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Trying to Teach Testing Skills and Judgment
Rikard Edgren
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Context
• Higher vocational studies, 1 – 2 years full time
• Based on market needs, including supervised internship
• We (Rikard and Henrik) have taught test-savvy parts at several schools
• Teaching Philosophy– Motivation is key
– Not for the money
– It’s not about us
– Encourage new ideas
– Don’t be afraid
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Tacit Skills and Judgment
• Asking good questions
• Critical thinking
• Understanding what is important
• Rapid learning
• Seeing many perspectives and test ideas
• Selecting effective test strategies
• Capturing serendipity
• Realizing when testing is good enough
[Courses are not centered around these, but they are embedded within “classic” testing areas.]
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Think Like a Tester - excerpt
• I will now show some examples from course ”Think Like a Tester”.
• We usually start with a story…
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Think Like a Tester - definition
• Testers think differently than other professions; we want to see problems.
• A good tester needs critical thinking, questioning assumptions that really aren’t givens.
• You get many perspectives with creativity, often by combining old things in new ways.
• You also need logical thinking, to understand how things are connected.
• And we need to learn rapidly, since there are loads to know in order to test well.
• On top of this a healthy dose of pragmatic thinking, to adjust to reality so you can test your best within time limits.
• This needs to be balanced with a very good understanding about what is important in the unique situation.
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Critical Thinking
• Question everything, especially this statement
• What If…
• You can’t avoid bias, but you can manage it (Lessons Learned #39)
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Critical Thinking - Examples
• Evaluating concepts
• Questioning the product
• Testers can make mistakes
• The critical thinking is embedded in who we are as testers.
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Think Like a Tester - Exercise
• There is an empty house. One person goes in and a bit later two persons come out.
• Explanations:– By Biologist: Procreation – amitosis, fission, (asexual) reproduction etc
– By Mathematician: if one more person entered the building it would be empty again.
• How would a tester think?
• Source http://wtquestions.blogspot.se/2009/04/first-question.html
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Think Like a Tester – Exercise Debrief
• Questioning – are the instructions (the specification) right? What exactly are the results?
• Reproduce – does it always happen?
• Variations – for any person, for two persons
• Side-effects – does anything else happen? Is it an identical clone?
• Purpose – what’s the house supposed to do? Without knowing, can we say something is wrong?
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TEACHER WORK
STUDENT WORK
THEORY
STORIES
EXAMPLES
TIPS & TRICKS
FEEDBACK
QUESTIONS
DISCUSSIONS
EXERCISES
READING
AUTHENTIC PROBLEMS!
PURPOSE
WEEKLY ASSIGNMENTS
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Courseware
• Own material + BBST and Rapid Testing excerpts
• James Bach’s Heuristic Test Strategy Model
• Books– Lessons Learned in Software Testing – Cem Kaner, James Bach, Bret Pettichord
– Essential Test Design – Torbjörn Ryber
– Exploring Requirements – Daniel Gause, Jerry Weinberg
– Explore It! – Elisabeth Hendrickson
• Miscellaneous articles
• In the beginning I thought the material and exercises were most important.Now I believe it is the individual feedback on the work they do.
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Examples
• The best examples are the ones created together in class.
• I also use authentic examples I explain thoroughly (in Swedish)
• A few examples are elaborated in English:– Exploratory Testing Example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0MXE8Onkh4
– Test Strategy - http://thetesteye.com/examples/Example_WorkRaveTestStrategy.pdf
– Test Analysis – http://thetesteye.com/examples/ScreenPluck_TestAnalysis.pdf
– Scenario Testing – http://thetesteye.com/examples/LibreScenarioTestingExample.pdf
• I would love to see more public examples!
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Finale
• A challenging opportunity to learn (for students and teachers!)
• “If a student wants a crystal clear education with easy assignments, you will probably not like it” (Magnus)
• I can’t really teach these tacit skills and judgment, but I know how to help students acquire it.
• You can do it too, a good start is reading the paper with details (March 2015)
