Dear All,
We were and are always at the receiving end in most of our QA meeting by Saba Sir's critics. Initially these critics always blocked us from going further and thoughts like "are we in the right path of testing", "what are we contributing to Quality", "Better to change the field" etc etc popped up. Better late than never, realized the importance of his opposing act on our thoughts, which is really refining our mindsets to form us as "Effective Testing Team".
History says testing concept was initiated by Scientists. There were controversies on the individual’s approach but then controversies led them to think better. One of the Scientists proposed Experimental Approach; other opposed the approach as he didn’t believe that they presented conclusive evidence of anything, thinking that devices used is unreliable. One more says that experimental approach always couldn’t produce Universal Knowledge, as the same experiment gave different results. So the “knowledge” that you create isn’t forever and always. Experimental knowledge is always provisional.
Some proved that the experimental approach, though imperfect, proved sufficiently useful to help generate new explanations for the way the world works, and the objections of few and several other critics helped in sharpening the scientific method and led to refinement of the equipment on the one hand
Now, tell me What can we learn from it? A surprising amount, I think. When we’re testing, we’re constructing knowledge. That knowledge takes the form of two parallel stories if you walk-through any of the invention.
There’s a story about the product—what it is, what it does, how it does it, how it works, and how it might fail. The second story—the testing story—is about how we arrived at the product story. The testing story has a structure based on what we decided to test, the oracles that we used, the extent to which we covered our models of the product, and the techniques we applied. Building that structure is the process of test design.
The testing story also has a narrative in which we describe how we configured, operated, observed, and evaluated the product; that’s the process of test execution.
Testing is a process of composing, editing, narrating, and justifying those stories. Our tests, our product demos at the end of a development cycle, and our
careful accounts of the most interesting tests—whether delivered in conversation or in writing—can be traced right back to the staging of experiments, witnessing,
testimony, and reporting that were part of scientific experiment.
Scientist’s insight of removing something to understand its effects remains an important testing technique. Want to find interesting bugs? Learn about
strengths and weaknesses of the system by depriving it of something it needs. Delete or rename a file, and observe how the system handles the situation. Want to find out about initial state problems? Clean out the database (remember to make a backup copy first) and see how the system deals with empty tables. Unplug
the network cable, remove a registry key, or shut down a process on which the program depends.
Finally, just as there are controversies in science, there are controversies in testing. Our ideas about testing are continuously being refined and shaped
by our experiments, experiences, and observations. If we’re to be excellent testers, we should continue to question and critics widely accepted beliefs as Saba always do, and we should respond to those critics as He does when we oppose his thoughts.
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I wonder "How do we measure ‘Effectiveness’ of Software Testing?". Any thoughts on this?!!!
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