Looking back to 2020

Yes, a lot of things happened, but since we're going to forget many of them, let's review a few worth remember.

European Testing Conference.

I was invited to Amsterdam to give a talk explaining my journey from Tester to Product Owner.

The conference went fine!
I had the chance to de-virtualize people I knew for a long time, to meet new people and to see old friends.

The talk went quite well, and somebody thanked me for waking up their tester soul.

Hey, that was a nice praise! and that was a great last European Testing Conference.
I want to express my gratitude and admiration for all the people involved in running those 5 events, and for letting me help a bit along the way, it's been a pleasure.

And yes, somehow we turned this conference trip into a family adventure, but this is how we like doing these kind of things.

MoT Tour.

So, my good friend Tomislav came up with a fun idea, how about delivering 3 talks in 3 days in 3 cities?
Of course, I accepted, and there we went. 

We delivered three talks in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia in 3 days. I got the chance to meet a lot of people and had a great time, even that I finished quite tired at the end, but as Bon Scott once said, it's a long way to the top.

Family time.

As the situation evolved, and quarantine was imposed, I moved to work from home, and the kids moved to study from home as well, so we got a lot of time together.
We have been playing games, watching movies, discussing life and finding ways to adapt to this ever changing situation, and it didn't go bad, at least we made it through the year, one day at the time.

My wife and I we have been together for 20 years now, and one thing we been doing more often this year is going for a ride.

As Keith Klain well said, the road is the journey, and there are plenty of roads out there waiting for us.

Tenerife.

Summer came and we didn't have any plan. With all the situation evolving, there was no way to make plans, let alone going for a road trip like we have been doing since 2013.
But then, things happened, and Iberia announced a discount for healthcare workers, and in a couple of weeks we went from not having a plan, to flying to Tenerife and spend a week in this wonderful island.

Good times never come alone, you need to plan for them, but sometimes plans come together in unexpected ways.

Voicemod.

I'm back to testing!
I never went too far away, but starting in July, I joined the Voicemod team as a Software Tester to help with the testing thing. 

You know, make questions, evaluate requirements, test working software, write bug reports and test session reports, have fun with the team, automate tests, learn about software, processes, infrastructure, tools, users, competitors, grow as a professional, be a professional skeptic, all things I love from this job.

I got lucky that we also hired Belén, and that together we have been building an interesting automated test suite that is helping the team to achieve the levels of quality we're searching for. She even wrote an article about it. 

Good things will come out of this team, just wait and see.

Flywire.

My former company made it to the news, but this time it was because they decided to do a layoff due to COVID and the change in the business context.

It was not the first time I saw this happening, but the perspective of being one of the laidoffs was new and interesting for sure. 

As it happens in any spaceship, it turned out that I didn't have my astronaut suite, I was part of the fuel.

But hey...

Pradeep Soundararajan wrote a book, The buddha in testing, this book helped me understand that it was just a business as usual.

He also wrote an article with a new job description, Product Owner's Testing Assistant, and featured me, along with Jon Bach as somebody that would fit in that job description.

I'm very grateful to Pradeep, for helping me understand many things, for many years, in different ways.

And I'm grateful as well to all the flymates, for these good years we had.

As Johnny Cash sings...

"Now I been out in the desert, just doin' my time, Searchin' through the dust, lookin' for a sign
If there's a light up ahead well brother I don't know, But I got this fever burnin' in my soul
So let's take the good times as they go, And I'll meet you further on up the road"

Ride to Cabo de Gata

In July 2020, we went for a three day ride, the longest bike trip we been to, up to this date.

Some context.
My wife is my riding partner. I been riding since I was 17, she got her license after we got married. I bought a Vespa PX200 back in 2002 when I worked as a courier and I needed a cheap bike that was easy to maintain.
At some point, back in 2012 we started renting a second bike and going out for a ride, and since we did enjoy this time together, we do go for a ride every now and then, so in January 2019 we bought a Honda Rebel 500 as a second bike.

The planning.
Given this is 2020, and we have COVID-19 cases all around us, planning a trip is a complex task.
The problem is around the uncertain evolution of the cases, the more to the future you want to plan, the greater uncertainty you have to deal with, and you don´t want to put your money in advance for a trip you won´t be doing.

So this time the plan was different. There was no plan, we only had options.

We managed to arrange a weekend where the kids would be taken care of, then we decided that we had three places where we would like to ride. We had two nights out, and we were riding out of Valencia, Spain where we live, so...
We could try driving north to mount Tourmalet, West to the Sierra de Cuenca mountains or South to Cabo de Gata.
We also decided not to book a second bike in advance, to not put money in stake, but to just drop by the bike dealer on last Thursday and give it a try if they had anything we could rent. If we didn´t find second bike, I would do the trip on the Vespa.

The bikes.
Then, when the Thursday arrived, I went to the local Yamaha dealer. As any decent bike dealer, they have a set of test bikes you can use for a quick test ride before purchasing one. Many dealers offer this service, but Yamaha Spain went a bit further, and they also offer the chance of renting one of the demo bikes for some days.
They had a spare Tracer 700, so after the brief paperwork, we had the bikes ready.

The ride.
On Friday morning we checked the news and the healthcare information, COVID-19 cases were worse to the North, so we decided to go South.

We managed to travel 1200km in three days. We went all the way down to Cabo de Gata on our first day, then went up north to Albacete by crossing the Cazorla natural park, and the last day we went back home by riding to Requena.

Some lessons.

The Tracer700 is a great bike for travelling, it has fairing, powerful engine, wide tires... and the Honda Rebel did exactly the same trip without any of those. It's not the bike what makes the biker, it's the attitude.

Riding without a GPS is fun, but you will get lost, and by the time you're back on your track you will be tired and late.

Have a bandana on your neck, and if it get's too hot, soak it in cold water when you stop for fuel.

Get a bluetooth intercom, so you can talk with your riding partner.

If you are going to an area with plenty of accommodation, you can book a room by the time you get there. But if the hotels are scarce, you better book in advance and plan accordingly.
Our first idea was to sleep in Riópar, but by the time we went there we could only find a room in Albacete. And this added a couple of riding ours to an already long day.

Some people don't ride out of their commuting route, some people ride a lot and afar. It doesn't matter what others do. Find what kind of riding makes you happy and enjoy the ride.

My last day at Flywire

Yesterday was my last day in Flywire.

How does it feel to be laid off after 8 years working in the same company, the same project, along with the same friends?

Ah, it feels strange, yes the company has given me good exit conditions, yes there was no drama in all the process, yes we are still friends.

But I liked my job there, I liked it more than my exit process.

Looking back, we did a great job, I joined the team when we were 25, and left when we were almost touching the sky.

I got the chance to travel, to develop my career as a Software Tester and as a Product Manager above any expectation I could have when I joined the company.

I had the chance to meet awesome people, inside the company, and getting to events, conferences and trainings.

All those experiences, from sunsets in the Caribbean to sunrises in a frozen Gulf of Finland, from the San Francisco bay, to the bar close to the office.

I got the chance to grow a team, to help other teams grow, to try developing all kind of new skills.

I always saw this job as an adventure, and all adventures come to an end, so that new adventures can start.

My days at Flywire are over, some of my stories will be around for a while, the friendships will last forever.

Looking back to 2019

I like writing a year review post, it comes handy when I want to get back in my memory, Maybe I read this post in the future, maybe my kids read this post in the future, I don't know, the future is hard to guess, but the past is worth remember.

We started the year with a new bike! This nice Honda Rebel 500 is our second bike at home, since we do keep the Vespa up and running. Having a second bike means that going out for a Sunday ride my wife and I is only a matter of finding a plan for the kids. At the end of the year we passed the 6K kilometers with it, all of those were joyful.

When this 2019 started, I was busy producing videos for internal use in Flywire, one of those videos flew me to our London Office, and since I was in the City I went for a beer with Antony Marcano. As a long time follower and reader of this man, I really enjoyed his company.

European Testing Conference came to Valencia! Maaret Pyhäjärvi and her crew organized an incredible two day conference in town, bringing speakers from far away. We helped with the logistics, and with our flywire office space to host the speakers dinner and an Exploratory Testing retreat.

Just because we felt like doing so, we had a Formal Friday, a fun event to suit up and have a good time at the office.

The family went to Tenerife, such a nice place on earth. This island is a whole continent by it's own, with mountains, jungles, deserts, forests and valleys. We went up to the Teide top and down to the seaside, and marked this place as somewhere to return in the future.

And we also went to Portugal, this time on a road trip. We like going on road trips to nice places, and the southern coast of Portugal is a nice place to go.

I changed role, I moved from being a video recording product analyst to a bank statements matching and partner integration focused product owner. And I got the chance to join a team with  some of the oldest developers around.
A team where the ego game is low, where people is open to listen to suggestions and crazy ideas, where we take our jobs very seriously, and the serious matters with humor. A team that has helped me grow and learn as a Product Owner and as a storytelling fellow.

Since I moved to the product team, I started going to product related conferences, where I soon noticed that product has it's own folklore, contradicting ways of doing product development ( solutionists vs problemologists ) and a nice and supporting community.

This year, we lost our first tester, (in 8 years, it had to happen someday...), and this big guy left the company to seek fortune in another ship. I wish him the best, we still go for brunch together from time to time, but boy, do I miss this fellow metalhead.

Talking about metal, we went to Madrid to see Amon Amarth perform live. Having a night our with my wife without the kids is a rare happening, but if it is going to be like this, I can't wait for the next time. Turning married life into an adventure!

We went to visit my parents in Bilbao a couple of times, and even that it is easy nowadays to stay close with calls and video-conferences, it is nice to have some time to drink a coffee, talk and hug each other as well.

This summer we went to Scandinavia, in a two week long road trip, keeping with our summer tradition of driving somewhere. We went from Copenhagen to Bergen and then to Stockholm. We saw valleys, fjords, viking towns and overwhelming nature all along the way.

Back from an unforgettable 5 week summer break, I went to Madrid to attend Peopleware conference, where Javier Garzás and his crew are running a nice agile development-centric one day conference.

We also drove to Lisbon to join Productized conference, a two day event with talks and workshops where I learned a lot of things while my wife and kids were exploring the city.

 

Closing the year, the Valencia Product team went to a team lunch where we shared success and failure stories.
This 2019 has been a great year for us. We have integrated with Banks and Partners from Australia, Indonesia, VietNam, China... we have explored new ideas, automated a lot of manual processes, fixed all kind of problems, we have built a solid foundation for what our company will be in the next years.

 

And of course, we did a year closing party, welcoming this new twenties in old twenties style.

For this 2020, I have work to do, a family to care about, places I want to visit and people I want to meet.

Good times.

From Tester to Product Owner

Now that I have done my first 6 months as a Product Owner, I would like to write about four tools I had on my tester belt that came handy when it was time to do the Product Owner thing.

Broken clutch cable == no problem!#Vespa life! #Px200 pic.twitter.com/liaZBaJYDf

— Jokin Aspiazu Jensen (@JokinAspiazu) April 18, 2018

1. Problem bash.
In software testing, doing a bug bash is about getting people around some software, defining the scope and the mission and letting people work around the feature trying to find as many bugs as possible.
As Product Owner, there has been a couple of times where we performed a problem bash, where we sat the whole team around a problem, and talked about how we were going to approach the solution. Once we got the understanding of what the problem was, and what a solution might look like, I started writing the user stories, but not before.

In both cases, you get the benefit of diverse points of view, you get the benefit of a shared process of learning, you build the team that is going to work on the solution, and both cases are a fun thing to do.

2. Cynefin for Product Owners. 
Cynefin is a framework for understanding complexity. Testers who know about this framework know what kind of testing is best depending on the situation the project is in, so, depending if you are learning, if you have experience, or if this is a crisis situation, different techniques should be applied to the development process and the testing.
When it comes to Product Owning, when it comes to writing stories for the team to work on, I realized that we could use the framework.

Simple, When there is no learning to do, when everybody knows and understands what needs to be done. Simple problems can live in the backlog for months waiting to get some time window to get solved, and if all you have are simple problems, you can work in slow one month sprints. Simple issues are rare.

Complicated, When only somebody in the team has the expertise to work in the problem, then writing the issue is not enough, now we need to make sure the availability of the one who understands the problem, and that this person can help others understand it as we fix it. Also complicated is when the learning has a impact in other teams, say Operations or Customer Support, then the learning that will happen with the solution needs to be planned and shared. When you have several complicated issues, you want to move to shorter sprints, say two or three weeks, so you can get the feedback from the involved teams about how all these changes are doing.

Complex, When nobody in the team, the company or anywhere else has solved this problem before, then we need some space to experiment in a safe way, to understand first and learn after. Once you get into this complex problem point, estimations about when solutions will get done are meaningless, since you can not predict the time you need for discovery. When we got into a complex scenario, I tried to run the backlog without a defined sprint, and even that the first weeks the team ran quite well, while everyone was aligned and working in the same problem, it happened that as the weeks passed, we kind of missed the pace you get when you work on sprints, and we moved back to one week sprints.

Chaotic, You run into chaotic situations when the team needs to solve situations without considering backlog, when you are impacting users in production or when you put the business into risk. When this happens, you need to understand that the flow of information is going to be different, that your stakeholders are now support or infrastructure teams, that you need to help for the stabilisation of the problem first, and then do the analysis and the learning.

Disorder, Good old Disorder is when you are not aware of the right situation. So you ask the team to handle a certain problem in a way that doesn't match with the situation the team is in.

3. Context Driven Product Owning.
When I started testing software, the Context Driven Testing approach got me hooked, I understood how to get out of testing with test cases, I understood how I should better use my time as a tester, and when I moved into an agile team, it helped me to fit into this new mindset. Also the community around this principles happened to be very supportive for me, at that moment.
So, when I moved into Product Owner role, I could still make good use of the principles that were defined. I'll give you my top three:

• People, working together, are the most important part of any project’s context. And when we say people, it is not limited to the development team, it has to be wider, and include other teams in the company, Operations, Support, Infrastructure, Security... and also teams who work for other companies trying to build integrations.

• Projects unfold over time in ways that are often not predictable.
  Sometimes you start a project that seems to be the most important thing to work on, and as the project evolves, and the learning happens, some of the assumptions we started with will fade away, developers might run into technical issues that were not anticipated, or anything in between, from marriage, birth and other vital issues, to legal, compliance or whatever other happenings. When you are going to run projects, you better get ready for this, and deal with it.

• The product is a solution. If the problem isn’t solved, the product doesn’t work.
  Sometimes we might develop the solution we want to do, with this team, in the time we want to spend working on it... and once we have built it, we find out that the problem doesn't really fix into our solution, or that now that we have built something new, we run into new issues.

4. Storytelling.
As a tester, you soon understand that part of your success is how well developers are able to understand your bug reports. Writing "This is not working" is not an option, and you need to elaborate your writings, after all, this is your contribution to the team, so you need to learn how to do this.
When you move to Product Owner, the team trusts you to help them understand the problems we want to address, so again, writing "Just do this" is not an option.
A model I find useful, is Campbells Hero Journey, so before I start writing my user stories, I do a sketch about the problem, the characters, the stages and the story line, and once I have this clear, I would start writing my user stories.

I started testing software because the boss had fired all the testers he had in the shop.
I started as Product Owner because C-level director told my manager to change my career, starting tomorrow.
There is a pattern here, I'm not worried about this and the learning curve is exciting and challenging.

I think just as Software Testers come from anywhere, we can move to many roles as well, we can learn new ways to test, we can manage people, or we can try new disciplines, as I am doing with Product Owning.

As long as there is a journey, there is discovery, learning, challenges and a nice project to work on, it's going to be fun.

5. Celebrate
Wait, there is another one... When you manage to complete a project, a milestone, a tricky integration, make some time, grab the team and celebrate. We are all together in this.

Salva, Manel, Andoni, Edgar, Jaume, me, Manel, Paco and Albert

Looking back to 2018

So, how was 2018...

Well, short story, it has been interesting.

Basically, because lots of things have changed.

Some change by nature... kids grow, I get older and the cycle of life won't stop for anyone.

Some left after a long plenty life, leaving a trail of knowledge in forms of books and experiences, Gerry Weinberg, thank you so much for all I still have left to learn from you.

Some left way too early, leaving a hole in our hearts, making us appreciate how short life is, and how important it is to share, to love, to live, while we are here, while we are together, Linnea, thank you so much for all the love we have witnessed, I never met you, but I will have a though for you as long as I am in this world.

Yeah... take a breath.

Some things also changed in my shop.

We got a new C level flymate, and as it happens, we changed workflows, mindsets, culture, habits, structures, people... now we estimate how long it takes to build a feature.
If you are worried about the Agile transformation process, don't worry any longer, I have learned that it is a two direction path, and you can either go up or down. It's not easy, but it can be done.
As any change, it has good and bad parts. The good part is that I have seen the team getting conscious   about our culture and values, and why they are important, and why we should take care of them, and boy, I am proud of this team.

In between reorgs, we have updated our user experience, our whole website, we have a new API, a new mobile app, improved performance and got several new payment processing tools, we collect documentation that users need to provide from certain countries, we have built integrations and automations with schools, banks and partners, we built a school in Guatemala.
And you know what... 2018 is good and gone, and we're still kicking and rocking.

Flymates

The company has grown and changed, and just like a street car, some people decided that this was as far as they wanted to go in this line and went out, some people just got in and are looking after enjoying the ride and some were invited to leave.

I changed role, now I am a Product Analyst, and this is kicking a lot of opportunity for learning.
Some of the learning is a structured learning, that you go and look after, and some other learnings come by serendipity, and that is alright.
Now I write, record, edit, communicate, follow, help, coach as I didn't have time to do before.
Now I follow in twitter interesting product people as John Cutler, Antony Marcano, Alan Cooper and I'm getting into communities such as MTP and Productized.

Good times, yeah!

As for events and conferences...
We went to TestBash Brighton, and got the chance to learn about Modern Testing and many other things.

And up to the sky we go, #testbash bound!!!
With @juvercape & @TDelalic, Three testers from #Valencia is not a bad score.#steady #keep_on_going pic.twitter.com/uxa5X97Rpf

— Jokin Aspiazu Jensen (@JokinAspiazu) March 14, 2018

I gave a talk at the local VLC Testing conference about Cynefin and how testers can take advantage of this model.

Pruebas en situaciones complejas #vlctesting18 follow ⁦@JokinAspiazu⁩ pic.twitter.com/dWP1WwJdFU

— emerrefe (@emerrefe) November 28, 2018

We also went to TestBash San Francisco, and got the chance to put faces to many twitter friends from the bay area, as well as listening to many interesting talks.

#flywire #flymates #TestBash San Francisco... pic.twitter.com/HI9AG71pHm

— Jokin Aspiazu Jensen (@JokinAspiazu) November 8, 2018

We also hosted a few TestNight events where we met and talked about performance and tools and testing and things. But lately we haven't scheduled anything since summer. I think we are getting way too busy with work.
Well, fix is on the way, we are hiring! So if you feel like joining our Valencia team, please check this link or get in contact with me.

The family also did some road trips, We went to Murcia to see #43Grupo Corsairs doing their stuff.

View this post on Instagram

Botijo en acción, #43_grupo #75aga #canadair #bombardier Apaga y vámonos.

A post shared by Jokin Aspiazu (@jokin_aj) on Jun 10, 2018 at 12:14pm PDT

We went to Oloron in Southern France, Baden-Baden in Southern Germany and Potes in Northern Spain, all of these went really well, giving us chances to unwind, spend quality time together and meditate about all things while you're driving.

And yeah, since daddy was going to San Francisco, we all took a flight and went around California.

Remember, Good times require some work and planning. Bad times come by themselves.

Looking forward for a great 2019.

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, Book review

When I was offered a Product Analyst role, one of the first things that I did was to write a list of books.


New reads that should improve my knowledge about what and how and why and when about Product Management / Analysis / Owning / Whatever.

For some reason, this book resonated and I decided to give it a try, so here is my short overview.

This book was written by Alan Cooper in 1998, the same year that Microsoft released Windows 98, Valve released Half-Life and Blizzard released their first Starcraft.

So, given it was released three years before the Agile Manifesto, and the whole evolution that we had in software, I found myself following my curiosity about what has changed and what remains the same in 2018 while reading it.

Cooper was right in certain things, that the next revolution in software would be the usability revolution, 9 years before the first iPhone ever made.
He explains how the development process, (and the developers) are guiding the design of the user interface, and the reasons for this to be wrong.

The book explains why you should work on the design of the user interface before the coding starts, and why you should define your user personas before thinking in what the solution will be.

Yes, the examples are getting outdated, people don't really buy scanners anymore to scan pictures, but the problems of bad user interaction design, of making our users feel stupid and miserable, of believing users will understand something just because you can understand it, all those problems remain nowadays.