Name it and own it again

This is one of the first posts on my bwin-blog:


When I first came to bwin Games I had a vague idea of what testing was, something about finding bugs. Now that is indeed true. I found the bugs, I did the testing. But as time went by, I started to feel that I couldn't describe my work properly. If somebody asked me - What did you do yesterday? I would say,
-Uhm, well I tested this and that and I found five bugs.
- So what kind of testing did you do?
- Ehh... exploratory? I clicked on a bunch of stuff and then they broke.

I did testing but I had no idea of what kind of testing. I had no words to describe my work. I am certified by ISTQB's. I had a bunch of testing terms in my head for a couple of days. If somebody would ask me today what equivalence partition coverage is, they would get a blank stare. The term means nothing to me. Maybe it should, I took the course. I know we need a common language, but in my opinion that language is useless, unless everyone can speak it and understand it. Using the terms of ISTQB is like having Latin as the common language of testing. Nobody speaks it, and people only know a few quotes. This hardly helps us communicate with each other, neither developers nor management.

So there is a dilemma. We have a vocabulary that we don’t understand, and still we have to be able to communicate what we are doing, something more specific than “um,.. exploratory testing”. With inspiration from James Bach I have tried to take control over my language and my work. I have started to reflect on what I do and write it down. If I have to make up my own name for it, I do. In that way, the language becomes my own. If somebody asks me what I have done I can tell them with my own words. If someone doesn’t understand, it is easy for me to explain what I did and I don’t have to get the feeling: “Sure, I have done a great job but I don’t have a fancy word to describe it with”.

So, take control of your testing, name it and own it!

See you next week, until then, happy testing.

(Inspired by James Bach)