What are the storytools of testing?

I love spicy foods. And especially I love foods where I get to use chili peppers that I have to grown myself.

I plant the seeds of new varieties in February. The actual growth season is really short in Finland so I’ve got to move early if I want those juicy pods in August.

The seeds however don’t work their magic on their own. They need a lot of attention to sprout, grow, flourish and eventually flower.

Without attention they wither and die. Naturally with the right attention in the form of water, light and nourishment they grow into beautiful bushes that will bear fruit.

What I have learned over the years of growing peppers is that ideas work exactly the same way.

Ideas are the seeds of our circumstance.

The thing just is that ideas too produce their crop months or years later. And they work their magic only if we give them enough attention over time.

Seeds are easy to transport. Sometimes I send chili seeds to friends in an envelope. Sometimes I give away the seedlings in a small cup of soil. But how would I hand over the ideas worth planting?

It is no accident that the great sages of our time ranging from religious figures to business tycoons all tap into the same source. They use fables, parables, metaphors, analogies or even epics to demonstrate those ideas.

And just sometimes those storytools become twitter-friendly quotes we have all seen in thousands of motivational posters online.

I am a software tester by profession. Over the past decade I’ve had to wrestle the principles of testing in countless meetings with an attempt to change mindsets of others. And it just occurred to me that, writing this blog is a way of cultivating those tools, those seeds of ideas so they might produce an ever better harvest.

So now that we meet here at the end of this miniature story, I wanted to thank you for being there. You just made it so much more meaningful.

Thank you.