day, I remember what Gerald M. Weinberg said, “I knew that nothing I would ever write would please all of the people all of the time, or even some of the time. All that’s important is that some of the people respond some of the time sufficiently often.”

Writing is Hard Work

In 2011, I decided that I will work hard towards my writing. Two years later, I can say, I am good enough (although there is lots to learn). I decided to write more often and write better. I started writing for many testing, leadership, entrepreneurship magazines, wrote a couple guest blogs for friends, started helping people to blog, helped them with reviews and reviewed a lot of stuff for other writers too. Around the same time, I started to read scores of books. My current record is 3 books per month, reading all 3 in parallel most of the time. I get a lot of writing ideas while reading books, while playing with my children and in the restroom too ;). Reading books has become an integral part of my writing life.

Leadership is (expletive-deleted) hard. A leader needs to be ahead of his people, yet walk alongside them and light the path. A leader needs to take a lot of pain, which may never be recognized at all. I like that pain, it makes me a better human being. This is why I find writing about leadership highly challenging and stimulating. It's easy to write if you have lived it well. I believe I am doing a decent job. 

I write a lot about Influential Leadership and Entrepreneurial Leadership these days. I am learning a lot about Influence and Leadership and hence writing on similar lines. 

"Ability to Influence People Positively is one of the toughest tasks in human history and I intend to be good at that"

Curator at TechWell
Oh, I am one of the official curators at TechWell! Curated writing is a new challenge I have accepted for myself. I no longer want to do what I am comfortable with. I want to do whatever appears impossible and see what is in store for me. I want to throw myself off the comfort zone again and again and again. 

Writing is Mental Therapy
Pradeep told me about one lady who walked up to him at CAST 2013 and told him how she had decided to quit her 15 years testing career, but decided to stay after reading my blog [If you are this lady and you think I have misquoted you, please get in touch with me :P]. 

"It’s fun to quietly inspire someone from some corner of the world"

Writing is a Mental Therapy. It soothes me down. It connects me with my soul. It trains me to listen to my Inner Voice better. Writing reminds me that I don’t belong here. Writing tells me that I am here to do my bit for the world and move on, just like Jonathan Livingston Seagull!

My Latest Collection of Articles

Testing Planet

Influential Leadership :: Bitter Truths and Hard Lessons – Part 1

Influential Leadership :: Influencing Strategies – Part 2

TechWell

How to Test User Experience

Carma Connect

Essential Qualities for an Entrepreneur

Curious Tester Blog

Writer’s Block and it’s Mysterious Journey

A Decade in Software Testing – In Search of The Master

By the way, Scott Berkun is my new writing hero!

Happy Reading!

Regards,

Parimala Hariprasad

A Decade in Software Testing - In Search of The Master

Hello Readers,

On 14th August 2013, I completed *ten* cool years in testing. While I am not a great fan of numbers, ten years is significant because of my journey in this time. It's been special, hard, painful and yet highly satisfying. This journey made me tougher in terms of handling situations and gentler while dealing with people. I wish to jot down my learning journey in these ten years as a series of blog posts. These blog posts are a gift to myself because I started this wonderful journey here - on Curious Tester blog! I am writing it down so I can look back when I want to, when I need to. If I lose hope someday, I will come back to regain it here. 

Failure favors the Unprepared

After failing in 30+ interviews, I was finally offered a job at Oracle.  I was quite a dumb kid who didn't know much of how the outside world works. I was least prepared for anything other than programming languages and technical concepts. I got beaten down in interviews for obvious reasons. It was the toughest phase of my life when I look back. I am glad I handled it (not to mention the cry baby I was).

The folks who interviewed me were impressed with how I executed my final year project (not the what part). At Oracle, I learned several enterprise products in Oracle CRM suite. I raised Severity 1 bugs on almost every product that integrated with the module that I tested, hence sending pager messages to them on weekends. Managers of those teams hated me. I didn't know that until a senior colleague told me this couple years later (how stupid of me?). 

Those days, if I ran out of ideas to test, I learned other CRM products like SAP, PeopleSoft and SalesForce offerings. These were obviously not available for free. I would download trial versions, make sense of screenshots on Google Images and come up with my own findings. I reported these as bugs in the module/product I tested (Competitiveness Analysis in 2003, Holy Cow!). What I lacked during my Oracle days was Confidence and my ability to present my work in a way that it would get noticed. I never recognized this until years later.

Post my wedding, I joined McAfee. During third round of interview, one of the Senior Test Managers (who became my reporting manager thereafter) asked me, “How good are you at setting up hardware?” I replied in a loud tone, “Very Poor, but I can learn quickly if that is important to do my job better.” I knew I was fired even before I was hired. I was wrong. I got hired. Life was very hard at McAfee. I had to learn a lot about hardware, set up stress/soak test beds and install an enterprise product on cluster machines which took 2-3 days. I was particularly scared of going into the Stress Test lab where not a single soul would be present in nearest vicinity between 3 PM and 9 PM. Add the drama of noises coming in from large cluster systems and it would sound like a Ghost Lab. I did many things that I never thought I would.

When Man proposes, God disposes

Due to my husband’s relocation plan, I quit McAfee. Unexpectedly, he changed his plan. I thought I could try a new company so I could learn new things. This is how I landed at SupportSoft, a startup with over 70 people at the time. As I start to write about SupportSoft, my heart dances with joy. It used to be a techie’s heaven. Employees were very talented and passionate. For me, most employees at SupportSoft demonstrated the highest level of professionalism I have ever witnessed in my life. If you are a startup and you want to create great stuff, you must be like SupportSoft. In here, I just put what I learned at Oracle and McAfee to use – effortlessly. I honed my leadership skill. I learned a lot more about Professionalism, Passion, Love and Mutual Respect at workplaces. Until then, I thought organizations had highly political environments where people always stab you in the back and where you should just do your work and get away without sharing what you know with your colleagues. At SupportSoft, it was one family working to build a great company. There were a few bad weeds, but the leadership team was so powerful, kind and lovable that the bad weeds never grew. They had to leave some day and that someday wasn’t far off.

I had started to read Pradeep Soundararajan’s blog while I was in McAfee. I started meeting testers outside SupportSoft, discussed testing, discovered Exploratory Testing, SBTM and Context Driven Testing. I must say I was naïve when I first encountered these new buzzwords. I used them just like that – buzzing around without really understanding what they meant. These started making sense only when I started to apply my knowledge on real projects.

Good things don’t last forever

ESG division of SupportSoft (where I worked) was sold off to Consona who took over our team. The transition was hard, although not new. I had been part of 3 acquisitions before - at Oracle and McAfee. The acquisitions at Oracle had a great impact on me in terms of understanding what job security meant and how it leaves people almost homeless. I had strong views around firing or laying off people. Some of those views have changed now. What I loved at Oracle was the way they handled Lay-Offs. At SupportSoft asa well, transition was handled with utmost care. The leadership team made sure it was that way. Great level of professionalism.

When Consona took over, I decided to stay. I wanted to be a part of that journey and see where it could take me. New leadership team took over, there were changes every day, resignations were dropping on desks every week. It was painful to see some of my great colleagues leave. My manager left from whom I learned a lot about project management. I stayed. I was resilient. It paid off in the end. 

Life is all about choices!

What I learned post Consona acquisition was amazing. I was constantly observing how the organizational goals were changing. I finally decided to invest on my learning all over again. I decided to pay from my own pocket to attend Pradeep Soundararajan’s workshop. The fee was 50% of my monthly pay at that time. I told my family to bear the cut for that month and told them how important it was for my career. That is one of the biggest decisions I made in life that has paid off so much. If I had looked at money and opted out of Pradeep's class, life would have been different. My director Sai sponsored a couple more workshops by Pradeep Soundararajan which I attended during his time. He wanted to bond with his new team while I wanted to learn new stuff. It was mutually beneficial.

In the meantime, there was a personal turmoil and my support system took a hit. My second child was 3 months old. I had to take a little break so my parents could take care of other important things in life. The long commute to office was eating into my health too. It was time to say goodbye to Consona. I loved what I did at SupportSoft and Consona. I groomed myself pretty well.

Moolya happened around the same time my second child was born. It was a little baby taking tiny steps in this big world. When my child was 6 months old, I joined Moolya as the 4^th employee. Today we are 67. The journey so far feels awesome. At Moolya, I was knocked out of my comfort zone every single minute. At the end of one year, I had accomplished a lot and yet had not accomplished many other things. My growth in Moolya has been phenomenal in terms of what I learned and how I made use of every opportunity that rocked my life. I work with some of the best colleagues in the testing industry at Moolya. I interact with some of the greatest minds in testing and outside testing using technologies like Twitter, Skype, Facebook. I have started to attend entrepreneurial events and meet passionate people every day. I now have so much do to in life and so little time. Well, Einstein had the same time. I better work harder and smarter!

My Inspiration – People who helped me be Parimala Hariprasad

Devang Mehta – Karnataka’s IT minister who took IT to a new level during my college days

Dilip Ranjekar – CEO of Azim Premji Foundation who wrote great stuff in Times of India when I was a teenager

Ishwar Hangargi – my first mentor in IT

Harini Swaminathan and Ramanjit Singh at Oracle

Amit Kumar Yadava, Dipankar Roy, Smriti Metikurke, Lakshmi Athreya, Vadiraj Thayur, ShyamSunder Jaju, Navarathna Narsimha Murthy, Rahul Verma, Rahul Mirakhur at McAfee

Yatish Nagavalli, Sanjeev Kumar, Sai Balakrishnan, Shan Kadavil, Arvi Krishnamurthy, Ravi BV, Seema Bharadwaj, Rituja Indapure, Meera Huddar at SupportSoft/Consona

Pradeep Soundararajan, Dhanasekar Subramaniam, Sunil Kumar, Manoj Nair, Sharath Byregowda and Warriors (my team) at Moolya. Moolyans also inspire me. I work with most of them in different capacities and am inspired at different levels. Muthu Kumar from one of our client locations inspired me big time. 

James Bach has become very special especially after I got an opportunity to ghost-follow him (for five days) everywhere during his visit to Moolya. Thanks to Pradeep for making this happen

YOU – All of YOU whose names I haven’t mentioned, but who touched my life in some way or the other have inspired me. 

Special thanks to all those wonderful critics who said I couldn’t do it, who hoped I must fail, who prayed that I should wither out and who told me I can never be happy and successful at the same time. Special thanks to you folks because without you, I wouldn’t have challenged myself. Thank you so much for being a part of my journey!

I often wonder what is it that I was actually doing in these ten years. In these ten years, I have been in search of my Master. Have I found my Master?

Watch this space!

Regards,
Parimala Hariprasad

Writer's Block and its Mysterious Journey

*Naomi Karten writes that every writer hits writer’s block and one needs to unblock himself. Wikipedia describes writer's block “as a condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work.” Anything a writer writes is new work indeed which contradicts the definition itself.

Seth Godin thinks that writing isn’t the hard part, it’s the commitment. He also talks about how Writer’s block never existed before the 1940s and it became a hit with writers only when Writing became a respectable and lucrative profession. Seth asks amusingly, “No one ever gets talker's block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down. Why then, is writer's block endemic?”

Writer’s block is an excuse to get away from writing. It’s at best, the fear of writing anything crappy. It’s not the inability to write that is the problem, it’s the hard work, motivation and commitment to write that writers lack. Additionally, writers avoid exploring different methods of improving their writing from time to time.

Writing is not as easy as it appears to be. It’s not as if, a writer sits in a beautiful apartment with a beach side view staring at palm trees and ideas start striking like stars. Writing is about serious thinking. It’s about choosing from ideas, facts, stories, plots, characters accumulated over time. Gerald M Weinberg calls these nuggets as Fieldstones.  This means that any writer would have a ‘Work in Progress Inventory’  that may include several books in different stages of completion, article drafts, collection of quotes, bits and pieces of writing that amused the writer on several occasions and so forth. He may carry a pen and paper (tools) to collect his fieldstones all the time. Yeah, all the time! Note that the writer may not use all of these right away. He hopes to use them someday.

Aspiring writers all over the world are desperate to get an answer to the most dangerous question, “How do you overcome writer’s block”. Some of these writers expect a magical answer, “Oh! Writer’s block indeed exists and you need to do A, B and C to conquer it.” Getting stuck cannot be excused as Writer’s block. There’s one best way one can beat your mind from getting stuck – Start Writing!

Addendum

It's ironical to write a blog post on Writer's Block while I have not written on this blog for 4 months now. Interestingly, I have been writing more than before, but at different places like on Moolya Blog, Testing magazines and TechWell too. Take a look if it interests you. 

Moolya Blog

Moolya Startup Test Lab

My Journey to Let's Test 2013 in Sweden

Testing Circus

Challenges In A Warzone Project

Medical Emergencies and Testing Skills

TechWell 

How and When To Give Feedback

And many more articles in progress - I am collecting fieldstones.

*I have been reading Naomi Karten's article since 3 years and I love what she writes. I particularly like her articles on Human Behavior and its implications in organizational setups. Interestingly, I disagreed with her on this particular piece.

Happy Writing and Happy Reading!