Mapping Test Concepts To Real Life Scenarios

1. Introduction

One of the major problems that has been noticed in the software industry is the lack of understanding of technical jargons when it comes to understanding different concepts. This has been mostly seen with freshers who even before understanding the concepts fall into the deadly trap of jargons and getting intimidated by them. With my overall experience of almost 10 years into the testing space I would try and invoke an intuitive approach to understand and map these concepts to real life scenarios so that they become easy to comprehend and are never forgotten.

2. Examples of a few test concepts and their mapping to real world scenarios

2.1 The Defect Life Cycle

Actual concept : The defect life cycle is indeed one of the significant testing concepts that every tester in the inception of their test career comes across. This concept talks about how does a defect and its state progress starting from the point when it was raised and going up to the point it was closed. It essentially covers status like Submitted(When the defect gets logged), Fixed(When the defect gets fixed), Tested(When the defect fix gets tested), Reopened(When the tester finds that the fix is not in place), Closed(When the fix is properly in place) and so on and so forth.

Real Life Scenario : This entire concept might be a bit scary for any person who is very new to the testing space. Now let us try to map the entire concept into a real life scenario where let us assume that we have a car and it has gone through a damage because of a minor accident. The car owner(In this case the product owner and the tester both) takes the car to the garage and hands it over to a mechanic(In this case the developer) to get the damage(In this case the defect) fixed. As soon as the owner hands over the car to the mechanic to get it fixed the state of the damage(the defect) can be considered to be Submitted. Let's say after a week the owner comes back to the garage to get back his car and the mechanic hands over the repaired(defect has been fixed) car to the owner. The state of the damage(the defect) can now be considered as Fixed. The owner now looks into the damage and verifies whether the damage has really been fixed or not. In short he runs some tests to understand whether the damage has been properly repaired or not. This state can be coined as Tested. If the owner finds that he is happy with the repair then he drives his car back home and we can call this step as Closed. If not the owner(Tester) points out the reasons why he is not happy with the fix to the mechanic(Developer) and requests him to reinvestigate. The final state is known to be Reopened and the entire cycle goes on.

2.2 The Shift Left Strategy

Actual Concept : This testing concept is a major widespread and significant test strategy and concept accepted by most software industries and is a booming trend in software engineering. The concept mainly deals with early testing in the STLC(Software Test Life Cycle) phase leading to an early identification of defects so as to save time, effort and cost for any organisation.

Real Life Scenario : The entire concept can be really hard for newbies in the software testing space to understand. Let us now hop onto a real world scenario to understand this strategy and make it more simpler and comprehendible. Let us consider the manufacture of a pen. Let's consider a customer designs a pen, notes the requirements down in a piece of paper and hands it over to the manufacturer who builds it. Imagine the manufacturer asking no questions about the requirements, manufactures the pen and hands it over to the consumer. The consumer feels extremely excited to get his new pen, starts using it to write his first article with utter despair to find that the pen bloats. How would the experience look like? Apart from the customer experience try to imagine the time, effort and cost it would require to re-manufacture the same pen all over again. Wouldn't that be frustrating?

If your answer is Yes then let us try to think of a different approach. Now let us consider that the manufacturer takes the piece of requirement from the customer, goes through every point in the requirements properly, asks clarifying questions to make sure that he understands every requirement properly. The customer and the manufacturer makes necessary amendments to the requirements. The manufacturer now extremely clear about the requirement starts developing the pen and tests every part of the pen properly pre integration and does a thorough testing of the pen post integration of its parts and then hands it over to the consumer. The consumer again feels extremely delighted to have his new pen working smooth this time with no major significant issues. He now feels extremely gratified. The customer develops a natural predilection for the manufacturer and gets back to him with a bunch of orders now.

This is the power of early testing starting from the requirements phase. It brings confidence to a product and helps mitigate unnecessary waste of time, effort and cost for any organisation.

3. Conclusion

As rightly said by Sir Winston Churchill that "A vocabulary of truth and simplicity will be of service throughout your life.", I would like to reiterate the same quote by saying the more simple we can think the more easy our life gets. Apart from a few testing concepts and strategies discussed in this article there are many more concepts that lies within software testing. Let us be more intuitive, innovative and not bookish. Almost all scientific and engineering concepts lies in the real world. Let us try to map these concepts to the real world and I am sure science and engineering would be fun and interesting rather than being intimidating.