Load testing

I'm afraid this is the last cartoon in the "No user would ever do that" series. I hope you’ve enjoyed them!

Some people have not understood the cartoon about bugs being socialites. The idea behind the cartoon is that bugs often cluster or group together (in my humble experience). For example, if you find a number of bugs in one area of the software, you can bet your donkey there will be more bugs if you continue to test this area (although you might need to change the type of testing you are doing).
If ever you don’t get a cartoon, feel free to email me and let me know and I will be more than happy to explain, or add a comment to the post and other people might chip in with their thoughts too ;o)

One last thing, for all the twitters out there, I’ve just joined twitter! Search for cartoontester to find my tweets.

That's not a bug

There were a number of people who didn't get the cartoon about differentiating between a good and a really good tester. For those who didn't get it or like the cartoon, thank you for return to this blog again :o)
 The idea behind the cartoon is that it can be very difficult to assess the performance of a tester, this can be specially hard during the recruitment process. For example, a tester with a testing qualification (ISEB/ISTQB) does not necessarily mean they are a good tester (nor does it mean they're a bad tester!).
 I’ve been recruiting testers for around 4 years and it’s not getting any easier. It can be very hard to determine if the candidate is actually any good at testing, it's one thing giving answers to questions in an interview but it's completely different testing real applications. If I had to give any advice, I would recommend employing testers who you think are suited to the culture of your work place; would you get on with them? Would other testers/developers get on with them? Also, for our workplace, it’s important that the candidate understands what type or style of testing they are getting into: is it heavily documented? What SDLC is used? Is there a requirement to use automated test tools sometimes/all the time?
 I could give you more advice on recruitment, but I'm afraid I would have to charge you and I couldn't guarantee the advice would be of any use.
;o)

That's not a bug

Here's the second one in the series on "No user would ever do that!" (or "that's not a bug, it's a feature!" or "that's not a bug, it's a user error!")

That's not a bug

Since I started reading blogs, articles and forums about testing, I've noticed testers mocking developers when they use the phrase "It's not a defect, users would never do that" or something along those lines. In fact, I have been on the receiving end of that kind of comment recently when a developer told me "It's not a defect, it's a suggestion for improvement". Naturally, I disagreed! After I calmed down, I tried to think from the developer's point of view, and knowing he was very intelligent and good at his job, I started to realise, that maybe, ever so often, us testers aren't always right... (but on this occasion, I was!).