Open eyes Working brain

I’ve finished reading “Perfect Software and other illusions about testing” by Gerald Weinberg. A short, easy to read, low technical book, full of anecdotes which drive you through illusions and challenges of software testing. The nice thing is when the author of a small well written book about testing happens to be the father of software testing himself, epiphany becomes possible.

But beware developers, that’s not about automated software testing, it’s from perspective of the person who leads the testing process. One who knows the true nature of testing and answers to the big questions:

What’s testing? Why do we test?

These naive answers particularly stuck to me:

1. Humans are irrational, emotional, imperfect thinkers
2. Humans have to make decisions (ie. about software)
3. Those decisions are risky (because we make mistakes)
4. Testing is gathering information to reduce risk

So testing is about taking less risky, more informed decisions.

Also, by this definition, testing is much bigger than what you do in front of your computer:

…let me tell you about a job i turned down at a large insurance company before taking the job here. It paid more money, but it failed The White Glove Test. I asked my prospective manager whether the company used a defined testing process for its testers. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘All one-hundred-fifty use the defined test process.’ I then asked him what that process was, and he said, ‘It’s defined in our testing process manual, which is kept with the CMM library.’ I next asked him if it was the only copy. He said yes, so I asked him to show me the library. In the library, i put on my white glove and dragged my finger along the top ot the Testing Process Manual. I came away with a quarter-inch of dust. Was i testing? It gave me an estimate of how long it had been since any of the company’s one-hundred-fifty testers touched the manual. I performed a meta-test of the testing organization. I decided i didn’t want to work there.

In other words

The number one testing tool is not the computer, but the human brain in conjunction with eyes, ears, and other sense organs.

Another interesting point is that information you get by testing is neutral, which means it’s not implicitly good or bad until it impacts on us, emotional thinkers, bringing new reactions. If you want to properly assess and report information from and to others, you have to understand how humans think and behave…ehm… let me search wikipedia:

Psychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the scientific study of human mental functions and behavior.

Ouch, so as weird as it can seem, testing is also about psychology. It’s about understanding what others really mean and make them understand what you mean, because information without proper communication can turn out useless…

People listen selectively. A tester may say, “At the current rate we’re finding and fixing bugs, there’s very little chance that we can ship by the first of September.” The project manager whose job is on the line is likely to hear, “Blah blah blah blah we can ship by the first of September.” Only give and accept dates in written form.

I definitely recommend this reading for anyone who wants to really understand testing. I’m leaving with some more gems.

Major Testing Fallacies

• The Blaming Fallacy: The more time and effort someone spends looking for someone else to blame for a problem, the less the chance of solving the problem.
• The Exhaustive Testing Fallacy: The only real kind of exhaustive testing is when the tester is too exhausted to continue.
• The Testing-Produces-Quality Fallacy: Quality is a product of the entire development process. Poor testing can lead to poor quality, but good testing won’t lead to good quality unless all other parts of the process are performed properly.
• The Decomposition Fallacy: Test the parts and you’ve tested the whole.
• The Composition Fallacy: Test the whole and you’ve tested the parts.

As tradition goes, here it is. Hello World. That’s just me trying to dump some of the too many thoughts that flow between my ears. Let’s see what happens.