I had an awesome day at work today. Been handling a bunch of employees from Cognizant and today after 7 days of continuous sessions, I got feedbacks from them. And judging by what they had written, I think I have achieved what I aimed to do. Get software testing professionals to like their job.
There seems to be a mis-conception that testers don’t have a cool job. Call me crazy, but I think they have the most responsible job in the world.And this, (at least according to me) makes it the coolest job in the world(I might be exaggerating a little here. But then again, Ive had an awesome day at work. So that gets me excused.:) )
To all the developers out there, everyone in their lives, do a little bit of testing
often.For instance, you go out to buy a pen, don’t you write and see? Isn’t this testing? You go out to buy a TV. Don’t you turn the volume up and down before buying it? Isn’t this testing.? Before buying a car, don’t you take the car out for a test drive? Isn’t this testing? How is it that when we testers take this job seriously, you developers dare to think testing is not cool???(OK development guys.. seriously. please don stop reading my blog. I just had an awesome testing day today. Excused again alright??? )
This is a call for all the testers out there. To stand up and take this pledge with me.
I , (please insert you name here) do solemnly swear to test my heart out. Every day, Every minute of my testing life. As long as I have some tools and an excel sheet, I pledge to make the developer’s life miserable and the end user’s life a little better.
Long live THE TESTER. Long live TESTING.
Escape Route 
🙂
1)Why do u care if some one else thinks that testing is not cool ?? Cant ppl have their own opinion ? Are you saying that opinion of a person is “affecting” you. Then the problem is with you. If developers dont find testing as a cool thing, good for them !!! Why do you care ?
2)”To all the developers out there, everyone in their lives, do a little bit of testing often” Absolutely right !! But you see, no developer releases a code without testing. So to tell that only “testers” test a code is absolutely wrong !!! No developer is complete without some testing skills.
3) Now this is going to get tough 😦
“Get software testing professionals to like their job.” I hope that you meant “i am happy i made these people understand wat they r supposed to do and i am happy they r proud of wat they r doing”. Cos i dont think any shld even consider pushing a person to “like” something. Love towards a work should come by itself.
4)Why i dont like to be a specialist tester.
I personally like to do something new everyday. I like to solve new problems and new challenges everyday. If all i have to do is the same thing again and again i will LITERALLY kill myself. AFAIK and as far as i have seen most of the testing that is done is black box testing. Where i dont find much to solve or create anything new. And most black box testers dont even get to know the domain they are working, because people thing they dont need to know those. That to me is a very STRAIGHT learning curve !!!.
Where as in development i get to work in different platforms , different languages and different projects with unique and different challenges. This has a very vertical’ish learning curve. And someday i get to show the world a product that is my brain child. I dont think i will ever get these being a specialist tester. That is why i dont want to be a specilist tester. Although i believe that testing/QA is one of the most imp part of product dev.
@dinny…
0 ) You could have made this reply as a blog post. put in your blog and just given the link here. That way u can get some traffic on your blog (Just saying). Can’t believe u actually replied in points 🙂
1) Did i mention any where in my post saying I was affected in anyway??? I had an awesome day today. WHich means though I think u guys think testing is uncool, I went ahead and had an awesome day.. WHich means… it did not affect me in any way…
2)so a developer has some testing skills… Is it enough to release a product into the market???
3)Havn’t u ever come across times when u did not like something because u did not know much abt it.??? And once you came to know entirely about the person / thing / concept etc, u started developing a liking towards it??? thats my point..Thats what I aim to do.
4)If we dont test your application, your product wont be good enough which mean your work wont be good enough which means…without us.. forget about your vertical learning curve. Heck, forget about your learning curve itself.
To each his own.
@dinny – great that u gave so much thought to why u dont want to be a tester. Thats great. I disagree with point 3. Love comes through motivation. And motivation can stem from many things(probably through angel’s sessions). You don’t just wake up one day and say I love my job. I used to love certain subjects in school not because of the content but because of the passion with which my teacher taught.
@angel – Just look at it as dindin’s opinion. U dont have to defend your cause. Dinny’s point 4 is talking specifically about black box testing.
ps: I admire the passion with which you talk about this topic. 🙂
Thank you vini 🙂
Answering Angel first :
First i will clarify on what i am talking abt.
Testing – a way of checking the product to see if it has bugs. this can be done by developer , dedicated tester , common end user(all latest platforms support a system, where in an end user can log bugs).
Reason why i am defining testing is, no programmer would ever say “we dont need testing”. But, the “testing” that you are talking abt is “dedicated testing” and mostly black box testing(mostly, not always)
Tester : A person who does testing. Once i code a module or function or anything, i will test that function. So all programmers are testers as well . But, the “testers” you are talking abt are “dedicated testers” who will end up doing black box testing most of the time.
So in our discussion we are talking abt “dedicated testing” and “dedicated testers”.
0)Teach me abt all that 🙂 .
1)Well, you do sound like you feel bad cos some ppl think testing is uncool in ur second paragraph.
2)Yes and No. Understand why things are the way they are now. Companies dont want to “waste”(not in a bad way) time of coders in dedicated black box testing. Are you telling me it is hard to teach a coder all testing techniques ? And use himself as a black box tester. I think that this is a better solution as the dev will kno all the limitations of the product and will kno for sure where it may crash.
But they will never do this. Because, most of the s/w dev nowdays is Agile where the product roll out time is very short. Most dev companies want to push out as many features as possible. So they cant let coders do black box or dedicated testing. Dedicated testers have a very good task when it comes to testing an IP module or a reusable huge component(white box testing).
But most of the projects now days are done in a way that, when it goes to QA team it is more of black box testing. This is done to reduce the project life cycle. I do understand that dedicated testers do have a very challenging role when it come to white box testing. But 90% of projects run dont ask that of the dedicated testers.
Its not a matter of coders not able to test(black box) the code. But rather it is a business/project management decision to keep the black box testing out of their responsibilities. But, when it comes to white box testing, the dedicated testers have a huuuge challenge, but unfortunately companies are more worried abt making money than releasing a bug free product. So most of the times no one really does white box testing.
3)I take my comment back. My misunderstanding. I wanted to tell that to u, to save you from setting “unnatural” standards which will haunt you the next time.
4) It was my opinion. You are totally confusing project dev to learning curve. You can be out of a project and still have a sharp learning curve. I dont have to work i a project to learn something new in programming.
I am assuming that by “we” you mean dedicated testers. 🙂 You are totally completely wrong 🙂
Most of the open source projects are not tested by dedicated testers. It is tested by programmers and coders. If you ask for example of such products.
1)Linux Kernel.
2)Android OS.
3)Hundreds of language compilers.
4)The browser ur using (chromium web engine or webkit web engine(firefox,safari))
And many other things that you are using now are not tested by “dedicated testers”. All these projects are released with lots of bugs, which will be reported by other fellow programmers and end users and fixed by some volunteer coders !!!!
Personally i dont “like” this method, but this method seem to work just fine going by the number of ppl adopting to these technology !!!. Although i dont agree, but if u look at these successful products one can safely say that we dont need “dedicated testers” right ??
I dont agree to this methodology. But still one can some to that conclusion easily.
Now vini
Yes i agree. Real life example – Ebby when he listened to Johnny Jacob’s speech 🙂
Yes ur right, it is my opinion “black box” testing is not something i would love to do all my life. That dosent mean i dont respect “dedicated testers” for the work that they are doing.