Testing ISN’T (is) About Learning. It is About Thinking.

by

Changed title, as it is misleading – Refer comments section.

A good tester is a good thinker. A long time I give my following thoughts on testing here

There are many testing institutes in India. They all can give us technical and bookish knowledge on software testing.

But this is not enough. The main asset of a tester is ‘the way the tester thinks’. And this is not given by those institutes..

Testers need to change their mindset.. change the way of thinking..
 Testing is nothing, but it is the game of thinking..

As per my experience – In CMMI5 companies, all the things are well documented and we prepare the test cases blindly with the help of specs and test the apps blindly with the help of Test cases. As all the review processes are followed in CMMI5 companies, so there are less chances of discrepancy.

But what will happen if someday you will be asked to test the application (in critical times) which dont have test cases. Will you able to test the application efficiently?

Testers should improve  Lateral thinking, scientific thinking & problem solving skills.

The concepts from Edward de Bono’s book, “Six Thinking Hats” is applied to Software development and Software testing (by Julian Harty, Google) and I found them useful and practical. I believe many of you will benefit by using them, too. You can get more details here and here.

3 thoughts on “Testing ISN’T (is) About Learning. It is About Thinking.”

  1. I agree that testing is about thinking, but the notion that testing isn’t about learning strikes me as silly. Testing is learning about the product in service of our clients and the rest of the project community. What is the point of thinking if it’s not in service of learning?

    —Michael B.

    Reply

  2. Hello Michael, thanks for your comments.

    I agree Testing is learning about the product in service of our clients. Here is just trying to this apart from testing you need to think how actually things work.

    There can be some cases where (while doing testing) testers just implement/execute only “testing techniques – boundary value, equivalence part,etc” & check alignments, links etc and don’t think on other areas.

    These above Checks actually sometimes are not required in early stages of testing a product. Instead of validating the above, keep focus on the product functionality and think how actually it should work.

    Hope you understand my point.

    Reply

  3. The view which you have told is very useful… But as a beginner we still need more detailed information.. Please do give more links in your site related to software testing. n short we need a better guide to show us the right path in our career..

    Thanks

    Vignesh

    Reply

Leave a Comment