Month: March 2014

Two contributions to the uTest University

Back in December of 2013, uTest officially launched the uTest University (blog post) which is intended to be a single source for testers of all experience levels to access free training resources. This is a neat opportunity for testers to contribute to the growth and development of the testing community by creating courses and writing articles. The university also offers  Author Page

My first course was derived from a uTest forum’s post I I wrote back in June of 2013. I was on a cycle where the customer required logs from Charles Web Debugging Proxy be attached to every bug report, but none of the testers (myself included) or the knew what that was or how to use it. I spent some time learning how to use the tool and then put together a tutorial to share with the rest of the team. Fast forward 8 months later several other customers started required the same thing. To make the information a bit easier to find the tutorial was turned into a uTu (uTest university) course:
How to Set Up Charles Web Debugging Proxy for iOS Devices and Windows 8

My second course came at the request of the uTest Community Management team. They needed a tutorial for new testers to show them how to create videos (screencasts) of their bugs. They specifically wanted it based around the free tool Screencast-O-Matic. I had actually never used that tool before, so I spent some time getting familiar with the tool. I also compiled a list of suggestions and tips based on things I see frequently in the videos of other testers. The result is:
How to Set Up and Use Screencast-O-Matic

 

A Tester’s Haiku

From time to time uTest puts on fun contests for the community. This month the objective was to come up with the best testing-related haiku. Over 90 testers participated, coming up with some great poems ranging from serious to silly to clever.

There was one haiku that got more attention than most so I felt it warranted some further discussion. It was one of the first submissions and it was well-written so the uTest CM team used it to promote the contest. It was mentioned it on the forums and posted it on Twitter. It was nominated as one of the 10 finalists and went on to win the contest, earning the vote of 21 other testers. Here is the poem in question:

Gifted are testers
Fixing a world of errors
Coded by others

It follows haiku syllable structure and has a nice flow, but I feel it’s misleading and potentially damaging. I’ll quickly address each line.

Gifted are testers
Can’t argue with that 🙂

Fixing a world of errors
This shouldn’t be a  great revelation, but in general, testers do not fix errors; We provide information and dispel misconceptions. One of the way’s we do this is by identifying errors. Some might try to make an argument that part of resolving a problem is finding it, but testers who understand what we do to provide value, realize the importance of making the distinction between finding an fixing a bug. These are two different actions that required two different skillsets.

Coded by others
This line really bothers me because it promotes an us vs. them mentality. Even though someone else (the developer) did write the code, it doesn’t help to point the finger at them. It’s a testers job to identify mistakes in other people’s work and that puts us in a delicate situation. It needs to be handled without judgment or condemnation. Bugs are an inevitable part of software development and since quality is the responsibility of the entire team, we need to work together, take responsibility together and avoid blaming each other.

Now, I’m not trying to say the author of this haiku meant to say that testers literally write the code to fix bugs or that developers and testers are enemies and I don’t mean to pick on him/her, but the fact that so many other testers thought this haiku was a good representation of testing troubled me. I’m sure this can be partially attributed to uTest’s endorsement and also because of language issues, but these are two themes that I see often and wanted to briefly address them.

My Entry
In case you were wondering, I did write a haiku. While I was a finalist, I didn’t make it into the top 3. Here’s my entry:

found and reported
a customer enlightened
value provided