Reflection - Visualization 

 ( Email as Service ) 

 Shaik Paswan 

 Challenge & Selection 

 I lead End to End Software testing for large projects for one the major banks .   Like any team across software 

 development and testing industry , my team is constantly challenged with handling larger testing work scope 

 with limited team size , late change requests and lots of overheads when project is not running as per plan ( late 

 software build delivery , infrastructure setup delays etc . ) 

 Having gone through this course , I decided to come up with some innovation discussion with team that would 

 help our customers , projects stakeholders and my team as well .   We wanted to innovate something apart from 

 our normal KPI s of automation functional testing in applications we are involved in . 

 We decided Visualization as tool to come up with innovation where the project is not going through the plan 

 ( overall status as Red and Amber ) . The objective was to do something better that will help customers , project 

 stakeholders and improve productivity within the team especially during the tough times . 

 Insight & Approach ( What Is ) 

 As a starting point we picked all the lessons learnt documentation where the team faced quite number of 

 challenges in completing the milestone within last one year . Rather than looking at specific incidents 

 pinpointing to certain flaws , the next objective was understanding common trends common unidentified pain 

 areas can be nailed down especially during the tight patch of critical delivery timelines . 

 A series of calls were scheduled with project stakeholders . The team divided into groups consisting of 2 - 3 

 members was given task to come up pain areas within themselves and project community . 

 After series on call , floating several sticky notes , few critical observations were made after series of calls    

 1 . The frequency of adhoc communication ( emails & Teleconferencing ) with project stakeholders 

 increased drastically as the project deviated further from the original plan . The majority of   communication was involving asking similar same set of status metrics – how much we have   completed , how many more to complete , key blockers and their action owners etc . 

 2 . Triggering the automaton regression testing and sharing the respective result involved someone 

 to be at desk . By regression testing , I mean testing existing functionality just to ensure developer   has not broken something else while fixing a specific bug . This activity is required to iterated   large number of times at different inconvenient time zones especially for projects where large   number of bugs or critical bugs are discovered . 

 3 . Many Business Analysts and Designers while reviewing specific testing details   needs to logon 

 to Defect ( code bug ) management tool manually or need to dig up lots of emails if they needs   to find specific result of bug , 

 Insight & Approach - Continued ( What If & What Wows ) 

 The team has as such good experience of skills on automation of testing functionalities on software   applications they were working on . While learning through the pain areas , the idea emerged to   automate the communication areas so that  

 1 . They are less involved in adhoc communication and focus more on pain areas    2 . The stakeholders gets the details instantly rather being dependent on the team   3 . The productivity of team will be less impacted when Senior Management is looking for adhoc 

 details . 

 The team then thought of building the framework where they could automate  

 1 . Providing details of progress ( right from High Level to Micro Level )    2 . Trigger automation testing by development team    3 . Provide adhoc specific details of testing . 

 After series to several brainstorming sessions , the approach was taken to use “ email ” as source of   automation . This idea was picked to ensure  

 1 . Automating this task should not involve any human interaction apart from triggering email    2 . Stakeholders of various kinds ( technical / non - technical )   could use this framework rather than 

 thinking of training on any automation tool 

 An example of what above means is , whenever required to run regression testing after bug fix , any   person within project just needs to do is send email to testing team and he / she   should get response   back with details . The received email on any of the testing team desktop should trigger automation   work in required work . The technical feasibility was studied and checked carefully across other teams   and we also got a framework to build what we were thinking of . 

 Prototype ( What Wows )    

 Rather than jumping directly making ‘ cool stuff ’ we decided to test our idea with Business Project   Manager , Designer and Development Lead .   We initially gave a walk through about the framework we   want to build and its advantages . 

 Later they were asked trigger email with certain keywords in the subject to one of my team member   who had a sample response already prepared and responded with 2 minutes delay .   The overall   approach really worked out well with feedback of what details they were seeking in automated way   and review system . 

 As a team we got a brilliant feedback to come up with this initiative and approach .   One of the few   compliments from Senior Management came up for the team as “ This team is one of the most pro - active   and highly committed team seeking continuous improvement “ . 

 My team has completed built of first frame work now which is covering regression testing and final   stage of internal testing before rolling out to project . 

 Conclusion 

 On several projects of various kinds , human pain areas may mostly not get documented . It is only the 

 systematic implementation of Design Thinking Methodology can improve business substantially or 

 even bring in disruptive innovation that remains key challenge for large organizations . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: Shaik Paswan
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: 
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: Reflection - Visualization 

 ( Email as Service ) 

 Shaik Paswan 

 Challenge & Selection 

 I lead End to End Software testing for large projects for one the major banks .   Like any team across software 

 development and testing industry , my team is constantly challenged with handling larger testing work scope 

 with limited team size , late change requests and lots of overheads when project is not running as per plan ( late 

 software build delivery , infrastructure setup delays etc . ) 

 Having gone through this course , I decided to come up with some innovation discussion with team that would 

 help our customers , projects stakeholders and my team as well .   We wanted to innovate something apart from 

 our normal KPI s of automation functional testing in applications we are involved in . 

 We decided Visualization as tool to come up with innovation where the project is not going through the plan 

 ( overall status as Red and Amber ) . The objective was to do something better that will help customers , project 

 stakeholders and improve productivity within the team especially during the tough times . 

 Insight & Approach ( What Is ) 

 As a starting point we picked all the lessons learnt documentation where the team faced quite number of 

 challenges in completing the milestone within last one year . Rather than looking at specific incidents 

 pinpointing to certain flaws , the next objective was understanding common trends common unidentified pain 

 areas can be nailed down especially during the tight patch of critical delivery timelines . 

 A series of calls were scheduled with project stakeholders . The team divided into groups consisting of 2 - 3 

 members was given task to come up pain areas within themselves and project community . 

 After series on call , floating several sticky notes , few critical observations were made after series of calls    

 1 . The frequency of adhoc communication ( emails & Teleconferencing ) with project stakeholders 

 increased drastically as the project deviated further from the original plan . The majority of   communication was involving asking similar same set of status metrics – how much we have   completed , how many more to complete , key blockers and their action owners etc . 

 2 . Triggering the automaton regression testing and sharing the respective result involved someone 

 to be at desk . By regression testing , I mean testing existing functionality just to ensure developer   has not broken something else while fixing a specific bug . This activity is required to iterated   large number of times at different inconvenient time zones especially for projects where large   number of bugs or critical bugs are discovered . 

 3 . Many Business Analysts and Designers while reviewing specific testing details   needs to logon 

 to Defect ( code bug ) management tool manually or need to dig up lots of emails if they needs   to find specific result of bug , 

 Insight & Approach - Continued ( What If & What Wows ) 

 The team has as such good experience of skills on automation of testing functionalities on software   applications they were working on . While learning through the pain areas , the idea emerged to   automate the communication areas so that  

 1 . They are less involved in adhoc communication and focus more on pain areas    2 . The stakeholders gets the details instantly rather being dependent on the team   3 . The productivity of team will be less impacted when Senior Management is looking for adhoc 

 details . 

 The team then thought of building the framework where they could automate  

 1 . Providing details of progress ( right from High Level to Micro Level )    2 . Trigger automation testing by development team    3 . Provide adhoc specific details of testing . 

 After series to several brainstorming sessions , the approach was taken to use “ email ” as source of   automation . This idea was picked to ensure  

 1 . Automating this task should not involve any human interaction apart from triggering email    2 . Stakeholders of various kinds ( technical / non - technical )   could use this framework rather than 

 thinking of training on any automation tool 

 An example of what above means is , whenever required to run regression testing after bug fix , any   person within project just needs to do is send email to testing team and he / she   should get response   back with details . The received email on any of the testing team desktop should trigger automation   work in required work . The technical feasibility was studied and checked carefully across other teams   and we also got a framework to build what we were thinking of . 

 Prototype ( What Wows )    

 Rather than jumping directly making ‘ cool stuff ’ we decided to test our idea with Business Project   Manager , Designer and Development Lead .   We initially gave a walk through about the framework we   want to build and its advantages . 

 Later they were asked trigger email with certain keywords in the subject to one of my team member   who had a sample response already prepared and responded with 2 minutes delay .   The overall   approach really worked out well with feedback of what details they were seeking in automated way   and review system . 

 As a team we got a brilliant feedback to come up with this initiative and approach .   One of the few   compliments from Senior Management came up for the team as “ This team is one of the most pro - active   and highly committed team seeking continuous improvement “ . 

 My team has completed built of first frame work now which is covering regression testing and final   stage of internal testing before rolling out to project . 

 Conclusion 

 On several projects of various kinds , human pain areas may mostly not get documented . It is only the 

 systematic implementation of Design Thinking Methodology can improve business substantially or 

 even bring in disruptive innovation that remains key challenge for large organizations .
### Output: 