Testing express

Testing express

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

I can sing BUT I don't know how I do it..(contd)

As promised This is a continuation of previous post.

I was interested in this story because I can relate this story with my thinking on testing. The main moral of the story was eventhough a person has talent, but if he doesnt know and utilize skills to the best of his abilities then he misses an opportunity to do his best.

Same thing happens in testing teams, I have seen and worked with people who do testing and find defects BUT dont know how they did it. May be this is because there is no proper thinking process or tester never tried to find out why this happens, He is happy until he is finding defects, sending report and executing tests. BUT there is more to testing than this.

This type of thinking makes a tester more predictable and at some point his testing techniques(which he doesnt know) get outdated. As a tester it is very important to realize what is going on during testing and note down all the interesting things that happen. This kind of approach helps in identifying style of thinking and testing, This information can serve as a feedback for self-growth and other testing tasks.

In many companies it is a bad practice to appraise people based on bug counts, which is not at all a measure of a good tester. Eventhough this is competitive, testers tend to miss other aspects of testing in this mad rush of finding defects, because they see benefit in only finding defects and logging them to get attention from managers/leads.

If you know the past, think in present, it will not be that hard to build or predict future...

Monday, October 4, 2010

I can sing BUT I don't know how I do it

A guy in a small rural village says "I can sing BUT I don't know how I do it" - Other person from same village says " Its God's gift" - Is this correct?

I asked myself. I was curious to know the answer. I requested the singer guy to give me some of his time. He Immediately obliged in a humble way. I thanked him.

First of all I appreciated him for his singing skills and told him to sing few of my favourite songs, he was brilliant and a bundle of talent.

Suddenly I realized what my focus was because I had bought time of this singer guys and I had to complete my task.

I was curious to know about this person and his singing skills that made me interested in him. I started with few general questions and then focused specifically on his singing skills...few of his answers interested me.

He said,
he had lot of interest from childhood in singing,
he used to listen to songs on radio whenever he used to get time
he used to sing, sing and sing because it made him feel happy and make others happy
he was interested in singing different types of songs
he also made a tool out of wood and strings that was similar to a string instrument called 'violin' and was good at playing it
Based on the type of mood, weather and occasions he used to sing different songs
he was a fast learner, because he said he can sing a song once he listens once or twice on radio
he even had a chorus kind of group who used to sing with him during festivals in village

wow, I was just amazed to listen to him and also satisfied that I got the information that made me curious and answered my question...

You might be wondering why I am writing this experience in a testing blog...you will know that soon

to be continued :)