There are things in testing that never get old for me. The intellectual puzzle of uncovering the answer key to bugs that matter, and the dynamics of removing friction from uncovering bugs to such a level that the bugs never really existed. Figuring out communication that conveys things the people in this particular conversation would otherwise miss, with realisation that writing a specification is the wrong mindset on a learning problem. The results in efficiency and effectiveness, and building something of relevance that works.
As a tester, while I center information about products and organizations, I'm also an active agent in the system that creates the products. We're builders, building together.
I felt the need of saying this once again seeing Michael Bolton proclaim:
So, for the thousandth time: testing does not make things better. Weighing yourself does not improve your health. Weighing yourself informs decisions about what you might do with regard to your health.
Me and my tester colleagues in projects are more than a measurement device like a scale. If we were like a scale, we would be commodity. We choose information we produce based on risks, and make decisions when we call out risks we focus on. We find information and choose to present and act on it. We have agency and a place at the table to do something with that information.
Testing is about making things better. It is about selecting the information that would be valuable enough to make things better. And it is about timely application of that information, sometimes so early that we avoid making certain mistakes. To make things better, we need to be founded in empiricism and experimentation. We learn about the state of things and we actively change the state of things every single day at work. We don't decide alone but in collaboration with others.
It's not enough to know, we have long since moved to the combination of knowing AND doing something about it.
We want to know some things continuously and we create test automation systems to replenish that information in a world that keeps moving, that we want to move.
We want to know some things deeply, and spend time thinking about them with product as our external imagination, without caring to capture all of that to test automation systems.
We build better people, better products and better societal impacts by actively participating in those conversations. We consume as much information as we produce.
We can decide and we should.
While this is a fundamental disagreement, acknowledging it as such is what could move us forward.
