Hell of a Tester

So it's summer time again, and my year long spell as a scrum master is starting to be over. So starting August I'll be a full time tester again! (Or, as much as you can be a full time tester when working in a scrum team..) I'll likely write up some experiences on being a scrum master later (summary: hard, abstract, frustrating, fun), but thought now to start writing up on testing again. I'll start by sharing some of the tactics I often deploy when approaching testing situations. So this should become a series, until I get bored on it. So I'll start with my classic, my "master" tactic that often acts as a framework to other more subtle testing tactics. This is a rather common way for me to approach situations more on the exploratory and less on the confirmatory side, and/or situations where the thing (it may not always be the system) under test is not yet that common to me. It's rather simple: 1. Take a tour 2. Decide the target 3. Go with the h...

In spring I wrote about a big change on my career , continuing to work as a tester but changing almost all other aspects of the working context, the aspects being: From - Customer acceptance testing role into Developing our own products - Waterfallish into Agilish project models - Business oriented & simple into Mission critical & complex domain - 8000km from developers into a Few meters from developers - Consultant into Employee - Non-technical into Technical So how has it been? Comparing my new job between the jobs in the organizations I've previously worked for isn't really possible, or fair, due to the many contextual differences (trust me, I worked on a blog post comparing the differences for a long time until eventually scrapping it). But still there are huge changes that have happened to me as a tester, which I'll briefly discuss here. Information over-flow The biggest change has happened regarding getting information on the contents of the...

I often have problems in finding the ketchup bottle from our refrigerator. At some point I started to notice this, and eventually realized why I did not find it. It was because I was looking for something red, but the Heinz ketchup bottle isn't actually red but transparent instead. So after it has been used for a while (I have a three year old son so it doesn't last full long), it becomes mainly transparent in color. And when I start to look for the ketchup, I can't find it because I'm searching for something red. Today I had a short discussion with my wife which wen't about like this: Wife: Do you know where's the ketchup? Me: The bottle isn't red, try looking for a transparent bottle. Wife: Oh there it is. You get the lesson already? Well I have another close experience of similar kind. Last week I was taking part in Helsinki testing day as a test lab assistant. I was responsible for my own stand where I had created a few testing tasks for an op...

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 ...

I've been noticing a phenomenon lately, that is the over/misuse of the term Exploratory testing. As many testers seems to have kind of settled for the Exploratory testing paradigm and have moved to new frontiers like checking vs testing , it seems many other parties are really getting into it, and of course understanding it in different ways. Couple of examples of this phenomena: 1. In my final days as a consultant one of our sales people, had visited a customer who had no experiences about testing, but specifically requested the sales man to give a offer on Exploratory testing 2. I just looked at the program of Agile testing days 2013 , and really many of the testing related talks were labeled about Exploratory testing, although to me many seemed to talk/practice testing in generally It's nice that the Exploratory testing is gaining momentum, but I am also a bit worried about it. The examples listed above could be supported by many others, which kind of give me the impr...

I just resigned from my +seven (wonderful) years spell at Qentinel working as a SW testing consultant, and am now starting as a SW test engineer at Philips Medical Devices.