Testing is easy! Right?

Can everyone test? Yes!

Can everyone be a tester? No!

There are far too many projects where developers, project managers and others have been brought in as testers in a project because "they had nothing else to do". What signals does it send about quality? And what kind of signals does it send to us who work with test?

Michael Bolton answered this loaded question in a brilliant way:

 “No one ever sits in front of a computer and accidentally compiles a working program, so people know — intuitively and correctly — that programming must be hard. By contrast, almost anyone can sit in front of a computer and stumble over bugs, so people believe — intuitively and incorrectly — that testing must be easy! “

Why do people think testing is easy?

Why do people think everyone can be a tester?

The lack of knowledge about the role is probably the biggest reason, but also that in today's technological society it is easy for everyone to find bugs in their everyday lives. How often do you not run into a bug in a product you bought or on a website you visited?

But does that make a person a professional tester?

A tester does so much more than clicking the same button 100 times to see if it breaks at click 99. A tester is so much more than a resource that follows instructions. A tester does not find a bug by accident.

A tester is a creative thinker with a fondness for taking things apart to see what happens. A tester wants to break down a function and see what it takes to break it. We love and are driven by exploring things or finding out what happens if you do this and that. In the same way we are driven to understand why it broke down at that very moment. We want to solve the mystery and present it proudly to our team.

This can appear as a lone player and destructive individual. But the truth is, we are here to help! We want the customer and the end user to get the best product possible that we, as a team, can offer. We want to help our team members deliver products with the highest quality possible that we can create. We want to be the ones to find the errors instead of the end users.

What a tester brings to a project is a different kind of mindset. In the same way as a developer, we have our methods, tools and way of working for examining the product with different eyes and mindsets.

Does this sound like a description of yourself? Or is your project in need of a tester?

Do not hesitate to contact us and we will help you!