Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Test Communication Grumpiness

I've been having the time of my life exploratory testing a new feature, one that I won't be writing details on. I have the time of my life because I feel this is what I'm meant to do as a tester. The product (and people doing it) are better because I exist.

It's not all fun and happy though. I really don't like the fact that yet again, the feedback that I'm delivering happens later than it could. Then again, as per ability, interest and knowledge to react to it, it feels very timely.

There's three main things on the "life of this feature". First it was programmed (and unit tested, and tested extensively by the developer). Then some system test automation was added to it. I'm involved in the third part of its life, exploring it to find out what it is and should be from another perspective.

As first and second parts were done, people were quick to communicate it was "done". And if the system test automation was more extensive than it is, it could actually be done. But it isn't.

The third part has revealed functionalities we seem to have but don't. Some we forgot to implement, as there was still an open question regarding them. It has revealed inconsistencies and dependencies. And in particular, it has revealed cases where the software as we implemented isn't just complicated enough for the problem it is supposed to be helping with.

I appreciate how openly people welcome the feedback, and how actively things get changed as the feedback emerges. But all of this still leaves me a little grumpy on how hard communication can be.

There are tasks that we know of, like knowing we need to implement a feature for it to work.
There are tasks that we know will tell us of the tasks we don't know of, like testing of feature.
And there are the tasks that we don't know of yet but they will  be there.

And we won't be done before we've addressed also the work we just can't plan for.