"Some birds aren't meant to be caged, their feathers are just too bright"- Morgan Freeman, Shawshank Redemption. This blog is from one such bird who couldn't be caged by organizations who mandate scripted software testing. Pradeep Soundararajan welcomes you to this blog and wishes you a good time here and even otherwise.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Tested for James Bond !

Hi Reader,

"Wait ! Don't talk about Casino Royale. This is a testing blog, keep it in mind" before anyone of you shout this at me , I wanted to say that " I too have that in mind".

Have you seen a man who uses literally bug free product and if you have seen that man , I too have seen him and he is of course James Bond. Isn't it inspiring to create bug free products but is it possible ? Many say "No" , I don't agree. ( My perception , if you differ , continue testing )

As a Tester I was impressed about one character in Bond movies , any guess ?
No , its not Bond's Blonde instead Mr Q.
Mr Q the gadget man for James Bond, impressed me because I feel he is a good tester.

"Pradeep, anything wrong with you , last time you said Sir Thomas Alva Edison is a Tester and now Mr Q ?" you have all rights to ask this and I too have all rights to share my learning .....

__ Tested for James Bond !__

Mr Q always conveys the limitation of a gadget before handing it over to Bond.
What is great about it ?

"It is a mark of a good tester" is what I would say. You need not believe me but I got this belief after interacting with some good testers across the globe.Hence you can atleast believe those testers.

What we don't do -
  • Whenever we submit a Test/Bug report, we do not include the limitation of the testing.
  • Whenever we interact with the customer, we do not discuss what could be the ill-effects he could face, as there was less time for a testing with respect to a major release.
  • Whenever we are involved in a meeting with a non receptive manager, we do not let out our limitation in testing a case/feature we are assigned to test. ( ego , could be another reason )
  • Whenever we are bored/angry/out of mood we do not test a case and blindly assign a "Pass" and sleep well the same night.

What happens after that -

  • Our Manager or Lead trusts our report and forwards it directly to the customer, ending up with our organization loosing its reputation when a customer comes back shouting that he could find a silly bug after release.
  • Our customer thanks us for making a release at the promised time without knowing that there was a limitation in your testing which may impact his business, provided he pushes the product into market by just putting his seal over it after our release.
  • We give our Manager one more reason to shout at us and sometimes if a critical bug is found by the customer, irrespective of we doing a good job , we may have to face some action.
  • We wake up from sleep to see our Manager's Name on the Mobilephone's LCD display as a prefix to a word "Calling".

What should we ideally do -

  • We should include atleast a sentence about the limitation of the testing along with the Test/Bug report we send to our Leads/Managers, which will help us build a good rapport with them also in turn with the customer.
  • Before our customer thank us for a timely release we should ask him to thank us for sending him the limitation of testing due to lack of time for testing for that release.
  • We knowing that the Manager shouts for invalid reasons should make him shout for a valid reason : Limitation within us about handling a case/feature.
  • If we are bored/out of mood/unable to continue testing , push ourselves hard and do some good work or seek help from colleagues after taking them for a coffee/dosa( india only).

I did not mean that Mr Q did all this to James Bond but why not learn something good without bothering the "good" factor being in a movie or a novel.

By the way did I forget to tell you that "my limitation is that I am unable to convince everyone with one post" and for those who are not convinced with this , unfortunately you need to revisit.

__ End of __ Tested for James Bond !__

"The Bugs you miss out don't Die Another Day instead they gamble with your life as if you lost in ....

Casino Royale"

Regards,

Pradeep Soundararajan
pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

As usual AWESOME

Anonymous said...

Hey Prad, Sharat here.. One more topic of research. Do the Testers/QA have to play second fiddle to the developers..Dont they have a more proactive role to play?? Coz the QA was leveraged quite efficiently in my previous org..but not here..and it sucks maan.being a sleeping partner..

Prashant Kumar R said...

I dont agree with u regarding the content in this post. Have u heard abt someding cal'd "release notes"? thats where the bugs which were priority 3 or not resolved and verified in the latest build or when the product is released goes in... have lots to say to contradict this post of urs !

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

Good comment from a true tester .. but does the release notes contain all the limitations ... the release notes have "Known Limitations" but there are certain limitations known and still not conveyed in "Known Limitations" .. there could be several reasons for it .. of course dude .. you can contradict .. if a better theory comes out :D ..

BTW Manvasanai is cool and I would say the flair is Prashanth Stylish

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

Sharat,

Shall research on it and let you know first :D

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