"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.

Friday, March 10, 2006

Learnings from crash test dummies !



Hi Reader,

As a Tester you must have seen something crash and reported to your senior casually "Hey , it crashed" , maybe you didn't force it to crash but still it did.

Here I introduce you to a very interesting Testing where Testers force crash the system to save your lives. Yes ! you guessed it right , it is the Testing that your dad's car has undergone.

I happened to see this testing in Discovery Channel and was amazed at the test cases people think.

What are we doing ... Testing applications , testing mobile phones , testing routers , testing banking applications ?

How many lives are lost if these things are not tested well ?

I haven't heard of any such case except huge money loss due to lack of testing but when it comes to testing those things that directly interact with death is really challenging ! ( come on , now don't act like a small kid in putting up a comment here as to "isn't your job challenging?" )

What we do is to test "How a product dies? and its analysis" but what you are seeing in the image is "How could people die?" , isn't that challenging ?

"Ha Pradeep , We are software engineers why do we need to read this ?"

If you ask such question , I appreciate you for your focus and insist you to go further ... there could be something you can learn as I did from these crash test dummies.

__Learnings from crash test dummies __

Crash Test dummies are designed by Testers , I don't have any proof but I am sure what I have said must be 100% correct.

  • Testers should be aware of what data they need to collect from the system under test.
  • Testers should be able to build prototype/simulate/emulate the real time scenarios , especially as the offshore Testing is booming in a country like India.
  • Testers should be able to evaluate whether the collected data is enough to come to a conclusion about the performance or quality of the system.
  • Testers should be able to identify the data they need to collect in order to evaluate a system performance.
  • Testers should be able to communicate the developers clearly as what caused the crash and where could be the problem. ( Tester sees a crash and developer at the logs )
  • Testers should be aware that a single person doing the testing is always not holistic as testing needs thinking and working from different dimensions and perspectives in order to achieve a better quality.
  • Testers should be able admire every other testing that is happening and learn from it. ( only if he/she wants to progress in Testing , else ... Relax ... bindaas ! )

__Learnings from crash test dummies __

Now it looks like you want to learn more about this Crash Testing through dummies so you can get the basic from here and if you want to learn more ..

"Behind every life saved in an accident there is a tester and for every life killed in an accident

there is a test case missing"

Regards,

Pradeep Soundararajan

Note : This post is dedicated to all thos Testers who have saved many lives till date and thanks to them for giving us good learning's in testing.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi,
I came across this blog series and then started reading from the first one. I am at this post today and i must say, really excellent and impressive thoughts.
Great going sirjee....

After reading this post, i just thought of 'testing' as a practice in different fields and occupations. And i felt, there is always something that we can learn from testing practices in different fields.
Also, as you said people test to save lives. A thought just fluttered in my mind that in medicinal research too, they do the same. What say? :)

A great read it has been. Thanks and Regards! :)

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

@Abhijeeth,

Thanks for your encouragement. I am glad to know you are benefited by these posts. It would be great if you could pass this experience of yours to your friends and colleagues too.

Hope you also enjoy upcoming posts to this blog.