"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.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

How do you explain testing to your children ?

Hi Reader,

Many active children we have seen, ask a lot of questions and sometimes we are left in a state where we are unable to give an answer for a question. If your son/daugther is an active child then try explaining testing to them, they shall give you a new dimension of testing. If you don't have a child yet , don't try for one without marriage but ensure you are active to have an active offspring.

__ How do you explain testing to your children ? __

Child : Dad/Mom, what do you do at work ?

D/M : I Test products, my dear child.

Child : What is Testing ?

D/M : Well, Testing is playing with a product.

Child : So have I done Testing too ? Will I get a job in your company.

D/M : Partially true but you are not a tester.

Child : I play well , you can ask my friends !

D/M : Ha ha ! No my dear child, Testing is not about playing with a product alone. It is more than that.

Child : I am not understanding, can you explain it in simple words ?

D/M : Ok, Let me take an example... If I give you a toy robot , what will you do ?

Child : I shall play with it.

D/M : Ok, can you explain how you will play with it ?

Child : Well, I shall move the hands, legs , rotate the head , make the robot to fight against another toy....

D/M : Well, given a toy robot, I would do the same but I do it better than you.

Child : How can you play with the toy robot better than me ?

D/M : I shall plan "How to Play ?" , "Write a document of various ways I can play with it" , "Play with it" and "Note down what I see".

Child : Why should you do all that, it isn't that difficult to play with a toy robot.

D/M : Good ! Now say you and I play with two different toy robot and we both notice that when we try to rotate the head of the robot , the head part breaks from the body. What will you do ?

Child : I would cry , what would you do ?

D/M : I would take steps to ensure no more children cry.

Child : How can you do that, would you buy them a new one ?

D/M : Dear, you have started to learn Testing ... I would take another sample toy, rotate the head slowly, measure the point/angle at which the head breaks, call up the company and inform them my observation.

Child : Are you seriously playing with the toy ?

D/M : Yes, what you call as a "serious play", we elders call it "Testing".

Child : Wow ! Will I be a Tester if I do as what you do ?

D/M : Yes, 100% but do you want to become a Good Tester ?

Child : I want to become gooooooooooood tester.

D/M : Then you must start playing seriously with whatever you see, use or feel and have to read a lot of books, teach your friends, write your own articles...

Child : Except of reading books, I can do anything else.

D/M : No Dear, you need not real all books,
James Bach , a Test Expert I know, writes about Testing in simple words. You can use his book/articles as a bible.

Child : Dad , We are Hindu's , why do we refer to bible ?

D/M : Bhagvad Gita, Quran or Bible all tell good things and we should not block ourselves in reading any of those.

Child : OK, Let me test the goodness in all those three books.

D/M : I am proud of you , hope you become a better Tester than your Dad/Mom.

Child : Can I have your cell phone for a moment ?

D/M : May I know why ?

Child : I want to call up Bill Gates ?

D/M : ???????

Child : Well yesterday I was playing a game on our PC and whenever I used to keep the mouse pressed for a while to keep shooting the PC rebooted.

D/M : Oh my God ! This guy/girl is testing my patience :(.

___ End of __ How do you explain testing to your children ? __

"The child labour act : 2006 : says 'Parents who make their son/daughter a Tester at young age will have to face punishment on the charges of making their children smarter than others in the country"

Regards,
Pradeep Soundararajan
pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

Disclaimer : The above post is my own imagination and it is an effort to talk about testing in a simpler fashion that I can potray and not to affect any person or his business. The law mentioned above is the law that is presently pevailing in Mars and does not hold for people planning to protest against the law in this Earth.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Simply Awesome Blog !!!

Anonymous said...

Man you are awesomee.

Anonymous said...

Hi,

First of all , I should thanks you for your wonderful posts where I learn a lot. It is very different in approach. I want to keep reading and please write some posts on Smoke/Sanity Testing, Test harness, QA ... in simple words as you have written here.

Anonymous said...

there is something your different

i like the way you express

thats funny too
good

Fledo said...

Cool!
Useful!!
Thanks!!!

`elden

nagendragp said...

Simply fantastic!!!!

Couldn't get more realistic than this

Narendra Satpute said...

I think you are borne to be tester.You may not be knowing but you are creating tester pool in india.The way approach problems to find solution in simple manner it is incomparable.

Hats off to you

VINOD said...

i don"t want to say anything ,but i say hats of Mr.Pradeep.i really like this Blog,keep on continue