My wife, who has a wonderful education in liberal arts (BA in philosophy from an ivy-level college) walked by an saw the icons flashing and the screen running, and said “that’s awesome.”

I suspect that explains the success of some large percentage of GUI-driving tool sales: To people inexperienced with testing, having stuff fly by the screen is, in fact, “driving it”, is the same thing as testing. And it’s cool, right?

I had an HOUR to explain the real challenges with this at ST&P Conf. I had some success.

Sadly, Not everybody goes to ST&PConf. (But you can still read my column for free, every month, downloadable as a PDF from http://www.stpmag.com ! 🙂

On that project, I pushed hard for the abandonment of the useless 6000+ test cases in that spreadsheet, and was successful in promoting a functional and system approach to reducing the number of cases while enhancing the coverage and effectiveness of the testing, and getting pretty ok with our process, and efficency.

Now, a year after that, I am out of a job as well…

I’m almost giving up, but then I get angry…and anger is a really good souce of energy, if it is recognized as such…just pure energy, and take control of the direction the energy pushes in, and I feel very pushy!

[James’ Reply: I’m lucky never to have worked for a manager like that.

I’m glad that you are awake and kicking back. Thank you.]

I wish I had known this before I joined them. I walked within 3 months.

Even if test cases were written by thinking brilliant people, will they ever be complete – for God’s sake! This is like becoming an ape from a man as Ben rightly suggests. Kill the passion, kills the brain and a man (read the tester who wants to reveal… please… only reveal) becomes a rat waiting for directions to take this or that direction dependent on someone else’s instructions. How subjugating! How stifling!

In nature, if you choose the wrong evolutionary path, you die. We don’t do that much anymore.
Ordering a big-mac may seem to some like a good short-term solution for hunger. Do that every day though, and you end up fatter and slower than the rest of the herd. The penalty for that is far less immediate than say being a fat slow guy would have been 40,000 years ago.

Same in software testing, it seems. Unfortunately, when a stupid/ignorant/(etc) manager gets it wrong, you’re not allowed to kill them. Instead, you get to live with the pain of their evolutionary retardation. The quick fix is a credit card where the interest rate is a high percentage of inevitable pain. Luckily (for some), if you’re in management you can delegate the suffering.

I am not surprised and so will be many in India. Day in and out we see people (our managers) making such statements and pushing testing totally out of anything related to “thinking” or questioning.

I have seen many people keeping so much FAITH on test cases and some even can not think of testing without test cases at all.

On way I often counter these folks is by saying “if a tester were to simply follow STEPS and report what happened – then you want a tester? Any one would do?” If testing is about following steps – why bother testing at all as it looks very silly to pay so much to simply follow steps. I am sure there is a simple way out without using any human”

Shrini

Everyone has the opportunity to try and make up something useful. Mostly, it will be useful for themselves and if they’re real happy with it, they will market it (I guess that’s where all the ‘best practices’ comes from).
But in evolution there’s an element of survival. Probably not many testers will let these products survive, but they will still exist (~be created) and they will still arrive on the market at a steady rate – only to succumb. After all, most of all species on this planet have gone extinct – a lot of testing tools has gone already and more will go the same way.
Still, in niches, some of these tools will be useful and save the day for someone.

“Dear Jon Testing,

I am Barrister John Mensah,a solicitor at law.I am the personal attorney to ENGR.J.P.Testing,a national of your country, who is a Contractor and have spent most of his life in my country (Togo) Here in after shall be referred to as my client.On the 30TH of April 2000, my client,his wife and their only son were involved in a car accident along bagida express road.All occupants of the vehicle unfortunately lost their lives. Since then I have made several enquiries to your embassy to locate any of my clients extended relatives,this has also proved unsuccessful. ..”

Time for a tangential rant.
The sad thing is that a company like this can be successful at all. I think it’s down to human nature and the tendency to value the easy short-term option over the more beneficial, but generally far less sexy longer term one. As long as the quick and easy, cheap solution is available, why make an effort? You don’t need a real gold nugget – it’s much easier to paint a turd gold and sell that instead. It’s why so many people are morbidly obese. It’s one reason why software quality sucks – one could go on and on, but until there is some sort of paradigm shift in understanding of the false economy that is the ‘easy option’, then the sort of change you want to see will remain limited to an enlightened (probably frustrated) few.