I am an Impersonator

I am a tester for some time now. A tester plays different roles for his job so do I and believe me I am happy about that. It seems that I am living life of an Impersonator. Some of you might be thinking what is an Impersonator?

An impersonator is someone who imitates or copies the behavior or actions of another.

Now when you know what is impersonator, you must be thinking why I am so happy about it? Actually I don’t think that any other career than testing can give me opportunity to play such different roles and this is not an exaggeration. When an actor can proud on his different characters played in different movies then why can’t I.

Different roles which I play

I am an Advisor: An Advisor is normally a person with more and deeper knowledge in a specific area i.e. a specialist. As a tester I generally play the role of an advisor. I give them suggestions from my experience with different products during development, I suggest them how they can make software better. I suggest them during bug fixing. Even I suggest them how to display an error message. What if they don’t follow every time what I suggested, sometimes even they don’t consider it but they always know I am doing best to help them and they are always keen to know my thoughts. That is sufficient for me.

I am a Police Officer: A Police officer is generally charged with the apprehension of criminals and the prevention and detection of crime, and the maintenance of public order
In Beautiful Testing, Linda Wilkinson has said:

Are testers policemen? Not usually. They can’t “arrest” anyone for breaking a law, even if the world of software development could figure out what those laws should be, and most do not have the authority to keep something from moving to production, regardless of the generic goodness (or badness) of the software.

According to me, a tester also wears a cap of a policeman. As a policeman, I find the culprit who breaks the laws of an application and put it behind the bar. The culprit in this case is a bug. I find the bug and log it in the bug sheet.

I am a Detective: A detective is any licensed or unlicensed person who solves crimes, including historical crimes, or looks into records. My job allows me to play the role of a detective.
For being a good tester, it is important to have good detective skills. A good tester is not who finds an issue, a good tester finds the issue and the reason behind that issue and here I need my Detective Skills to find the reason behind any issue. Sometimes I fail to find the reason but I always try. It helps me to know the product better than anyone else.

I am a Lawyer: A lawyer is a person who is learned in law and licensed to practice the law. As a detective I found the evidences and found the culprit, as a policeman I have put the culprit behind the bars but what if the culprit is escaped due to poor advocacy. To win a case we need strong prosecution against the culprit otherwise the defense lawyer can make him free. Similarly, sometimes we need strong prosecution skills against a bug. I need to describe the impact of the bug to the developer. In Software Testing it is called as Bug Advocacy.

I am a Critic: A critic is a person who offers reasoned judgment or analysis, value judgment, interpretation, or observation. Like a critic, I analyze a product according to my knowledge and share my views with the stakeholders about the product. I don't bother about what they want to hear actually, I just give them an honest opinion.

I am an End User: An end-user as the person who uses a product. This is the most important role which I play. It is an end user who is going to use the product finally so it is important to understand an end user for the success of the product. I test any product with the perspective of an end user and discuss my views with the development team and other stack holders so that they can improve the product accordingly.

I am a Reporter: A reporter is a type of journalist who researches and presents information in certain types of mass media.
Any news is breaking news if it is most significant story of the moment. It could be a story that is simply of wide interest to viewers and has little impact. As a reporter, I report the entire bug with all the evidences as soon as I find them. Late reporting can cause benefit to other reporters. Once an issue is found, I immediately report it.

I am a Salesman: A Salesman represents a person or company on the selling end of the deal. A real Salesman is that who sells the product to a customer when he needed it least. Sometimes I need to sell the bugs. I have found the bug, I have reported about it, On the basis of my bug advocacy it is also proved that the bug is critical and must be fixed but still I need to make the developers to fix it in current release. In that case, I use my Salesman skill to convince them to fix the bug immediately. It’s like selling a bug.

I am a Tester: and in the last but above all I am a tester. I need to change my role according to the situations but it is only because of the need of my Job. My basic job is to test the product. It is versatility of my job which allows me to wear the different caps at different time.

Am I missing any role? I might be....do tell me....... :)

Please choose one of the following actions.

Recently, while unzipping a movie file with WinZip I found the following error message:

Did you find something weird?

The message requests to choose one of the actions from the list but they forgot to display the list of actions.

Any Comment......

A Heuristic and A Puzzle

A Heuristic is a “rule of thumb", an educated guess, an intuitive judgment or simply common sense. A heuristic is a general way of solving a problem.
- Wikipedia

There are few heuristics which I generally use while doing testing. One of them is “To solve a big problem let it divide it into smaller ones”. I learned this heuristic in one of the workshop by Pradeep Sir.

Recently when I visited the Blog of James Sir, I found a puzzle challenge. The Puzzle was:

Find the missing 13th number in this sequence:
77, 341, 923, 1547, 608, 2116, 377, 2263, 518, 1394, 3182, 1645, _____, 944, 4636 …”

I always love to play with numbers and so I thought to find the 13th number in the series.

My approach: I noted down the series in WordPad and started to apply different arithmetic operators. Nothing found. I left the exercise (Hopeless!!!!)
Next day I have started again from scratch. As I already played with them so I knew simple arithmetic operation would not help me. Then what should I do? How to find the missing number?
I was just gazing the numbers like an idiot and expecting them to tell me what the pattern hiding in the series is. At this moment, suddenly an idea came to my mind: Apply the heuristic which I learnt in the workshop.

To solve a big problem let it divide it into smaller ones

I was not sure that it will solve the problem, but there might be some logic which could help me to solve the problem. So I started to use the heuristic and I hit the Bull's Eye. After applying the heuristic, I not only got the answer but also found the two patterns in the series. The pattern in the series was awesome which is difficult to find by simply applying the arithmetic operations or any formula.
I am not solving the puzzle here so that you can find the solution of the problem with your own and share your approach of solving the problem here.

P.S.: I am posting the solution in comments section for those who want the solution of the puzzle but I wish you to try yourself before looking the solution.

What is your sentence?

Scene -1

Sir, there is an issue here.

What issue?

We are populating the date and time by default; but the date and time is already scheduled for another appointment. What’s the use of populating the data if user needs to change the data?

So what do you want? We are displaying the current date and time here. Client has gone through the module and he didn’t complaint about it, then what’s the problem?

Earlier we don’t have the functionality to display the next available schedule. Now when we have the function, we can implement the function here. It will increase the usability.

Hmmm…. Ok, we will see later.

Scene -2

Hey Jags, There is an issue?

What issue?

Look at this buddy. In the month view of the appointment scheduler, you are displaying the appointments for each day. User is able to create the appointment by clicking on a day. But when user clicks on the days of next month in the current month view, the appointment form doesn’t open although you are displaying the appointments for that day.

It’s not possible. To create the appointment for next month you have to go to the next month view.

But if you are displaying the appointments of next month here then user wishes to create the appointment from here too.

It’s not possible.

But the same functionality is already implemented in Google calendar then why it’s not possible.

Client didn’t complaint about this issue. We will do it when client will ask.

If it is not possible then how will you do it then?

Everything is possible what client wants. We have other tasks too so we can’t do it just for your satisfaction.

You are not developing the things to satisfy me. We all here are working for client satisfaction.

Tester went to his Project Manager. He detailed the issue to PM.

Hmmm…. Ok, we will see later.

Scene -3

Sir, the module is still under test. There are few issues which need to be fixed before uploading the client site.

Is there any show stopper?

No Show stopper is there but there are many minor issues which can not be ignored.

Hmmm…. Ok, Let us upload the module today as we promised him. You carry on your test, find the bugs and assign them. After bug fixing we will upload the changes.

Next day, Client logged the issues.

Scene -4

Why did you disclose the issues to client when he was unaware?

He wants to know the issues in the module.

He was not aware of those issues. You could hide them easily. We could fix them afterwards.

Later if he finds the issues, he can conclude that I am not a good tester for his project.

We would handle the situation in that case. Now he is demanding for the major changes in the module which can cause late delivery and hence deduction in billing. You are on responsible designation. I was not expecting this from you. Well, never repeat the same.

Scene -5

Hey Jags, This is not right. Client wants to do the things in this fashion. What you are doing is incorrect. Do it in this way

Hey man, we are the developers, not God. Why you don't accept the simple things.

It is not simple. It is buggy. Client is asking for a dinner chair and you are giving him Potty Chair. Do as I said, it is the right approach.

Hmmmm....

After three days:

Congrats Jags, Client has really liked the module. Well Done boy. I was not sure that he would like the module. Good Job.

What does your Manager say:

On Scene -1

I am agree that it increase the usability but as I said Client didn't ask for implement the changes here. There is lot of work in the project, we can't spend time for the things for which client doesn't care. So I put the things on hold.

On Scene -2

This is a valid issue but if client didn't make a complaint it means he is satisfied with the current feature. In the limited time line we can't provide everything to client. We have put the issue in our To-Do list and if we can get enough time, we will surely fix the issue.

On Scene -3

Bad things are better than nothing. I have promised to client that I would deliver the module on particular date. Postponing the delivery can cause the bad credibility. So I decided to upload the module.

On Scene -4

Due to your stupidity, Client has known the issue which we could deal later. He gives us a long list of changes which has put us back from the schedule. The client will deduct the payment if project is not delivered on scheduled date and you'll be the only one responsible for the situation.

On Scene -5

I never knew that you also contributed so much in the module. I thought it was Jags who developed the module alone. I really appreciate your efforts but you must also agree that Developers are the real contributor in a project; if they are not there no project could take a shape. Your work depends only on their work.

What is your sentence?

Now as a tester what is your response? Are you agree with the Project Manager or you have different sentence. Share your point of view as Comments.