Sinner Guise

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Testers
Part 6 of 7

This is the sixth post in a recently neglected series which is based ever-so loosely on Stephen R. Covey's book but focused on what you can do to be more effective as a software tester.

If Moses was alive today he would be a technical writer. Just like the ten commandments, the purpose of software documentation is to tell people what they should do and should not do. Also like the ten commandments, much software documentation is ignored.

Software is designed to be used in a certain way. Careful use cases and flows are thought out and implemented by designers and developers. Testers test these happy flows and make sure everything works the way it should. All is well until a user gets the software and tries to do something with it that no one ever imagined. What happens next is crucial.

A sign of quality software is that it either handles the abuse, or at worst, fails gracefully. It is our job as testers to make sure that this happens. To do this, part of your testing should include ignoring everything you know about what a user Shalt Do or Shalt Not Do, and go crazy:

• Put negative numbers into text fields
• Put ridiculously long strings anywhere you can,
• Paste inappropriate stuff - like binary files into text boxes
• Open 13 instances of your app at once
• Unplug the network or the power in the middle of an important flow
• Change the system date and time
• Install on a system way below the minimum specs
• Use weird characters like ì È Ö
• Run 10 other apps while you are testing
• Delete crucial files
• Don't close other applications before proceeding

In other words - be great and terrible in the way you treat the software. Put on the guise of a sinner and break all the commandments. The developers may not forgive you for doing this, but your users won't forgive if you don't.

Previous Posts:
1 - Be Protractive
2 - Begin With the Vend in Mind
3 - Put Worst Things First
4 - Think When/When
5- Seek First to Understand, Then to Exploit

Next Up:
7- Sharpen the Flaw