My latest post to the
Agile-Testing List:
I heard an interesting line awhile back from James Bach; I will paraphrase him.
If I recall correctly, Bach's argument was they every time they had a
show-stopper, or even "big"-ish bug get to production, on every project, it was
never because we just ran out of time time and failed to do the next logical
test.
It was never because the team failed to automate feature X or feature Y and test
for it on this release - or that there weren't enough automated tests.
No, given an infinite amount of time with the current team and the current test
strategy, they would have failed to find the bug.
The problem with finding those bugs wasn't /time/, it was imagination - or, more
accurately, lack of imagination. That is to say, the team failed to think of
the software failing in that way. My experience tends to line up with that
statement.
If that is true, then a creative mind - creative in terms of possible failures -
something a tester should coddle, feed, and attempt to grow, right?
So - what techniques, ideas and skills do you know to encourage a creative mind?
One of my favorites is to indulge and reward my own curiosity.
regards,
--heusser