Learning quality

Testing is often perceived as “quality assurance”, but testing is much more than that. Testing is also about learning, risk handling, and innovation. #testing #exploring #learning #riskHandling #innovating #disrupting #qualityAssurance #qualityExploring

When children learn to walk, they fall a lot, so they try again and again. It’s a process of trial and error, in order to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

We help our children, by catching them, removing dangerous objects, and make the floor softer with pillows and blankets. We create an environment (like a testing environment) to lower the risk of getting hurt or death. Less crying, less comforting, and less healing enables the child to try more often.

As testers, we shouldn’t only assure the quality. We should make it easier for the developers to experiment with features and technologies, so they can learn if and how these can be applied. This exploration brings experience and experience lowers the risk of product and project failure. Less crying, less comforting, and less hot-fixing enables the developers to try more often, and shorten the time-to-market significantly.

Yes, testing can be about: Assuring quality (to assure our crawling is still good enough)

But testing is also about: Learning quality (so we can experiment and learn walking, so “crawling” can be reduced to a fallback plan)

“Experimentation brings experience, and experience saves the day”