The Butterly Diaries 09 - Testing Troubles
I was nervous as I entered boss lady’s cubicle. “So,” she said. “You were actually earmarked for a project that is due to be signed soon.”
“Oh, no,” I thought. Not one of those again.
“However, our testing lead is keen to retain you. I have spoken to the manager of the new project and made alternate arrangements. You can continue here.”
Now that I was assured of my place in the project, my mind began to drift towards the possibilities the missed project represented – the allure of the road not taken.
Initially testing seemed a mundane activity. Just read the business scenario and the test cases and execute them. But over the days, it began to look like a game of cricket. The coders were the batsmen and the testers the bowlers. My job as a tester was to find maximum bugs and send the coder back to the pavilion.
To do that I could not just stick to the letter of the test cases. Edge cases provided the swing and spin. Like the bowler reading the mind of the batsman, I needed to read the mind of the end user and that of the code logic to identify the gap between the two. The environment variables were like the field being set. And like the bowler setting a trap across multiple deliveries, I had to select the right combination of inputs across steps to make the application fail.
I wondered if it was the details and the constant striving towards a goal that made anything interesting.
Some developers loved the challenge of getting their applications past me. Some felt I was cheating by not sticking to the routine cases. The senior tester on the team, a stickler for rules, did not particularly like my unconventional ways. But I had the backing of the lead.
While I enjoyed the appreciation from the test lead, I was beginning to tire of the game. This seemed not too different from the computer games we used to play back in Chennai. And one day, when Mr. Zest said, “Why don’t we play some of those games for old time’s sake,” I was only too happy to comply.
It was not long before we found ourselves back in Chennai playing intently like that fateful day. And then we heard a voice behind us. And turned around to stare into the face of our business unit head. It had played out like an action replay.
I wondered whether he would send us off somewhere else. But all he did was take us to boss lady’s cubicle and say, “See how your project resources are spending their time.”
She stared at us gravely for a moment and said, “I know people need a bit of relaxation amidst all the work pressure. But you need to watch the environment around you as well.” And then with a slight twinkle in her eye, “Let this be the last time you are caught doing something like this.”
Mr. Zest’s project involved writing a mainframe script and did not sound particularly exciting. But it was still coding. The trouble with testing was that it somehow did not feel like ‘real’ work.
But he told me, “No matter what you do, you are still just another brick in the wall.”
“There is a lot of nonsense in coding as well,” he added. “For instance, they have this crazy requirement of a line of comment per line of code. I was not keen to waste time writing superfluous hogwash. So, guess what I did?”
With a guy like him, one could never tell.
“I just copied out lines from Pink Floyd lyrics to meet the target,” he said, with a chuckle.
With time, the Chennai mood swings were beginning to return. The cause was not the same though. I had left her behind in Chennai but could not leave behind the two who had asked me to leave her behind. I missed them. Irrespective of the cause the remedy remained the same – a ‘Wills Navy Cut’. I still needed the old Wikoryl fix.
And that was not the only fix from Chennai - Mr. Zest’s charm rub-off fix too worked its magic on our new project mates like it had with the Internet stream girls. But though I hung around with the team, joining for project parties and team members’ family functions, I never truly felt one of them. I was but a substitute for Mr. Zest – a twelfth man.
But testing was all I had, and the workload began to increase as the release date started to come closer.
The release fell on my birthday. But I had to come to office early that day and ended up working till just before midnight. The team got to know it was my birthday just a few minutes before my twenty-second birthday ended and celebrated with cigarettes instead of candles.
It looked like one more phase of life would get lost in rings of cigarette smoke. Only difference being I was in Bangalore instead of Chennai and in a project instead of bench. And testing games instead of computer games. But the future still looked as hazy as ever. What would happen in the next phase? Would I finally get into coding or remain a tester? Or worse, be released to the bench?
“Oh, no,” I thought. Not one of those again.
“However, our testing lead is keen to retain you. I have spoken to the manager of the new project and made alternate arrangements. You can continue here.”
Now that I was assured of my place in the project, my mind began to drift towards the possibilities the missed project represented – the allure of the road not taken.
Initially testing seemed a mundane activity. Just read the business scenario and the test cases and execute them. But over the days, it began to look like a game of cricket. The coders were the batsmen and the testers the bowlers. My job as a tester was to find maximum bugs and send the coder back to the pavilion.
To do that I could not just stick to the letter of the test cases. Edge cases provided the swing and spin. Like the bowler reading the mind of the batsman, I needed to read the mind of the end user and that of the code logic to identify the gap between the two. The environment variables were like the field being set. And like the bowler setting a trap across multiple deliveries, I had to select the right combination of inputs across steps to make the application fail.
I wondered if it was the details and the constant striving towards a goal that made anything interesting.
Some developers loved the challenge of getting their applications past me. Some felt I was cheating by not sticking to the routine cases. The senior tester on the team, a stickler for rules, did not particularly like my unconventional ways. But I had the backing of the lead.
While I enjoyed the appreciation from the test lead, I was beginning to tire of the game. This seemed not too different from the computer games we used to play back in Chennai. And one day, when Mr. Zest said, “Why don’t we play some of those games for old time’s sake,” I was only too happy to comply.
It was not long before we found ourselves back in Chennai playing intently like that fateful day. And then we heard a voice behind us. And turned around to stare into the face of our business unit head. It had played out like an action replay.
I wondered whether he would send us off somewhere else. But all he did was take us to boss lady’s cubicle and say, “See how your project resources are spending their time.”
She stared at us gravely for a moment and said, “I know people need a bit of relaxation amidst all the work pressure. But you need to watch the environment around you as well.” And then with a slight twinkle in her eye, “Let this be the last time you are caught doing something like this.”
Mr. Zest’s project involved writing a mainframe script and did not sound particularly exciting. But it was still coding. The trouble with testing was that it somehow did not feel like ‘real’ work.
But he told me, “No matter what you do, you are still just another brick in the wall.”
“There is a lot of nonsense in coding as well,” he added. “For instance, they have this crazy requirement of a line of comment per line of code. I was not keen to waste time writing superfluous hogwash. So, guess what I did?”
With a guy like him, one could never tell.
“I just copied out lines from Pink Floyd lyrics to meet the target,” he said, with a chuckle.
With time, the Chennai mood swings were beginning to return. The cause was not the same though. I had left her behind in Chennai but could not leave behind the two who had asked me to leave her behind. I missed them. Irrespective of the cause the remedy remained the same – a ‘Wills Navy Cut’. I still needed the old Wikoryl fix.
And that was not the only fix from Chennai - Mr. Zest’s charm rub-off fix too worked its magic on our new project mates like it had with the Internet stream girls. But though I hung around with the team, joining for project parties and team members’ family functions, I never truly felt one of them. I was but a substitute for Mr. Zest – a twelfth man.
But testing was all I had, and the workload began to increase as the release date started to come closer.
The release fell on my birthday. But I had to come to office early that day and ended up working till just before midnight. The team got to know it was my birthday just a few minutes before my twenty-second birthday ended and celebrated with cigarettes instead of candles.
It looked like one more phase of life would get lost in rings of cigarette smoke. Only difference being I was in Bangalore instead of Chennai and in a project instead of bench. And testing games instead of computer games. But the future still looked as hazy as ever. What would happen in the next phase? Would I finally get into coding or remain a tester? Or worse, be released to the bench?
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