Friday 24 April 2015

The Carwash Analogy

I was recently having a discussion with a developer friend of mine about why he should recruit testers (since they currently don't). It bothers me that the end of the conversation didn't end "Dan, you're absolutely right, I'm totally getting me some of them!".

Explaining testing well is no easy task. What if the company is doing well with their current quality level?

The problem here is that testers don't have a largely tangible output. We provide a service. We deal in information, and our net output could be described as confidence.

What if we made the analogy between testing and a car wash? My friend has developers doing unit tests and sanity checks on the end-to-end process, so he's already at Level 2. It's 50p more than Level 1, and probably £2 more than not washing his car. Adding testers dials you up to Level 8. The car wash is much more thorough. There's some premium soaping and scrubbing that's happening at the same time as the Level 2 stuff. There's a bunch of stuff happening that you were never going to get at Level 2 that takes a little longer. Waxing, buffing and the like. Totally premium, and totally costs a few quid more.

So what's the result?

Either:
* you know your car is cleaner as a result of getting Level 8, or
* you're more confident that dirt that was probably removed by Level 2 is definitely gone now

Don't fool yourself. Level 8 doesn't mean sterile. But you certainly gave it your best try. 

Testers don't actually remove issues. I also think this analogy is imperfect in that it draws a parallel between what's probably a perfectly good wash and developers checking their own code, which I feel understates the importance of testing. All the same, I might try this on my developer friend and see if it helps.

Be careful: clean cars are addictive. Once you've sat in something cleaned at Level 8, you'll wonder quite how good Level 9 could be!

Friday 10 April 2015

The Persona of a Tester

Hey it's springtime, and there's a new testing blog, so given the time of year, you should be expecting a write-up of my experiences at the recent (and excellent!) TestBash 2015.

I might get to that, but not today.

Instead, I wanted to share a great picture with you that really captured the essence of testing for me, and perhaps why I still enjoy testing after years in the industry when some tire of it, or use it as a stepping stone to other things. 




For me this image is a person who has trained to be where they are, and who sets off exploring equipped with the best tools they can find. A confident step forwards, and they're into the untrodden. Sometimes, maybe a little faster than they should (or is that just me?).

You can extend the analogy further by saying they've got a supportive team, that the tools or the person or the team isn't separately enough, or that in times of recession people in this career are, rightly or wrongly, in lower demand. But that's all afterthought I put in when writing this post.

Following Karen Johnson's great workshop at TestBash, I considered that maybe I should spend some time considering my own persona when analysing requirements for testability. Whilst this orange chap might represent me, I'm sure there are plenty of other testers who wouldn't identify the same way, and their requirements for testability would differ.

I know some would say you can't boil testing down to an image, but I hear they can convey about 1000 words of it. This is how I identify as a tester right now, but I very much doubt that's static. I'll let you know when I find something I identify with more.

Image is CC licensed and originated here.