Stop Ignorance in Testing

by | Syndicated

Scripted testing… There are so many things wrong with it, its hard to know where to begin. Many test experts and prolific bloggers have written about this theme, therefore there is an abundance of literature about topics such as scripted testing vs. exploratory testing out there.

The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about. Wayne Dyer

ST is like an old wives’ tale, an urban legend, something that gets passed down from generation of testers to generation, and gets propagated and perpetuated due to the ignorance of testers everywhere. I was once an ignorant tester myself, who like many others learned from another unenlightened tester that the way to test is to write countless numbers of test scripts, with detailed steps, which will be diligently reported upon daily and you will get a gold star if you execute the pre-set quota of test cases for the day.

In this day and age however, there is no excuse to be uninformed about anything, which is why it shocks me how many testers still don’t know there are alternatives to scripted testing, especially here in Sydney.

This week I had coffee with a ‘seasoned’ tester, and the conversation about exploratory testing came up. This tester had heard about it, but like many others, had assumed that it was just ad-hoc-free-for-all testing. So I started asking questions about the validity and pitfalls of scripted testing with them. I find that this topic comes up very often in conversations with other testers, and I feel I’m repeating myself constantly, as I never pass up the opportunity to talk about context-driven testing, exploratory testing, and other fun topics like that!

Like I said in the beginning, there is plenty of information on the web about why scripted testing is not the way to better testing. Below is a list I had on Evernote, which I usually send on an email to testers that are interested in learning more about ET:

Every time I have an opportunity, I attempt to stop ignorance in testing. I chat and challenge testers that are still on the dark side. The list proposed above is just a starting point for testers interested in learning the craft of testing, for those looking for alternatives to what they know, deep down is fake testing!