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