Pair Testing with a 15-year-old

A few months back, I had the pleasure of working with a trainee at F-Secure. As usual in schools in Finland, there was a week of practice at work with the options of taking a job your school assigns you (I did mine at age of 15 in an elderly people home) or you can find one of your own. This young fellow found one of his own through parents, and I jumped on the opportunity to pair test with him.

At first, he did not have a working computer so it was natural for us to  get started with strong style pairing:

With an idea from my head to keyboard, it must go through someone else's hands. 

He was my hands, as I was testing firewall. And in many ways he was a natural in this style of work. He would let me decide where to go and what to do, but speak back to me about his observations and ideas, extending what I could see and do all by myself. Most of the things we did together were things I would have done by myself. Only difference was the times of going to the whiteboard to model what we knew and had learned, where I guided him to navigate me in the ideas to document very much in the same strong style pairing. As the driver drawing, I would ask questions based on our shared testing experience when he would seem to miss a concept.

His ability to test grew fast. He learned to use the application. He learned to extend his exploration with test automation that existed and play with it to create the type of data we wanted.

My reward was to see him enjoy the work I love so much. His words on the end of our joint experience without me prompting still make me smile: "I now understand what testing is and would love to do more of it".

He joins us for a full month in June. I can't wait to pair up with him again.