Usually we like to talk about our successes and how well we did with somethingToday we are going to look at the opposite – failure-> Airport check in storry
Here is from my good friend – the OEDand as we will see later, lack of success can be either via positiva or via negativa
all these are not really flattering words
Ok, I think it makes sense to demonstrate failureI brought a special tool that allows me to demonstrate failure – a footbag
OK, I ask a stupid question here – but here we are
No, seriously, there is nothing wrong with failing at an attempt to do something usefulActually, the more things you try the more often you will fail. Get over it
PradeepSoundararajan told me today: The best way to recover from failure is to learn from it
Let’s have a look how failure happens
As you can see in the next few slides, I failed to produce fancy PPT transitions, so I mitigated to a more manual processSo, let’s assume you do something – say you try to learn some testing heuristics
Yes, we have the phrase “It works” here, and by that I mean the thing you do satisfies your own criteria for success to some degree
I think that this path here is often forgotten when we think about failure – failure is often tied to actionLet’s have 2 examples1. You don’t learn to understand object oriented programming2. You refuse to just delete a bug out of the tracking system
I think the second path is the one we usually associate with failureBut then again, maybe if something does not work it is actually ok1. e.g. have all your testers certified2. e.g. trying to learn to program and not get anywhere3. e.g. expose ethically questionable behaviour
It like to distinguishPersonal – Whatever you attempt to do as an individual person, Your own actionsCorporate – This are the failures that are happening at the place we workCommunity – I am referring here to our community here, the club of skilled, context-driven testers
Now, the following list is by far not an attempt to generate a complete list of personal failureThat would be quite impossible
In my case: be a very crappy software developerGenerally: Might it be that too many of us are too untechnical?
I find it astonishing that I have met people who spoke about developers in such a respectless fashion and with complete ignorance of the difficulty or complexity of their job. I am guilty of that in my previous job at a medical device company – I alienated many people by being disrespectful
We testers are angels and everybody else (product owners, developers, managers in general) are idiots
For those of you who have participated at BBST Bug Advocacy know that not every bug is worth fighting for
Well, in this case – bad choice
Incompetence – e.g. if you are not a programmer, you will fail at attempting to set up an automation suiteLack of priority – if you spend all your time on Twitter, your ability to learn new things will be limitedFear – Who has ever been on a hot seat in the RST class?Motivation/Procrastination – This is a major driver – at least for me to failUnderestimating effort – Here you will run out of time and maybe it also touches your motivationHalluzination – You think you can do something but it isn’t soAnd then of course we can never fully single out the Zombie ApocalypseSo, it is there for the sake of completeness
Now, I am referring here to corporations in general, not the ones with a high percentage of skilled testers and a sound strategy, e.g. ;Moolya Testing or House of Testor even worse: live in the illusion of knowing what it is -> I often observed that with Dev Managers
How many of you let people actually test during the interview process?
Again, this is a pest especially in Europe-> Some major banks or big insurance companies insist on it-> The hiring process has been hijacked by incompetent HR people
Absence of evidence != Evidence of absence
I fail to come up with more reasons, maybe you guys can help me out
And now we come to the area I have most passion for
There are about 300 to max 1000 testers, who consider themselves skilled context-driven testersCompare that to the hundreds of thousands of test case executing drones
What evidence to we have when we say: He or She is a good tester?
This goes a bit in the same line. We often appear to take A as evidence for B
