Who Would Make a Better Tester – Harry, Ron or Hermione?

I recently was caught up in a discussion with a group of testers who came with varied experience from different projects. The discussion was veering towards how they could improve their testing effectiveness. A common grouse was that each one was saying that they were very good in finding a class of defects (which are of similar nature), but were utterly unsuccessful in finding defects otherwise which their other team mates were able to uncover easily, and the amazing thing was that all of them said that they could understand the defect but could not visualise how they could have caught it. One weary tester remarked that he wished for some magic to help him do better testing. 

My response to this was to ask them as to which of the Hogwarts wizards of Harry, Ron and Hermione would have made a better tester. This question led to showcasing the traits which each of these wizards’ exhibits.

Ron Weasley:

The characteristics that one associates with Ron would be jovial, loyal, pragmatist, moody and an abrasive personality. Loyalty to the team cause would be very important trait to have. He would as a tester give his 100% to the testing plan and schedule that has been agreed and he believes in. Ron is a person who goes by the script. He will do what has been specified, follow the steps and document the behavior. He would not waver in his commitment to fulfil his expected obligations. He would be most effective in test execution and carrying out regression testing. His abrasive personality and stubbornness can certainly be beneficial to the QA team if channelised correctly, for example he could be the guy who hammers the veracity of the defects which have been found, in communication with the development team and in bug triaging meetings. He for sure would not be cowed down by hysterics or emotions. Ron is best in his role of the trusted lieutenant who is pragmatist and delivers, but he certainly won’t be the best choice to make test plans or find out-of-the-way defects.

Hermione Granger:

Think of Hermione and the picture that comes to the mind is that of a logical thinking, smart and extremely clever person. Out of the trio she is the most thoughtful, observant, and quick thinking one. Testing as a work function will come naturally to a person like Hermione. Her traits will ensure that the specifications are thoroughly understood, and comprehensive scenarios are created having required coverage. The defect reports that will be created will be detailed and unambiguous. She will be the one that goes by metrics, statistics and schedules - ensuring everything is tracked, followed and optimised. The one trait though that needs to be worked on will be the fact that she is bookish and close-minded. This could be overt dependence on going by the specifications where there is a risk that they could be incorrect, and being dictated by schedules. Some situations may warrant an adhoc approach to be used in which she will fall short. 

Harry Potter:

Harry as a tester would be impulsive. He is best suited to do exploratory testing where he takes decisions based on his impulse and sets out to follow the new path head on. Harry would not show the discipline to follow a set script, he would be the one who would revel in adhoc testing. As the bravest of the three he would make decisions based on his gut feeling and what feels right based on his domain and project understanding he has. Though not a stickler for following test plans and schedules, he can be counted to discover the most critical and hard defects to catch. He will certainly have a special skill that he would use uniquely to improve his testing effectiveness – be it automation or any non-functional testing genre. His caring, somewhat over confident and compassionate skills will make him a natural leader to whom the team will gravitate on their own.

Would any one of them alone would have been able to vanquish Voldemort? This would have been impossible. Each one of them brought in their expertise, utilised their respective strengths, and negated the weak traits of the others. This allowed them to be an effective and all rounded team that could finally accomplish their objectives.

The Testing Connect

Coming back to testing we can again correlate the fact that having only one set of trait of the trio would not be an effective choice; which was exactly what the testers mentioned above were doing. They were using exactly the same approach every time and unsurprisingly were uncovering similar defects and missing the other ones consistently. The magic lies in imbibing different set of traits at different stages of the project. At the start of a project one needs to wear the hat of Hermione – plan things, work out schedules, design test cases to cover all requirements, and then test them out. Ron’s trait of sticking to the plan needs to be channelised during the course of execution, regression, integration testing and triaging and finally Harry’s traits of being exploratory and test out adhoc paths based on how the interim results are emerging needs to be invoked to uncover hard-to-find defects including non-functional ones preferably at the latter stages of the project. Different stages warrant wearing different thinking hats. As a tester one should be flexible to tweak the methods and techniques one uses in creating test scenarios as well as during execution and improvise them along the way. As defects get harder to catch, the techniques need to be made smarter to catch them. I will be discussing about the different techniques that can be used for testing in a subsequent article. Ensuring we understand what trait to imbibe at what stage is the crucial “secret spell” that can help us unlock the defects and bring the magic in our testing.

Alohamora

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