There are groups of testers out there right now denying that the term “manual testing” — or the reality of the term — does exist or has ever existed. To me this is a bit of historical revisionism. Let’s talk about this.
Category: Testing
Let’s Broaden Our Testing Wisdom
I talked before about tradition and dogma in the testing field. It’s often interesting to see how the idea that get passed off for wisdom in the testing world come about. Let’s take one example and break it down.
Testers and Future Angst
I see a lot of vocal pundits in the testing world saying that artificial intelligence (by however they choose to define that) is no threat to future testing. I’ll ignore for a moment that most of these pundits get AI wrong — equating it, as they do, with “better algorithms” — but I won’t ignore that they seem to forget a key point: will there be a perception that AI can handle future testing?
Should Testers Become Developers?
There is a distinction between “being a programmer” and “being a developer.” Yet those two terms get conflated in our industry quite a bit. The idea of a tester also gets conflated with … which? Programmer or Developer? That very much depends. Combine what I just said with the idea that many testers feel that DevOps has caused a decline in testing. Is there a correlation there? And should testers become developers? Let’s talk about this.
Don’t Be Such a Tester
There’s a book I really enjoyed that I believe every tester should read. Actually, anybody who has to communicate should read it. The book is called Don’t Be Such a Scientist by Randy Olson. And it talks about the need to have effective means at communicating by framing issues in a way that is interesting and not just recitations of things that people have been doing or saying. Let’s talk about this.
The Evolution of Testing
There is a relatively common sentiment that tester roles, as opposed to the testing activity, should disappear entirely. We see that a bit with descriptions of jobs like “Software Development Engineer in Test” (SDET) which basically just means “developer who can test” rather than “tester who can develop.” Is this evolution necessarily an unhealthy one? Let’s talk about this.
Testing Is The Art Of …
The title of this post indicates a sentiment you’ll often see. “Testing is the art of …” and then fill in some word or phrase. While I get the intent behind this, the word or phrase used to complete the sentence is often a bit lacking and actually reinforces the opinion that many have of testing, which is that it’s not a distinct enough discipline.
Testers and the Bug Hunting Focus
What do people tend to think of when they hear “tester”? More specifically, what do they think a person called “tester” primarily does? Arguably, more often than not, you’re going to hear something like “a tester’s role is to find bugs” or “a tester helps surface issues.” As an approximation, that may be accurate. But it’s only a very rough approximation. And a dangerous one. So let’s talk about this.
Revisiting Testing vs Checking
As part of my attempt to continue my thinking on the topic of “tests” and “checks”, I’m revisiting what I talked about previously. I want to see if my thinking has changed and I want to set myself up for being willing to change my opinion. I don’t want to be one of the fundamentalists I wrote about. So let’s take another trip down the rabbit hole.
The Prevalence of Parallax
I believe there’s an interesting parallax effect that happens in conversations around testing and the implementation of testing ideas. This is an area I want to investigate a bit more so I’ll start off as I usually do: with my half-formed ideas as the basis for discussion, elaboration and possible refutation.
If You’re Human, You Test …
… but you may not be a tester. Or at least not a specialist tester. Here I’ll close out 2017 on this topic which will indicate some of my future direction in 2018.
Modeling Testing
Dan Ashby recently posted his views regarding a model for test strategies and heuristics. I really like the level of effort put into it, particularly because it was clearly distilled not just from thought but thought based on experience. Let’s talk about this.
Wherefore the Death of “Manual Testing”
I see so many people lately talking about the “death of manual testing.” Opinions obviously polarize on this but what I don’t see is testers engaging at all with why this perception is there. There is a form of indoctrination that happens across the industry. And testers, by and large, do nothing to combat it. Largely because they ignore where it’s coming from. Let’s talk about this a bit.
About Testing
Earlier I talked about describing my own role. I think what I said there is almost interesting. Interesting, for me that is. But I often find testers struggling to frame their value beyond “I find bugs” or “I help mitigate risk.” So let’s dig into this a little bit.
Testing vs Checking – A Flawed Argument?
Lately I’ve been seeing that the whole “testing” vs “checking” debate is now more used as a punchline than it is for any serious discussion around testing as an activity and tests as an artifact. Regardless of my perception, which may not be indicative, I believe that this distinction has not been very helpful. But let’s talk about it. Maybe someone will convince me I’m wrong.
When Do You Stop Testing?
The question of this blog title comes up often. The worst answer that can be given is: “When there are no more bugs.” It’s the worst answer because the inevitable follow up is: “But how do you know?” On the other hand, some people, upon answering this, begin providing a very convoluted answer. Here’s my take.
Testing Fundamentalism?
I phrase the title of this article as a question. This will be a short article. I don’t have solutions. I’m not even sure I have a problem. But I think I do. I think I’m sensing a problem based on observations. But maybe not. Let’s see if you agree or disagree.
Uncomplicate TDD and BDD
Similar to reframing agile, I encounter a (perhaps surprising) number of experienced developers who outright deny that approaches like TDD or BDD have any value and it seems like we need a reframing here. But, in fact, I’ve found it’s more a case of getting people to uncomplicate the ideas.
Reframing Agile
Lots of people seem to focus on whether agile has failed. Or whether it’s dead. Or whether it’s a methodology. Or a process. What you end up with is something akin to Edmund Burke’s denunciation of political factionalism: “tessellated pavement without cement.” In the testing world this is even more so the case given the oft-used phrase “agile tester”, which any test specialist should be against. So let’s talk about this.
The Danger of the Muddy Thinker
I talked before about tradition and dogma and not too long ago, on LinkedIn, I saw someone post yet another one of those bits of dogma in our industry without considering the context. The discussion that ensued showcased exactly the problem with simply regurgitating the “received wisdom” of others. So let’s talk about this.