I never knew legends were so accessible. I am very thankful to
James Bach, who wants to spread his knowledge to the world.
I had my first lesson from James on "Friday, January 29, 2010 12:44am to 3:37 am".
It felt so great to have two words with James Bach that the first time I got a response as hi from him, I took the screenshot of skype, even though I knew skype archives your chat.
I want to forward the learnings that I got from him to other
proud testers:
Verse 1:
James asked me to
describe a test.
And I was very bad at it. I actually defined the test.
My Definition:
A test is to explore a product to find out more about it, specially the issues in it. These issues are problems that might affect the user's experience adversely.
(I personally thought I did great there. But alas, what I did was defining the test)
After knowing that what I did was defining the test, I made one more attempt at describing the test.
And that was a little close to describing the test, but it was mentioning instructions to test.
And then James gave me the pearl of wisdom. Mentioned below "as is" in words of the legend:
[1/29/2010 2:04:20 AM] James Bach: If you were actually doing the test
[1/29/2010 2:04:30 AM] James Bach: and I were a blind man standing next to you
[1/29/2010 2:04:40 AM] James Bach: and you were telling me what you were doing, thinking and seeing
[1/29/2010 2:04:46 AM] James Bach: that's what I want
And I learnt now that when we describe a test. It is something like:
"I want to verify that... So what I do is... and then I see this... therefore I think that's working..."
Verse 2:
Do testers make assumptions?
It is a nice way of legends to teach, they do not give you the answer. They guide you to the answer and let you find it. Thanks James.
I started with the bookish answer that I will not assume but I will ask for the requirements or search for them.
And James guided me to the answer...
[1/29/2010 2:22:14 AM] Santosh Shukla: Testers do make assumptions sometimes as a last resort, but they also communicate/state it
[1/29/2010 2:22:23 AM] James Bach: good answer
[1/29/2010 2:22:30 AM] Santosh Shukla: thanks
[1/29/2010 2:22:30 AM] James Bach: of course we make assumptions
[1/29/2010 2:22:42 AM] James Bach: what we need to do is be aware of the critical assumptions
[1/29/2010 2:22:47 AM] James Bach: and trying to declare those
Verse 3:
Complete list of Expectations from the test.
Can you ever list the complete expectations from the test?
NO.
What we always mention or list is the partial list of expectations. There are many expectations that go unwritten but those are still our expectations.
(My interpretations:)
Verse 3.1 Never promise for something you can not deliver.
Verse 3.2 Can we as a tester deliver complete test coverage? NO
Verse 3.3 Can a test team certify that the product is 100% bug free? NO
"What we CAN do is state clearly what we can do and to uncover the maximum amount of unpredictability from the product that we can." - yours truly
Verse 4:
"Also...Not..." heuristic.
When I thought that I was done mentioning the expectation from my test, James pointed me to the Also...Not... heuristic. Using this heuristic one can add many more expectations to the already stated expectation by adding Also...Not... heuristic.
One important thing that I learnt while interacting with James was the importance of communication in the tester's life.
(If you being a tester think you can communicate well, explain "clickable" and reply to this post.)
-Sharing is the essence of learning.-
Thanks to James for allowing me to blog about the chat.
My chat with James Bach is my prized possession and I am open to sharing it with another proud testers. Thanks to James for allowing me to blog about our chat.
