The Inquisitive Tester – Part I: Question the tests the test eye
In order to become a successful inquisitive tester, there are a couple of things you can do to improve your skills beyond the more common quest to “question a product”. One important thing is to question the tests themselves.
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Have you ever run tests and wondered if they were really necessary, perhaps knowing that the tests are useless?
Have you ever run tests that were too old and not updated with latest terminology or functionality?
Do your tests contain too much configuration information? Should this be put elsewhere?
Have tests become redundant because those failures no longer happen, ever?
Have the intent of the test been lost and therefore been rendered useless?
Have the tests already been run, on the same build? Twice?
Have you found any bugs or any important information at all with the tests?
Are your tests the most powerful?
Are the tests credible?
Can the tests be faster to execute?
Can you run the most important tests first?
Are the tests too narrow and/or too general?
Do you really understand the test?
Have the original test idea been lost in translation?
Are the tests too much of a projection of the test designer’s thought of view?
Are your tests interesting or boring to execute?
Are the tests in line with your test strategies?
How often do you change your test approaches?
Can the tests instead be better used as input to developers’ unit tests?
Can the essence of the tests be used elsewhere?
Have your tests been reviewed by your colleagues, including technical writers?
Have your scenario tests been reviewed by business people?
Have you captured how the users will use the software in the tests?
Are you satisfied with your tests?
Are your (hidden) stakeholders satisfied with your tests?
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Can you come up with more questions?
Regards,
the test eye (Henrik, Martin & Rikard)
“Are your tests interesting or boring to execute?”
Does that matter?
Are you suggesting that people should spend work time making tests “interesting”? If so, how much?
If tests are interesting, the testers’ minds will be alert, they will stay motivated, and see more things.
If tests are boring to execute, you should wonder why (maybe they never reveal new information), and maybe consider automating some of them.
And for the tester that find no type of tests interesting, it might be appropriate with a different job.
Of course there is a fair share of boring, hard work also for software testing, but it needs to be mixed with interesting and fun stuff.
Spend as much time on this as you think is appropriate for performing your best test effort.
Make tests interesting if it matters. Spend time making them more interesting until it does not matter.
Here is a very fast and easy way to make a test more interesting:
Instead of using the phrase “check/verify that…” you could instead use sentences with the word “investigate”.
This is, to many, a more mind challenging test-approach that triggers you to do a better job.
Why? Because it puts trust in you as a tester!