Tester’s occupational hazard.
Something strange happened at the moment I drove off from the parking lot of my car dealer. I had just bought a new blue Ford.
It suddenly felt like half of my hometown had just started to drive the same car. There seemed to be one in every traffic light.
Of course, it wasn’t a viral Ford buying decision that shaped my experience of the traffic that day. It was simply a shift in my perception that had changed.
We see things we learn to seek.
We testers search for problems. We turn our attention to places where something might go wrong. And then we report. We model the result in a way where reproducing the defect would be easy even on the developer’s desk. Steps to reproduce.
An occupational hazard hides there. Most of our time at work we condition our patterns of perception to see errors. We condition our mind every day towards problems. As if finding what’s wrong wasn’t hardcoded in the brain already!
Professional testing is playing around with mental health.
The best professionals have realized something exceptional, though. We testers are the experts in modeling. Steps to reproduce.
If we can model the steps to reproduce problems, why would we not chip in our know-how with incredible successes too? What if you would give it a try?
Can you figure out steps to reproduce success, happiness, health or money for example?
