Hell of a Tester

There's a saying in Finnish "Kysyvä ei tieltä eksy". In English it might translate into "Man asking for directions does not get lost from his route." I really like that saying. Another more famous one is "There are no dumb questions". I disagree with this one. There are dumb questions, and you cannot avoid them. Asking good questions, the right questions, at the right time, from the right source, and in the right way, is really hard. That's pretty much what testing is about. Asking, learning from the answers, and educating others based on the answers. As an example a dumb question would be one that: - is asked at the wrong time - is asked from the wrong source - is not answered - provides no information for anybody - takes a lot of effort to ask, and provides very little value - is asked just for the sake of wanting to ask - you shouldn't want to ask, you should want to ask so that you can hear the response   - does not help you to ...

After being a software tester for seven years, I've developed a condition I call the Tester's syndrome. I'm not sure what leads to this, and how specific it is to testers, but I am sure I didn't have it before I became one.

My company has a monthly news letter, each month having a different theme. The theme of the news letter is "Service promises" where we discuss and think what is and what should be the service promise we give to our customers. This got me thinking, what is my service promise as a tester, and then spent an hour creating them. Here's the list