By looking at the title of this post you might feel that you know already about myths about Software Testing. This post contains myths that are covered in other blog posts also but I felt like writing it so I am. These myths have been experienced by me.
#Experience 1
I was coming from my organization in my cab and I sat beside a HR and the conversation when like this,
HR : How is your work going on?
Me : It’s going good
HR : Try to get into development
Me : Why do I need to?
HR : Testing doesn’t have growth
Me : What growth are you talking about? Money, Designation or what it is?
[ I explained him about testing and my passion towards it and said him that not to misguide people without knowing about testing ]
[ HR after listening to me ]
HR : Wow, I did not know about all this
Conclusion : There are many people who think they are guiding but they are misguiding, you can see that a HR doing it but I am glad that finally I made him understood and I hope now he won’t do it with any person.
#Experience 2
I met a tester before few months and there was an event and after the event he said me that he will be doing higher studies. And I asked what after higher studies, he said he wants to be in development. I asked why development? He said that his relatives whenever they come to his home they ask what is he doing and he says that he is a QA and they say Oh QA’AAAAAAAA and now because of his relatives talking like that he wants to do his higher studies and be in development. Now, you might be interested to hear that this was the same guy whom I had met before meeting at this event and he said that there are testers in his organization who open eclipse and do something to show that they are ready to move to development and this guy was complaining about them. Now, my question is, how this guy is different from those now?
Later, he said that he wants to follow money that’s all. Wherever there is money he wants to do that.
[ I just kept quiet and said good bye to him ]
Conclusion : Do not allow others to control your life. Sometimes what you think interests you might be because that is in your mind because someone else talked to you about it and you got biased.
#Experience 3
Before few months a fresher called me and asked me that in which institute I did my course in testing. I said there are no good institutes in Bangalore which teach you real software testing and they are just making money with those slides which doesn’t teach anything and they give you big material which consists of definitions. But they provide placement and every fresher wants this and doesn’t want to learn software testing [ Very few of them think about their learning ]. I asked that person why do you want to get into testing? And his reply was,
>> I do not like coding, that’s why I want to do testing <<
[ I became little bit angry but I took patience to explain about the myth that he had ]
I said that if he does not like coding and if he thinks testing doesn’t involve coding then please do not do it. But, as he was a fresher he might have those myths because someone else might have misguided him. So, I explained him about testing and the conversation was over. I asked him that I would coach him for free and he said he would get back to me but he did not get back to me. After many months he calls me and tells he did his course in so and so institute and asked for my help to get me a job.
Conclusion : Testing involves coding / scripting. Writing your own tools to aid in your testing activity and also help the community by providing the tools that you develop.
#Experience 4
Most of the testers that I meet ask me a question like – Do you know any institute where they teach QTP? I ask them why QTP? Some organizations are looking for testers who are good with QTP that is why they want to learn QTP. In this context, I am not against QTP but, what happens is some of the testers like this do not know to think, apply ideas, explore and they just know QTP and hiring these kind of testers might be a huge loss to an organization.
Example : Some test can be performed with a simple utility which is of very less file size in kilo bytes. But, QTP testers do not know about the utility which can do it and he / she knows how it can be done with QTP. This tester has QTP corrupted on his / her machine. Now, QTP installation has to be done and this QTP tester keeps waiting till installation gets completed now you see if he / she had known about that utility then a lot of time could be saved and huge savings to organization. I am okay with a tester who knows QTP and has skills to explore and can do a better testing but just a scripted tester is what I do not like.
Conclusion : No tool is a god tool. Everything is about context-dependent.
