A nervous tourist, glances back and forth between their phone and the street sign. They then rotate their phone 180 degrees, pauses, blink and frown. The lost traveller, flags a nearby ‘local’ (the passer-by has a dog on a lead. “Excuse me…” she squeaks, “How may I get to Tower Hill?” “Well, that’ s a good one” ponders the dog walker, “You know…” “Yes?” queries the tourist hopefully. “Yeah…” A long pause ensues then, “Well I wouldn’t start from here” He states confidently. The tourist almost visibly deflates and starts looking for an exit. That’s often how we start off in software testing. Despite the flood of methodologies, tips on pairing, power of three-ing, backlog grooming, automating, refining and all the other … ings ) We often find ourselves having to figure out and therefore ‘test’ a piece of software by us ing it. And that’s good. Its powerful, and effective if done right. But, like our dog walker, we can sometimes find ourselves somewhere unfamiliar...
The beginning of the hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy leads with an alien ship about to destroy the Earth, and the aliens saying we (mankind) should have been more prepared – as a notice had been on display quite clearly – on Alpha Centauri the nearby star system, for 50 years. Seriously, people - what are you moaning about – get with the program? The book then continues with the theme of bureaucratic rigidity and shallow interpretations of limited data. E.g. The titular guide’s description of the entire Earth is one word: “Harmless”, but after extensive review the new edition will state: “Mostly harmless”. Arthur Dent argues with the Vogons about poor data access This rings true for many software testing work, especially those with externally developed software, be that external to the team or external to the company. The same approaches that teams use to develop their locally developed usually don’t work well. This leads to a large suite of shallow tests that are usually h...