Enjoy Testing

The testers at work had a lean coffee session this week. One of the questions was "I like testing best because ..."

I said that I find the combination of technical, intellectual, and social challenges endlessly enjoyable, fascinating, and stimulating.

That's easy to say, and it sounds good too, but today I wondered whether my work actually reflects it.

So I made a list of some of the things I did in the last working week:

investigating a production problem and pairing to file an incident report
finding problems in the incident reporting process
feeding back in various ways to various people about the reporting process
facilitating a cross-team retrospective on the Kubernetes issue that affected my team's service

participating in several lengthy calibration workshops as my team merges with another
trying to walk a line between presenting my perspective on things I find important and over-contributing
providing feedback and advice on the process

identifying a gap in the model-based tests that I've been playing with
making several abortive attempts to fix the gap
having a flash of inspiration and actually fixing it
showing that the model can now find a product bug that it previously did not
using the model-based test runner to explore the product with a bug fix
noticing some oddities in passing while doing all of that
digging deeply into them and finding two previously unknown product issues
discussing and investigating those issues with different team members
working together to understand the extent, likely risk profile, and priority of them

reviewing unit tests for a new feature
talking to the developer about refactoring them for readability and maintenance
sketching a refactoring approach and discussing it with the developer
refactoring the tests
pairing with a different developer to review the changes and explore additional tests
adding new tests based on the exploration

ensemble testing with medical doctors on an issue they'd seen in their testing
understanding enough of the issue to speculate where in our infrastructure it might be
sketching our architecture just enough that the doctors could understand my hypothesis
searching our codebase for a smoking gun, and failing to find it
finding someone from another team who would know where to look for the gun
quickly pairing with them and finding the cause of the problem
putting relevant information in the right place to get the problem fixed
connecting the doctors with the right team to explore further

Mentally tagging those activities I see they are the mix I expected.

But what I didn't say before is that the mix is also endlessly frustrating, and this week showed that too.

Which reminds me that there's another thing I like a great deal about testing: the learning. I learn while I'm testing and I invest time in learning to help me with my testing.

One of things I've learned over the years is to take a step back from a frustration to give myself time to refocus and to find alternative approaches.

Sometimes I even remember to do it!

This week, I'm pleased to say, was one of them. And that amplifies my enjoyment.
Image: https://flic.kr/p/oqoNh

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