Uncover Of Cover

The below mission and image from Test Mile is different and a trigger to unspoken thoughts. I wish to share my interpretation about this image.

Mission: Analyze the attached image which is a part of advertisement + awareness campaign by Test Mile.  What does the slogan - "Together We Cover. Divided We UnCover" mean to you as a tester? There are various visual clues in the picture as well. We would love to hear how you relate the story of this image.

Below are obvious from normal visual observations

• TestMile Test What You Value
• Issued in public interest
• "Together", "We Cover", "Together. We Cover"
• "Divided", "We UnCover", "Divided. We UnCover"
• Illusion of green surface on unzipping the zip
• Illusion of diverting roads showing two lanes. Not sure how many lanes each road has. Lane marking looks quite similar in two roads in size, color, and appearance. The side of road is marked by two parallel lines which looks as yellow-in-color. And it diminishes with size and color in left side road as it proceeds further. Right road does not show this indication.
• Not sure how many roads brought these two diverting roads.  The left road shows 'Development' and right road shows 'Testing'.
• Blue sky kind of  visuals with four clouds. I can see just four clouds in the snap; it can have more than four as well.  The clouds are placed in different places.  Looks like one cloud resemble just one other cloud in appearance and size.  Similarly  the other two looks alike in appearance.  Visibility of one cloud is not so prominent but it looks as though it is touching green area with high hue brightness. And it appears to be clear early morning sky.  There is a smoke or skew line structure between clouds; may be this is too cloud.  These skew line cloud connect all other clouds though it is thin and slightly invisible to look at.
• Along the side of roads, looks like human kind of objects standing opposite to humans on other road.  Just few are trying to interact or standing close by at point where diversion of road starts.  As the diversions gets broader, people are placed far way from who are on other side.
• "Divided. We UnCover" is shown on green land.  The text is in color that looks as white.
• "Together. We Cover" is shown in the air. The text is in color that looks as black.
• Green land at right hand side has a heap kind of surface. Left side road does not have this structure surface.
• Why the word is written as "UnCover" instead of "uncover" ?

What is being said to uncover? What is being said to cover?  'Uncover' is shown in the green land and 'cover' is shown to be in sky. 

I relate this to development of testing and clouds to five schools of software testing. The five schools of software testing what I have come across -- Analytical, Standard, Quality, Context and Agile.

The four clouds are Analytical, Standard, Quality and Context Driven school of testing.  The cloud that is passing through all these four clouds is Agile. Each of these school has its principles and students who does not listen or not show the ear for other schools of testing.  This is leading to disrespect among the testers and showcasing 'Testing and Software Testing' in software industry is not big deal. Between this happening, a buzz word 'Agile' is floating around and making Agile Development (agile programming and agile testing) is the solution which is smartest to today's business.

While we testers (who adds school name with them) keep arguing and disrespecting each other for their respective approach and testing practices, how do we uncover the existing myths, problems and misunderstanding in green land of testing?  While we are unable to uncover in little green land what we have got in software industry, how we do cover the testing essence which is as wide as sky?

We all testers divided, we fail to uncover the problems and hurdles that are blocking our Software Testing Profession to be the respected one.  While we are together, we cover though it as wide and height as sky is.

Testers, divided we are, we will not uncover anything; together we stand and work, we cover  unimaginable so the Software Testing excels.  Isn't this beautiful picture from Test Mile? Before we testers going and making programming better, we make our software testing to have its stand along with programming.

Is your shipping, “Hippocratic” of HIPAA? Mind Maps!

See if you fall in any of these sets:

• You have (or want to have) medical insurance(s) to you and for near-dear ones.
• Your medical health information is recorded. You (don't) know where and how.
• You reimburse the medical bills.
• You contact physician and pharmacist through web.
• You buy or inquire about medicines via online regularly using insurance.
• You think critically that, health details not to be shared with others whom you know and don't know.
• You are uncomfortable when nowhere people looking at health details.
• You are a researcher from drug company or employer handling ergonomics of your employees.
• You are an advertising or marketing or promoting person; or you received a call from unknown customer service asking health details of you, family, friends etc.
• Oh, you use technologies to seek medical help as well.
• Then you use web apps, mobile apps, chat over technologies etc., to reach out Medicare assistance and help?
• OK, wait you also do a business of writing software application for medical, pharmacy, insurance, data or information analytic dataware house, etc., which is place holder for collecting health information?
• Your health details are outsourced (Medical Transcription) to write and type it and send back. Does this operations involved software and hardware which you sell? You know the people who all are involved in this gap and are in which places?

Did you or your customer pay money for any of these? Ever felt health information is privacy and protected? Did you glimpse that your health details are more secured? If yes, you have just ignored the obvious daily happenings around you.

There are other factors that make ePHI (electronic protected health information) of a person to be unsecured and no more private protected. HIPAA covers them under Privacy Rule and Security Rule. Both of these rules are compliment to each other and cannot be neglected.

For an example, the most company's internal web apps to maintain details of employees, will also collect health information. Most would enter the details for getting benefits of health plans provided there. I have noticed, the health details are not protected nor have privacy. It is open, in most times. Then what about the software apps which are written to handle health data? It is neglected most times.

See the below instances how few are sued legally for violating HIPAA compliance. Multibillion penalty for breaching the compliance!

• CVC Caremark Corporation - here and here.
• Virginia Prescription Drug Monitoring web app - here.
• Kaiser fined by $250000 - here.
• Palmetoo General Hospital case - here.
• Alaska Dept. of Health and Social Services penalized for $1.7 million - here.
• Lovely smile lady, Farrah Fawcett, fights for disclosing her protected health data of Anal Cancer - here.

*Note: These URL's shows the details at time of publish this post and not broken.

Today software intruders concentrates on cracking humans than the software or/and hardware. As that makes the job quicker and easier. Hence protecting the health data outside the software app arena is also mandate. So why this post and what it is talking about, is the question you have now?

Effective testing includes tests of environment (includes users as well). So how can I have them covered in my test coverage and test result? Shouldn't I know what the sections in HIPAA privacy and security rule are?

I have come up with mind maps for HIPAA Privacy Rule (HPR) and HIPAA Security Rule (HSR) in knowing what they ask for. These mind maps have more text than a word or two in each node. Reason is, most of does not know or cannot make out what rules or section tells. Here is the mind map for HPR and HSR.

Each mind map tells lot more measures to be taken care apart from the implementing software which adheres to HIPAA. Connect any node to any other node, find ideas to test.

Are you "Hippocratic" of HIPAA in your shipment?

**Note: Don't rely on these mind maps as *complete* and legal data. It is built as heuristics for doing better testing. I don't love killing creativity and thinking ability of a tester. Hence I don't share one liner test ideas from these Mind Maps. Instead I'm sharing these resourceful Mind Maps for free and in non-commercial purpose. Make use of it to your good extent, if it is of help to you.