”Dear Evil Tester”

Alan Richardson
This book is for sale at http://leanpub.com/DearEvilTester

This version was published on 2016-03-17

ISBN 978-0-9567332-6-9

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publishers with the Lean Publishing process. Lean
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© 2013 - 2016 Alan Richardson

Also By Alan Richardson
Java For Testers
“Wonderful stuff there. Real deep.”

Rob Sabourin, @RobertASabourin

Author of “I Am a Bug”

“The more you know about software testing, the more

you will find to amuse you.”

Dot Graham, @dorothygraham

Author of “Experiences of Test Automation”

“laugh-out-loud episodes”

Paul Gerrard, @paul_gerrard

Author of “The Tester’s Pocketbook”

“A great read for every Tester.”

Andy Glover, @cartoontester

Author of “Cartoon Tester”

“Dad, what’s a testimonial?”

Keeran Richardson, Age 11

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii

You can still ask me anything . . . . . . . . . . . xi

The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Are you truly evil? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
When is testing not required? . . . . . . . . . . 3
Why are you evil? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
What is the most evil metric? . . . . . . . . . . 7
Any tips for a certification exam? . . . . . . . 10
If all testing is exploratory, am I no longer special? 12
How can I get involved at the requirements stage? 14
Can I make a decent living as a tester? . . . . . 17
How do you deal with a developer with attitude? 19
Pinnocchio’s nose? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
How do you deal with a tester not pulling their
weight? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Why is database testing painful? . . . . . . . . 25
CONTENTS

Should I pretend to test? . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Should developers do eunuch testing? . . . . . 29
How do you prevent boredom? . . . . . . . . . 31
How do you define concurrent users? . . . . . 33
How do I gain the respect of developers? . . . 34
My team only cares about defects, what do I do? 38

Unpublished Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
How to track Exploratory Testing? . . . . . . . 43
What is Exploratory Testing? . . . . . . . . . . 48
Can anyone test? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
What is Sanity Testing and why should I care? 53
Can I measure programmer quality using bug
count? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
What is a Program Test Manager? . . . . . . . 57
Tell me about ad-hoc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Who invented Liquid Soap? . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Why do we have labels? . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
How do you invent? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Difference between a guru, mentor and expert? 67
Is ‘Test Automation’ a waste of time? . . . . . 71
Most common project failings? . . . . . . . . . 74
Is retesting a subset of regression testing? . . . 76
Which is the best test tool? . . . . . . . . . . . 79
How to interest people in testing? . . . . . . . 82
How do you test quality? . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Oracle database did not respond? . . . . . . . . 86
What’s in your Test Tool Utility Belt? . . . . . 87
Why do we test? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
CONTENTS

Why are some testers called QA? . . . . . . . . 94

What are the new trends in testing? . . . . . . 96
How do you talk at conferences? . . . . . . . . 100
Can one be technical without knowing how to
automate? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Essays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
What is Testing? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Unconventional Influences . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Slogans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Seriously, an Afterword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

Recommended Reading and References . . . . . . 129

Recommended Reading for Software Testing . 130
Non-Testing References . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Pop Culture References . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Unrelated Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

About The Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

 Introduction
One of the great opportunities I had when contributing
to “The Testing Planet”, was answering people’s letters, or
in this case ‘Questions’. We created a “Dear Evil Tester”
column, an obvious rip-off of the Agony Aunt columns that
have existed in newspapers for a bazillion years.
I haven’t added these to the book in chronological order,
I’ve added them in the order that I think either motivates
the reader most, or for comic effect, or I just pasted them
in randomly. Whichever explanation works for you is
undoubtedly the correct one. If it looks like genius, then
I meant it.
In fact the very first one, I made up. Apparently this is
common practice in the newspaper industry, but I did it to
kickstart the process. You might even be able to tell which
letter it is. I know which one it is, but I’m not telling. All
the other letters were ‘real’.
I had no idea if the people on the receiving end of my
advice were serious in their questioning, or if they were
contributing to the global joke that was “Dear Evil Tester”.
Frankly, I didn’t care. I always planned to take their ques-
tion seriously and produced a serious answer injected
with all the humour, scorn, and cynicism I could muster.
Additionally, lacing the answer with the ‘I wish someone

i
Introduction ii

had told me this when I was younger’ attitude that I wanted

out there in the testing community.
A Book of Three Halves
This is a book of two halves, and an extra bit. The first
section contains the ‘published’ letters and answers. This
is a nice, fun, gentle introduction to the world of the Evil
Tester.
The second half is darker, harder, at times intensely prac-
tical, but still edgy advice. The kind of advice you don’t
receive anywhere else, possibly for good reason.
And then we finish with some essays which summarise the
attitudes and approaches evidenced in the letter answers.
So prepare yourself. If you are just here for a good time,
then forget it, you’re going to learn stuff as well and be
pushed to think about what you do.
On Publishing
I was somewhat reticent in publishing this. After all “Evil
Tester” is a persona, not me, and while sometimes I channel
him to make a point, or to rail at the world, he doesn’t
represent my normal communication approach.
Frankly I was worried that some people would never speak
to me again. I’ve forgotten who most of the people submit-
ting questions were, if I ever knew, but I’m sure I recognise
some of them. And some of them I hope will speak to me
again.
Introduction iii

Also, I’m not sure how the world of work will react to this,
some people might never employ me after reading this. But
then, some people will never employ me anyway.
And I’m sure you, dear reader, don’t care about my em-
ployment prospects. After all, when one writes a book one
instantly becomes rich and famous.
Also, you may not have even paid for this book, you might
have ripped it off some torrent or something (if you did and
they embedded a virus in the middle then don’t blame me).
If you did pay for it, then thank you. I do hope it entertains
you, perhaps you’d consider employing me as a consultant
as well?
And I know some of you don’t care about my employment
prospects given the advice I received from some of you:

• “You should swear more”

– I’m pretty sure I don’t swear at all in here.
After all, we are gentlefolk. And if it’s in the
dictionary, I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count
as swearing. And worry not for I don’t even
use those words, so all the little children here,
you can read this text without any fear.
• “You should write more strongly”
– While touchtyping does make my fingers stronger,
I’m not prepared to bench press solely using
them. I think that is why God invented arms.
That, and to make it easier to peel bananas.
• “You should name and shame”
Introduction iv

– I put my name on the cover. Oh, the shame I

feel.
• “Make a stand. Take a single position.”
– The only principle I’m prepared to absolutely
commit to, with absolute certainty, is that I can
change my mind.
• “Add more facts”
– If I add a fact in here, people might think it is
made up. Then where would they be. They’d
start believing made up facts and figures think-
ing they were real because they read it in black
and white in a book and books deal with facts
don’t they. If you don’t believe me read Robert
Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus books, then try
and work out what is fact and what is fiction.

And frankly some of you are my competitors. We work in

the same industry. We do similar things. And if I become
unemployable then that works in your favour. I’m not go-
ing to be cynical and attribute this motivation to everyone
that encouraged me. Of course I can think of someone who
did, and might have, but… I’m sure they didn’t, well, I’m
mostly sure.
On Formatting
Some of you may notice that your name, no longer has
its special characters in it. Yup, that was me. I took them
out. Sorry. I didn’t fancy maintaining anything except
ZX81 alpha chars. Feel free to write to someone else and
complain.
Introduction v

When I started writing this book I originally formatted the

‘letters’ as:

Dear Evil Tester,

blah blah blah
from,
Someone

But, honestly, that seemed like padding. So I’ve done the

decent thing and removed most of the formatting so now
they look like this:

blah blah blah, blah de blah blah, blah de

blah de blah, blah, de blah de blah blah?
Someone very special

Then my answer in here.

Introduction vi

Periodically there might

even be a commentary
If I do write a commentary, then it will look
like this.

It may not read like a letter, but at least you can take the
consolation to heart that I don’t want to rip you off with
an inflated page count.
Nope, no padding in here. Every word I write has value. I
don’t just put text in here to up the word count and increase
the number of pages so that you believe you have a bigger
bundle of pages than you actually do. I would not do that
to you. Take me at my word that I consider your decision
to purchase this book as incredibly important to me and I
would do nothing that might damage that trust between us,
so you will not find any artificial padding in here.
Nope, none.
Nada, never ever.
That’s right, not… ever.
Enjoy.
Introduction vii

Slogans! Slogans! We
don’t need no stinkin’
slogans
You might even see slogans. These are
designed to motivate, provoke, make you
laugh, make you cry. Actually most of these
Eviltesterisms are generated randomly by
“The Eviltestersloganiser” (and yes, that is
me too).
 Acknowledgements
I am grateful to everyone that submitted questions. I’d
mention you all by name but we anonymized you for pub-
lication and review. After all, it’s an agony aunt column.
You bared your soul to the world, and I mocked you for it.
Thank you all. I’m sure I could have made up questions, but
they would not have provided the ring of truth that your
true life painful experiences did.
Also thanks to the folks involved in the publication of some
of these answers in the Testing Planet.
Those of you I know were involved by name:

• Rob Lambert
– Rob was the first editor of the Testing Planet
who introduced “Dear Evil Tester” as a regular
feature and promoted it so well that we had
‘real’ reader’s questions. A miracle. Thanks for
laughing at my early drafts and tightening up
the writing. I used my drafts in this book to
avoid your heavy handed censorship and more
professionally edited and tightly written prose.
• Rosie Sherry
– Rosie took the risk of publishing this nonsense
in the paper. I have no idea of the critical

viii
Acknowledgements ix

reception because she shielded me from such

fame and fortune. Thanks also for creating the
Politically Correct iconography for Evil Tester
rather than my crudely scribbled drawing. I
have used my scribbles in this book to add an
authentic homespun charm to the proceedings,
and to avoid any licensing fees.
• Simon Knight
– Simon for carrying on Rob’s torch, excellent
editing, and gathering many more questions
for the answering.

And I’m sure there were other Testing Planet people in-
volved. You all did a great job.
Thank you to the reviewers who provided comments that I
fed into the editing process, and who also kindly provided
testimonial blurbs that I could butcher for promotional pur-
poses: Gojko Adzic, Richard Bradshaw, Paul Gerrard, Andy
Glover, Dorothy Graham, Rob Lambert, James Lyndsay,
Rob Sabourin, Huib Schoots.
Any remaining errors are mine, and either intentional,
or due to my poor grammar skills. You can decide. And
remember, I do so enjoy starting sentences with a conjunc-
tion. And writing partial sentences¹. Stop reading now if
you can’t handle it.
¹I’d love to claim that this style was deliberate and influenced by my study
of pulp novels from the 30’s and 40’s, but I suspect it stems from my inability to
read my English teacher’s handwritten comments on my school homework.
Acknowledgements x

Thanks also to my family: Billie and Keeran, for putting

up with my answers to their questions. The quality of the
answers you read here is representative of the quality of
answers they receive at home. Just imagine how badly my
answers impact my son’s homework.
And thanks to you, dear reader, for joining us.

Welcome to the World of “Dear Evil Tester”

 You can still ask me
anything
If you have any questions you would like to see in a future
volume then please let me know:

• www.eviltester.com/askmeanything²

²http://www.eviltester.com/askmeanything

xi
 The “Dear Evil Tester”
Letters
The hardest part of coming up with the answers was what
to sign off as.
Should it be E, or Uncle E, or Auntie Evil, etc. etc.
You can see the range of titles I used.
If you have a favourite then feel free to adopt it as your
email signature, I won’t charge you.

Of course I’m not Evil…

Do I look Evil?

1
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 2

Are you truly evil?

Are you truly evil or just misunderstood?

Vernon

Dear Vernon,
Probably neither.
In an attempt to make this section more interactive I offer
you more options.
Could it be:

1. I’m deliberately engaging in false advertising for

shock effect.
2. I can’t spell. I meant to write “live” tester, incorrectly
wrote it as “vile” tester and hastily corrected it to
“evil” tester. And now I have to live with this vile
tag forever. Poor poor pitiful me.
3. I got drunk and, well… you know how it goes.
4. insert your plausible answer here

E.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 3

When is testing not required?

When can a person say that testing is not

required for a particular product ?
Yogesh

Hi Yogesh,
I like questions with flippant answers. So, of course the
answer is “Whenever they want”. They can equally say
“Bibble Bibble” whenever they want.
But I suspect you want a less flippant and more scientific
answer (Bwahaha).
My first Google search for “% of IT projects that fail”
provided me with a scientific range of “62 - 68”%. I will
make this complicated statistic easy for my readers by
conclusively stating that 70% of IT projects fail.
Therefore, I can conclude that 100% of people on 70% of IT
projects can say “Testing is not required for this particular
product” and they can hold their heads up high in the hope
that the project was doomed anyway. Pretty good odds.
Consequently we only have to concern ourselves with the
100% of people involved in 30% of IT projects.
We all know that “you can’t test quality into a product”
therefore I can use this to conclude that the product will
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 4

either be quality or it won’t, so we can’t use ‘quality’ as a

justification for testing.
So basing my judgement on the preceding science; I can
say: if a person has the power to cause the project to fail,
then they can say “testing is not required”, at the point they
make the decision to doom the project.
Making rocket science look easy,
Oncle E.

Are you a good little

tester?
Don’t patronize me, I’m not a good little
tester!
I’m better than that. I’m Eeevil.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 5

Why are you evil?

Why are you evil?

George

Hi George,
Thanks for asking. Its not often people ask that. Actually
they do. And I give lots of answers. So here is one. Ask
again and you might get another.
Testers very often don’t think that they can go beyond the
norms.
They think they need permission.
The point is we don’t need permission.
We should do whatever it takes.
We should be using the system as a system. We should
manipulate it.
It is one of the few things that we can manipulate without
consequence, without worrying about its feelings. We can
do whatever we want to it. We can act however we need
to, to fulfil our part in the project.
We have to do things to the system that no-one else will
do.
Things that no one else is prepared to do.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 6

Things that no-one else can even conceptualise that it is

something that you would ever want to do.
I use the term “Evil”, to give me the freedom and flexibility
to do that.
Hope that helps,
Cap’n E of the Good Ship ‘vil
PS. Do whatever it takes.
PPS. You can tell your boss I said so.

OK, so I cheated.
“What so early in the book?”
Yup, that’s what testers try to do. We cheat.
Get over it.
I was asked this question after a keynote
session in Poland at “Agile Testing and Au-
tomation”.
But I liked the answer and wanted to share
it with you.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 7

What is the most evil metric?

What is the most evil metric that is used in

software testing, and did you invent it?
Steve

Dear Steve,
Any metric can be used to beat people over the head. Much
malfeasance can be done in their name.
“Number of Test Cases” ranks high on the twisted scale
because, even when not wielded, simply gazing upon it,
casts a spell of malevolence.
Consider. One has to posit the existence of a tangible phys-
ical entity called a ‘Test Case’ before one can even make
sense of the words. This immediately puts the innocent
reader in a state where such terrible things can become
manifest in this world.
Most testers have not read the “Experior Maleficarum”,
they have not learned to recognise ‘words of disreputable
definition’, and even an Indagator trained in the “Rituale
Exploro” can lapse when confronted with primitive hea-
then words of power such as this.
As soon as one posits the existence of a test case it becomes
natural to ask questions such as “how many do we need?”
And worse, “how many have you done?”
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 8

And then you start to think you haven’t done enough, given
how many you need to do. And how you do you increase
the “Number of Test Cases” done? By making it possible
to ‘do’ them faster, by associating each counted ‘Test Case’
with a ‘Test Script’ - this allows you to add cheaper and
more ‘Unskilled Testers’ to the project to transmute ever
more ‘Test Cases’ into the noble “Done Test”.
And as we all know, once a ‘Test Case’ is done, it can
never be undone. Otherwise your ‘test coverage’ metric
and ‘test progress against estimate’ metrics become invalid.
Therefore we restrict the validity to the phase within which
they transmute.
And so we see that a simple four word invocation leads to
the primitive constructs which once were used in the sav-
age times including “Test Phase”, “Test Scripts”, “Unskilled
Tester” “Pass/Fail”.
Brrr, I get chills just thinking about it.
I did not invent this metric. I confess, I have used it, but I
didn’t inhale,
Frater Evil
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 9

Evil Tester and the Agile Team

The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 10

Any tips for a certification exam?

Do you have any tips on taking the {insert

nominated certification board name here}
certification exam?
Anon

Dear Anon,
Why yes I do. And I will not say “do not take it”. It is your
money, consequently, your choice.
I, for example, once bought an expensive jacket with sleeves
that were too short, I still wear it, to remind myself that I
should spend my money more wisely and buy jackets with
longer sleeves. We all spend our money on daft things every
so often, so don’t feel bad about that; or do, I don’t mind.
Keep to the syllabus. These exams are not like school ex-
ams, they want you to pass. After all, you paid for training,
if you fail, it makes the trainers look bad, they don’t want
that. Stick to the syllabus like a piece of discarded chewing
gum.
Parrot like an African Grey. Your job, when sitting the
exam, is not to display learning, your job is to regurgitate
whatever you were told or read in the syllabus. Regardless
of what you think about what you were told, your job is to
repeat it back.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 11

For multiple choice: don’t think “what is the right answer?”,

instead think “what do they think is the right answer?”.
And watch out for double negatives in questions, these are
a useful lazy way of writing questions that trip people up.
For written questions you need to remember that the mark-
ers use a set of guidelines. These guidelines tell the marker
what type of phrases to expect to see and how many marks
to give for each phrase. I harnessed this at university by
running through the paper very quickly, regurgitating and
parroting words and phrases from the syllabus in the form
of a mind-map or outline for each question. If you don’t
score it out, it becomes part of your answer. Then I would
come back later and finish the answer with written English,
knowing that I had probably already met the marking
guidelines with the brain dump and that I could not run
out of time.
You paid. They want to pass you. Make it easy for them
to pass you. Write down clearly and concisely whatever it
was they told you. Engage your memory, not your brain.
Yours Educashunaly,
Professor Evil
PS. And write with good penmanship. I have marked writ-
ten answers, and could not understand why one candidate
kept writing about “Chicken Feet”. To this day, I still don’t
know what they were trying to write.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 12

If all testing is exploratory, am I no

longer special?

I have always tried to do Exploratory Test-

ing, and felt that that made me special. Now
I have heard someone say that all testing is
exploratory. Am I really not special at all,
after all?
Steven

Dear Steven,
Ah, yes. It is hard when life slams our face into the
pavement of reality.
If you want to remain special, like me, then you have to
stop listening to other people, like me.
I like to use child logic on arguments that I want to treat as
specious. Allow me to help you.
I suspect that the definition of Exploratory Testing they use,
includes the null state. Then, even when the testing in ques-
tion involves no exploration, it still involves exploration -
it involves null exploration.
You simply need to use a new, and more complicated scale,
one designed to allow you to hang on to your delusion of
specialness. I like to call this the ‘better’, or ‘best’, scale.
Immediately discard the notion of null exploration as valid.
You need to remove that if you want to be judgemental.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 13

I suggest initially setting your “fully exploratory” scale at

20%. Where 20% of testing is exploratory and 80% is not.
Immediately you have become special again. And you have
invoked the 80-20 rule, allowing you to make a pretence of
scientific categorisation.
Then it becomes a simple matter of adding more grades
in your scale to help you further label the testing of other
people.
There is one special step that I like to take. Enumerate
everything that you do, and only you do, and then define
‘true’ Exploratory Testing as the specific combination of
items that you enumerated. Then you not only cease ‘try-
ing’ to do Exploratory Testing, you become the only person
doing it. And that will make you really special.
Helping peel faces off pavements since 2011,
Auntie Evil

I’m not evil, I’m just do-

ing WHATEVER it takes
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 14

How can I get involved at the

requirements stage?

How can I convince my managers to let

me get involved and begin testing at the
requirement stage?
Soz

Dear Soz,
Hmmm. There are a lot of ways to do this. The testing
industry has been building up a lot of material and books
and standards and processes for years that cover this very
topic.
Sadly, I’m not going to encourage you with their reasons
because I think that most of that material presents ‘testing’
as: “start spending 100% of my time on the project, formally
writing a test strategy, approach, and plan, and writing
test cases and scripts which are cross referenced to the
requirements, even though the requirements are changing
and therefore much of the ‘testing’ would lead to waste and
rework”.
I’ve done this myself. I had to do a lot of rework, and saw
a lot of waste. I don’t want to see you do that to yourself.
Do you think your managers hear you asking to be allowed
to do that?
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 15

If I was your manager I would want to know: What value

will you add? How much time do you think you need to
spend? What risks are there to the project, if you are not
involved now? How will your involvement in this new
project impact your current project? What do you think
you would produce as a result of your involvement? What
is the risk of rework to the products you will produce over
this time? How will it benefit the future of the project for
you to be involved?
But beware. If they let you in, then you have the responsi-
bility of demonstrating that you can add value early in the
project.
And if that statement has you provoked you into a rant;
“How dare he question my ability! Why I can add value
easily by …” Then verbalise your rant to them.
If you can convince people that your involvement will add
value, then if they are good, and if they are in control of
the process, then they will let you add that value.
Just make sure you avoid waste,
Cuddly Uncle Evil
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 16

Evil Tester and the Strategy to buy more time

The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 17

Can I make a decent living as a

tester?

Can I make a decent living as a freelance

tester?
Paul

Hi Paul,
If by freelance you mean, just randomly testing things and
submitting bug reports and hoping to be paid for them.
Then, no, no I don’t think you can. Although if you figure
out how to, then please let me know as I’d like to follow
your example.
If you mean, work as a contract tester where someone hires
you to test stuff on a contractual basis, then yes, some
people do manage to make a decent living as a contractor
who tests.
The best way I know to get started is to make sure your
skills are honed and in demand. Market yourself effectively
in your CV and create a web presence to elevate you above
most of the people applying for work. Interview well and
honestly, and when you work, add value to the workplace.
Fear not though.
Even if you currently can’t do the things above, there
are enough ineffective hiring managers around, such that
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 18

you can make a decent living from creating a fake CV,

lying about having a bunch of in vogue certifications, and
exaggerating your experience. You might not enjoy the end
result though.
Yours,
Career Officer Evil
PS. I’m not currently hiring.

Be the “E” word.

The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 19

How do you deal with a developer

with attitude?

How must a tester deal with a developer,

especially when the developer carries the
attitude that he is always right?
Baz

Hi Baz,
I have similar problems. Since I too am always right I
occasionally butt heads with a misguided developer who
thinks that they are more right than me.
If you are 100% sure that they are not right, and have
evidence, then let the evidence speak for itself. Of course
the evidence may have to speak to the developer’s manager
since the developer can always block out the evidence
through clever selective listening.
Sometimes I find it useful to compromise. Let them win half
the argument, wait till they’ve fixed half of what you want.
Then start up the argument later and fight for the second
half.
Sometimes I listen to the developer, and sometimes when I
do that I find myself being influenced by their argument,
because sometimes they are not wrong. (I hate it when this
happens.)
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 20

I’ve always liked these words “The Gestalt Prayer³” by

Fritz Perls from “Gestalt Therapy Verbatim” and when I
remember them, they help me.

I do my thing and you do your thing.

I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.
If not, it can’t be helped.

Hope that helps,

Team Dynamics Therapist Evil

³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_prayer
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 21

Pinnocchio’s nose?

If Pinocchio were to say “My nose will grow

now”, what would happen?
James

Dear James,
Ah, philosophy involving an impertinent nose.
Fortunately for me, Pinocchio’s reaction is physiological
rather than philosophical. A curious thing though. Pinoc-
chio’s nose grows when he experiences cognitive disso-
nance and, when he knowingly and maliciously tells a lie,
but… “Unluckily, in a Marionette’s life there’s always a
BUT which is apt to spoil everything.” But, not always,
because we know that Pinocchio’s nose does not grow
when he lies if he lies because he is too embarrassed to
admit the truth.
Because we testers are versed in the arts of System Think-
ing and Modelling, we would model Pinocchio as a com-
plex and probabilistic system. With Pinocchio’s nose as one
system, having a homoeostatic relationship to the system
of a living wooden doll.
Also, in our reading of Pinocchio we see that he takes
no pleasure in the growing of his nose and is normally
embarrassed by it, so probably I think, his nose would not
grow.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 22

A counter question to you dear reader. If Pinocchio were

an experienced test manager and he wrote in a test strategy
“Testing will demonstrate that the system is fit for purpose
to go live”. Would his nose grow?
Yours, physiologically incapable of performing philosophy,
Uncle E

Evil Testing Skill Set

The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 23

How do you deal with a tester not

pulling their weight?

What’s the best way to deal with a fellow

tester who is not pulling his/her weight?
Anon

Dear Anon,
The ‘best’ way. I don’t know. My advice isn’t usually ‘best’.
And I don’t normally do manual labour so this is a very
tricky question to answer.
I have been a manager though. And I have seen unbalanced
teams where some testers appear to be doing more work
than others.
My first step is to check my observation. I investigate if
the person is actually under performing. Sometimes they
are performing differently and the observations we are
making don’t include all the work they are doing. Generally
I follow Deming’s advice and try to change the system to
help prevent such misunderstandings, or change the system
so that under-performance is shown clearly.
Your question suggests that the tester in question is a peer,
rather than someone you manage. So you may not be in
full possession of the facts relating to your peer.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 24

My advice to you is to raise your concerns to your manager,

after all your lazy manager usually has plenty of time on
their hands, and it is their responsibility to deal with your
light-weight under performing co-workers.
Yours,
Team Spirit Coach Evil

Tools make everything easier

I’m not good. I’m better

than that.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 25

Why is database testing painful?

Why is database testing so painful?

Mike

Dear Mike,
Are you confusing database testing with physical torture?
If so, then you’ll want to read my “Evil Tester’s Handy
Tips Summary Guide to Telling The Difference Between
Physical Torture and Database Testing” below.
In database testing we tend to do some, or all, of the
following:

• insert data into a set of tables

• delete records when the system isn’t expecting it
• generate data randomly using an automated tool
• stress the database with 1000s of transactions
• use powerful Extract, Transform and Load (ETL)
tools on the database

Please don’t confuse the above with actions on your own

person, so for a pain free testing experience, never do any,
or all, of the following:

• insert anything into yourself at work

The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 26

• ask people to steal your chair when you try to sit

down
• create a machine to randomly shoot cutlery at you
• ask your team to help you run the gauntlet
• use power tools on yourself

Don’t worry Mike, we’ve all been there. I’ve still got the
scars to prove it. But by following my handy tips above
I’m sure you’ll start to find database testing less painful.
Yours,
Auntie Evel

Joke Time
Question: Where do testers sit in an organi-
sation?
Answer: On bean bugs!
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 27

Should I pretend to test?

In the past I have worked with project man-

agers who have only pretended to manage.
Just in case I come across this sort again
in the future, I want to know; should I
only pretend to test too, as a form of self-
preservation?
Eliza

Dear Eliza,
Ah, a philosophy question.
How do you know you don’t already ‘pretend’ to test?
What does it mean to ‘really’ test something?
But since I don’t do philosophy. I can answer simply.
“NO”.
If you short change yourself then that isn’t self-preserva-
tion. It is allowing your skills and integrity to slowly rot,
wither and die. It is condemning yourself to victimhood
as a response to other people’s actions. Don’t do that to
yourself.
Always. Always. Work to the highest level that you can
be proud of. That is an act of self-preservation. That is
a process of self-maintenance. That is a coping strategy
which allows you to weather the storms of incredulity that
attempt to swamp you on project after project.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 28

I try very hard to get in the habit of evaluating myself.

Not in terms of the actions of others, or in terms of their
expectations of me, or in terms of a ‘generic’ tester. I try to
evaluate myself in terms of my expectations of me. And I
try to continually raise my expectations.
I’m not going to tell you to stop evaluating people and
building perceptions of them, because that is an essential
skill to office survival. We have to learn who the predators
are so that we either keep our distance from them, or hunt
them in a pack.
All the best,
Uncle Evil

It might seem Evil, but I

do this because I care.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 29

Should developers do eunuch

testing?

What’s all this I hear about how developers

should do eunuch testing?
Jim

Dear Jim,
I can’t tell if it is your hearing, or your reading, that is at
fault.
If it is your hearing then you have misheard the word
“unit”. Unit testing is where developers test an individual
thing. For example, if I was a developer and I had just
written a system, then that system is an individual thing. So
I (as a developer) have to write what is known as a “Unit”
test, i.e. an individual test. So I write a single test to cover
my entire system as a Unit.
This has now evolved in Agile projects into an advanced
process called TDD or Test Driven Development.
In TDD testers are given complete control over the project
and drive it to completion, which they do by shouting at the
developers as they sprint around the room. They typically
shout things like “Now write a failing test”, “Check your
style”, “Refactor it into your poker” and other suitably
motivating slogans.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 30

If it is your reading at fault then you probably mean

“enough” testing. And as we know, there is no such thing
as “enough” testing.
And how do we know?
Because asking “How much testing is enough?” is like
asking “How long is a piece of string?”.
As an example, I have a piece of string on my desk, it is 302
mm long. And it isn’t long enough.
Hope this helps you in your next stand up meeting,
Uncle E

I’m not laughing ‘at’ you.

The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 31

How do you prevent boredom?

How do you prevent boredom while re-

testing and ensure that you are always eager
to break the tested product as you were the
first day you got the product?
Sowa

Dear Sowa,
It might sound glib, but my immediate response is to say
“Stop doing the same things you did on the first day.”
I must have a different attitude though, as I don’t really
understand your situation. If someone gives you something
and asks you to test it again and again and again. How do
your eyes not fire up? How does your trident not tingle
with delight? How can you not be eager to test? How is
that possible?
The only time I don’t feel that way is when I’m using
software that I need. For example, I’m real careful when
I use bank automated teller machines. A life lesson that
cost me 50 Great British Pounds when I couldn’t afford it.
True story, don’t ask, the memories still pain me to this day.
When I’m using, I try very hard not to trigger problems.
When I’m testing. I’m not using.
But as to how? I’ll tell thou, now. And this time I’ll do it in
rhyme. Because to not do so… would be a crime.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 32

Ahem…
As if it were the first day
Testing’s not besting the code they produce,
We work hard and challenge ourselves to deduce
Ever more interesting ways that we might
Have deluded ourselves into thinking “everything’s right”.
If we ever glaze over and stop observing anew
We’ll miss bugs by the dozen not by the one or the two.
So partly it’s fear that keeps me in focus,
Fear that somebody else will notice,
That tiny small thing of no real consequence
“How did I miss it, it makes no sense!”
There’s no time like the past. To experience time is illusion
There’s no time like the present, so I have a solution.
I stay in the now, but not in the zone,
I stay alert, with intent, and I’m not alone.
All of my skills, and my models and all of my tools,
The software can’t win. I have no other rules.
I never re-test. I test and I test and I test and I test.
And now, again, as if for the first time, I will test it the best

May all your good testing dreams come true,

All @ EvilTester.com
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 33

How do you define concurrent

users?

Why is there so much argument about the

definition of “concurrent users” in perfor-
mance testing?
Mark

Dear Mark,
The argument stems from the belief that people can’t multi-
task, so the notion of a concurrent user makes no sense to
some people.
It remains my fervent belief that this argument would not
take place if everyone learned how to juggle.
Hope that helps you in your next non-functional require-
ments meeting,
All @ EvilTester.com

If someone left a door

open, would you walk
in? Of course you would.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 34

How do I gain the respect of

developers?

I want my developers to respect me and

the work I do. I’ve tried learning the pro-
gramming language they use but this takes
time and effort. What’s the easiest and/or
quickest way to gain respect as a tester?
Andi

Dear Andi,
Thanks for asking this really important question. In fact
it’s so important I’m honestly going to give you real tools
to deal with this situation. No joking around. No messing
about. This answer provides “therapy on a stick” for the
common tester.
I’ve heard the ‘respect’ cry since I started testing. I still
hear this type of question asked at conferences and test-
ing events so I’m sure plenty of testers are reading your
question and nodding along. “Yup, I don’t get none of that
necessary respectful neither”.
I too found myself caught up in that tester hysteria. I felt
the way I imagine you might be feeling now. Poor poor
pitiful me.
But I got over it. I gave myself a healthy dose of sane juice
to stop that delusional thinking.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 35

You can too.

But before I explain how, I need to mock you a little first. I
don’t want to mock you, but it’s mandatory. I don’t enjoy
mocking you, but I took an oath. Claiming ‘respect’ victim
status means that I have to trigger your self-respect defence
mechanisms.
Think. Now. Have you got a skill? Any skill?
When someone comes up to you and says “Hey, I tried to
learn your skill but I found it quite hard, it took too much
time and effort so I stopped - do you respect me more now?”
What’s your first instinct?
And mind your language.
Stop using that word. ‘Respect’ is a woolly, ambiguous
word. It spans the spectrum from “being nice” to “I’m
almost in awe”. You don’t mean it. You don’t want it.
Are you ready to defend yourself and tell me how my
behaviour showed evidence of a lack of respect? Ready to
tell me what you want me to do differently next time?
[wannabe life coaches note the use of provocation as a
therapeutic tool]
And now. How?
How do you know they don’t respect you? Did you ask
them? “Do you respect me?” Did they say “No”? Ignore
their answer, you’d still be no closer to your ‘quick fix’.
The person you really need to ask is… you.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 36

How do you know they don’t respect you? What, in their

behaviour, do you use as the evidence that allows you to
maintain the belief that they don’t respect you?
That behaviour, or absence of behaviour, gives you an
actionable request you can make of them, or work with
them to prevent happening.
If you know they don’t respect you because… say… they
don’t invite you to the planning meetings, then you can
say “I’d like to be invited to the planning meeting because
then I’ll know what’s coming and can identify spiffingly
splendid risks in advance”.
[Note: It doesn’t really matter what you say as a ‘because’.
You can get all tautological on them “… because then I
can attend the planning meeting”. Cialdini provides exam-
ples, in “Influence - science and practice”, that ‘Influence’
doesn’t require a good reason, it just requires a reason.]
They might say “Oh, we didn’t invite you to those because
we thought the work you’re doing was so important that
we didn’t want to waste your time.” And then you know
that you were delusional all along, and I saved you a small
fortune on therapy.
Of course they might not. In which case, as well as asking
myself “How?” I’ll point out that I also learned how to
juggle. Nothing pulls in the respect dollar like a good three
ball clawed hand cascade.
Don’t worry about payment, your tears of gratitude are
payment enough.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 37

All @ EvilTester.com
PS. always assume tears stem from gratitude.
PPS. delusions should help us not hinder us.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 38

My team only cares about defects,

what do I do?

My team only seems to care about defects,

they don’t seem to care about testing, what
should I do?
Earnest

Dear Earnest,
Yeah that happens. You spend all that time writing test
cases and scripts and producing a big test plan (that they
still haven’t signed off!) And then all they care about are
results! Well they count it as results, you count it as one
of your many valuable outputs. And if you spend all your
time raising defects you’ll never get any testing done.
Its a strange life we testers lead. Defects stop us achieving
coverage. Coverage leads to more (and presumably ‘better’
testing) and yet people only care about bugs.
Well here’s what you could do. Yes, I don’t recommend this.
And yes I haven’t tried this. But hey - you caught me in a
good mood. So I’ll tell ya.
Options:

• a) Buy lots of bugs, you know those creepy crawly, 6,

7, 8, 9, 100 legged beasty things, and just leave them
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 39

running about the office and see how they like them
apples.
• b) Find an open-source project’s bug database and
just screen scrape the defects into your tracking sys-
tem - Bam! Hundreds of defects from one automated
script (see, learning how to automate has its uses).
• c) Just keep raising the same defect over and over
again. At least this way you can tell if they’re even
reading the things!

Ha. But of course I’m just kidding. They are all ridiculous
suggestions.
So seriously now…
In the testing world people spend a lot of time talking about
metaphors, and heuristics, and similes, and analogies. You
know stuff that is like the thing, but is not the thing, but
seems like the thing, and reminds you of the thing in ways
that the thing is kind of like but isn’t. Stuff that triggers
thinking and imagineering but isn’t really test design, you
know, that voodoo hoodoo testy magic stuff that they talk
about but isn’t real test design. Yeah. Yeah. You with me.
Yeah sister.
So how does that help you here.
Well.
You know how people go on, and on, about requirements.
And how the software has to do all the stuff that the user
wants. And requirements are supposed to represent what
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 40

the user wants. But when you implement the requirement

and the user sees it and they are all like “hey what is this”
and all “I don’t like this” yeah, and even “I didn’t say that,
who said I said that, did you add that one when I wasn’t
looking, who signed these off” etc. etc. etc. (But we all know
how much fun it is to sneak those extra requirements in,
so we don’t want to stop doing that, otherwise software
development just wouldn’t be fun any more.)
So really, we could think of requirements as metaphors or
similes, you know, then Dev Teams can riff off them to
come up with software that is kinda like the requirement,
so it might come close to filling the user’s need, without all
the hassle of really dealing with the requirements, which
let’s face it, they don’t know anyway.
Well we can do that too, to find bugs.
So. Here’s what you do.
Pick some software, any software. Say, oh I don’t know…
a search engine. And let’s say you’re testing a, oh I don’t
know… an accounting package.
Well what you do is look at the functionality of the search
engine, identify all the functionality in that, and then try
and do the same stuff in the accounting package that you
are supposed to be testing. And if your accounting package
doesn’t do the thing- hey, you just found a defect.
So try and search for “evil tester” in your accounting
package and see how far that gets you. It didn’t work! Bug.
The “Dear Evil Tester” Letters 41

Type in “evil” and look for the quick tip completion drop
down. What, it didn’t appear! Bug.
Try and click on the “I feel lucky” button in your accounting
software. What, you can’t find it! Bug.
See - three bugs in 30 seconds. And you could keep going,
just look for another piece of software and map it on to
yours. Bug. Bug. Bug.
Of course you’ll get the normal objections from the dev
team: “The requirements don’t say that!” “The user would
never do that!” “It works on my machine!” But hey, you’ve
heard those excuses before, they won’t stop you. Keep
going. Your bug count goes up and up and up.
And that was what they wanted! Right!
Great - go do it.
Warning: this might get you fired
Warning: this really is a valid technique for coming up with
test ideas, I might have just twisted it a little
Buy hey, go do… testy stuff
Hope that helps with your problem Earnest,
Yours sincerely, all the best, hugs and kisses, etc. etc. from
all @ EvilTester.com
 Unpublished Questions
Yes, you read this correctly. The Unpublished Questions.
The stuff that didn’t get published.
The questions I never got around to finishing writing the
answers to.
The answers that were too shocking to ever appear in print
before now.
Welcome to ‘The Vault of Unpublished Questions’.

“Well… what if I just…

oops… wasn’t me…
quick leg it!”

42
Unpublished Questions 43

How to track Exploratory Testing?

Dear Evil Tester,

My question is about exploratory testing
tools. Do you recommend any tools for
note-taking and managing test sessions? I’m
looking for something easy to use and able
to share sessions with other people. Some-
thing that developers would like to use be-
cause developers do testing in my company.
Our stack is JavaScript and some PHP and
we’re working on MacBooks. All Java-like
tools wouldn’t be desirable.
I think I heard your recommendation for
Evernote. Do you really recommend that?
Kaz

Hi Kaz,
Thanks for asking.
I have tried lots of tools over the years and I personally now
use the simplest tools I can.
That way I always have access to them, or a variant of
them, on any machine that I test on.
The simplest tool I have found is…
Wait for it.
A text editor.
 Unpublished Questions 44

Yup, my universal solution now, is a text editor.

And here’s the really cool thing. Developers love text edi-
tors. Particularly when they are doing dynamic languages.
You could use Sublime Text - that’s cool. (Even cooler if
you spring for the registration fee to use it legally.) Or you
could go all cutting edge with Atom. (Both cross platform
and non-Java so you won’t get banished.)
If you are hardcore then you can turn to Vim or Emacs. But
that is way out of my league. I like my editors simple.
This works for me, when I perform Exploratory Testing,
because I make my notes serially. Top to bottom, start to
finish.
I add timestamps in my notes to track time.
I write things like:

1 ## Jira123
2
3 10:10 Starting to test Jira123

The above would be in a file called 20151119_0900.txt

Because my day started at 09:00 on the 19th of November
2015.

And I do use Evernote as well. I’ll often paste between

Evernote and a text editor because Evernote syncs between
different machines, so I can start testing on the Windows
machine, and continue testing on the Mac with access
 Unpublished Questions 45

to the same notes. When I use Evernote I create a note

called ‘20151119 Daily Notes’. I can import and export from
Evernote from the text editors so I move back and forth
between them. I often work with Evernote because I can
paste in screenshots directly.
When I work with text editors I have to write in the name
of the file to which I saved the screenshot.
I tend to use Markdown as my formatting in my text
editing. Because if I want to make it pretty I can use
dillinger.io⁴, or Pandoc⁵, or stackedit.io⁶, etc.
So yes, I use Evernote and text editors for taking my notes.
When working with a team we then need to add a tracking
layer. So I tend to version control my raw notes and screen
shots. e.g. folder structure:

1 - alan
2 - 2015
3 - 11_November
4 - 19
5 - images
6 - loginScreenError_0930.png
7 - misc
8 20151119_0900.txt

The above could all be version controlled.

⁴http://dillinger.io
⁵http://pandoc.org
⁶http://stackedit.io
Unpublished Questions 46

I try to use the tracking tools that are used on the project.
For example: If we are using Jira then I would have a task
for each of my testing sessions and I would create a text
file for each session. I would then copy and paste from my
raw notes, into the Jira task that was tracking my testing.
That way I have raw notes that support my testing process
on disk, and version control, and in Evernote for easy
searching. And I have the formal tracking notes in the
tracking system.
This tends to work because I mainly operate on Agile
projects where ‘Story’ is the entity that we track work
against.
We have in the past, also used wiki’s to share notes, and
I can just copy paste information from my text notes to
persist them in the wiki. In this instance I write in Wiki
Markup rather than Markdown.
I aim to report using the existing project reporting tools and
build my test reporting approach around those.
Does that help?
Hopefully it gives you some ideas. But take away the
ultimate guiding principle.
Keep it simple soldier. Because that’s what we do, fight the
good fight.
Signing off,
Sergeant EEEEEEEEvil!
Unpublished Questions 47

Evil Tester and The Progress Report

Unpublished Questions 48

What is Exploratory Testing?

Yo E! What is Exploratory Testing?

Rich

Dear Rich,
I used to go exploring as a child. Out in the woods and over
the fields. And when we came back we had had numerous
adventures, found lots of cool stuff and done lots of cool
things. But when asked, I couldn’t remember all of the cool
things, and I couldn’t remember exactly where I’d been,
nor how long I’d been out. I wasn’t really exploring. I was
playing. Our intent, as children, was to have fun. We just
called it ‘exploring’.
I used to go Exploratory Testing early in my learning. I
found lots of cool bugs, used lots of cool tools and tried lots
of cool things. But when asked, I couldn’t remember all the
cool things, or why I had tried them. I couldn’t remember
exactly where in the system I’d been, nor how long I’d been
testing. I wasn’t really exploring. I was playing. But my
intent was Exploratory Testing, I hadn’t understood what
that meant.
I don’t particularly like definitions. I do however like
descriptions. And when I describe Exploratory Testing, I
try to include the notion of intent, or deliberateness, or
purpose.
Unpublished Questions 49

I consider intent one of the key concepts which nudges my

testing in the direction of professionalism, or not.
The discussions over the years for Exploratory Testing
have resulted in a number of obvious places where ‘intent’
manifests.

• Missions
• Charters
• Questions
• Risks
• Notes
• Reports
• Debriefs

These are places where we reveal our high level intentions

towards the software. These are the easiest forms of intent
to incorporate into your Exploratory Testing process.
If you don’t do this already, then start now.
Test with intent, with minimal up front planning, tak-
ing responsibility for your path and the communication
of your journey.
If you do that, then I think you’ll increase your chances of
identifying what Exploratory Testing ‘is’ for you.
Yours,
Explorator E
Unpublished Questions 50

Can anyone test?

Hi Evil Person! I’ve been told that anyone

can test. That’s not true. I’m not just any-
one. I’m a tester. I’ve trained. Please set the
record straight.
Chuck

Dear Chuck,
I get in to trouble sometimes because I say that “Anyone
can test”.
Note that I haven’t described what I think ‘test’ means. But
some people will immediately take offence at this statement
because they already know what ‘test’ means.
And note again, that I didn’t use the word ‘professionally’,
but some ‘professional’ people involved in the testing pro-
cess often read the word ‘test’ and interpret it as ‘profes-
sional testing’.
Is that what you did?
When I look back over the testing I have done. I can see
times when I tested more professionally than others. I
noticed the following.
More professionally:

• I produced more written notes.

Unpublished Questions 51

• I used tools to gain insight into the application.

• I created more screenshots.
• I knew what I wanted to do before I did it.
• I could describe the scope of what I covered in detail.
• etc.

Less professionally:

• My notes had less organisation.

• My notes tended to be written after the fact rather
than before or during.
• I forgot to write stuff down. I didn’t make any notes.
• I repeated myself.
• I couldn’t say exactly what I had covered.
• I repeated myself.
• I got bogged down in areas without realising I was
getting bogged down.
• I couldn’t say why I was doing something.
• etc.

The simple fact is that anyone can ‘Test’.

Anyone can do anything.
Anyone can build a table.
I built a table. It wobbled. It looked ugly. It took far too
long to build. It would have been cheaper for me to have
bought a table in a shop. I eventually threw my table away,
Unpublished Questions 52

and did buy one from a shop, so it was waste. But I built a
table. And I learned that I build tables badly.
Anyone can do anything badly. Particularly without train-
ing or experience. Hopefully that does not describe you.
You need to be able to test better than ‘anyone’ off the
street. And be capable of demonstrating that you can test
better than ‘anyone’ off the street.
If you are confident that you can, then simply challenge
the person, saying such disturbing things to you, to a “Test
Off” where you sit down and ‘test’ an application.
If you discover that you aren’t better than ‘anyone’. Then
work at it, until you are.
Better than ‘anyone’, but not as good as I can be yet,
Improv E.

I don’t want to settle for

‘good’ testing.
Unpublished Questions 53

What is Sanity Testing and why

should I care?

What is Sanity Testing? When should I do

it? How does it differ from Regression Test-
ing?
Anon

Dear Anon,
Sanity is a cultural phenomenon. If someone holds the same
set of beliefs as you, then they are sane. If their beliefs differ
in an ‘insane’ way, then they are ‘insane’. Often we don’t
recognise ‘sanity’ because we don’t know what beliefs we
actually classify as ‘sane’.
We only recognise this classification of ‘sane’ and ‘insane’
beliefs, when someone holds an opposing belief and either:
acts according to that belief, or states that belief out loud.
We can then judge them as ‘sane’ or ‘insane’. But not
everyone shares the same classification, which makes it a
cultural phenomenon.
We have multiple cultures: family, team, work, personal,
friend, legal, etc.
These can have different classifications of ‘sane’ and ‘in-
sane’. This allows us to behave in a ‘sane’ way with our
friends, but the same behaviour would be classified as
‘insane’ at work.
Unpublished Questions 54

Sanity testing then is: when we compare the system’s

statements of its beliefs, and the system’s actions, to an
agreed model of ‘sane’ statements and ‘sane’ actions. The
model of ‘sane’ is the one that we, the team, agree upon.
Sometimes in advance.
In the real world, when a person is classified as ‘insane’,
they are prescribed ‘rest’ and ‘talking cures’. In the software
world we take a different approach.
In the software world: we kill the system, pull it apart
into tiny pieces, engage in invasive surgery that we don’t
even know will make the system sane. Then quickly put
the system back together again, try to start it up and
bring it back to life (we call this execution), and then
subject the system once more to our ‘sanity’ test. Woe
betide the system that fails such a test as it is forced to go
through a continual process of death, dismemberment and
revivification.
This differs from ‘regression’ testing, because ‘regression’
testing has a different model. That model uses a clas-
sification of ‘evolved’ and ‘primitive’ to guide its belief
investigation.
Sadly our cure for both software conditions is the same.
A barbaric dismemberment, followed by disembowelment,
leading to internal organ re-arrangement, and ultimately
execution for reanimation.
Hope that brightened your day,
Barber E
Unpublished Questions 55

Can I measure programmer quality

using bug count?

If a tester was asked by his QA manager

to gauge a programmer’s quality in terms
of the number of bugs he creates while de-
veloping a website application, what steps
does a tester need to take? I need a good
answer which could satisfy the manager’s
need of gauging a programmer’s perfor-
mance through some or other metrics?
Anon

Dear Anon,
Ha! You josh. Clearly no manager would ask such a thing.
And if they did, my answer to you would certainly not
satisfy the manager’s claimed need.
The steps I would take are:

1. Laugh
2. Say “You can’t be serious”
3. Say “No”
4. Laugh
5. Say “You can’t threaten me”
6. Call Human Resources
7. Defend yourself until help arrives
Unpublished Questions 56

If your manager wants to do this, then that is their madness.

That is their job. Those are their windmills.
Part of your job requires you to decide which requests
are sensible for you to take responsibility for, and which
requests are so lacking in redeeming qualities that they
should be bounced back immediately.
Other people could probably list ‘nice’ processes for doing
this.
I’d recommend using words such as “No”, “Never”, “You’re
mental”, “Not my job”, “I think you’ll have to do that” and
“No”.
Or you could take the route of automating the request.
That might be fun. You could build a tool that takes a list
of developer names (for this manager you might want the
list to contain the names of developers on the project) and
randomly sort the list into ‘best developer’. Estimate the
time it will take to build this tool as the same length of
time that you estimate it will take you to find another job.
Bye.
Your always helpful, automatization recommending,
Uncle E
Unpublished Questions 57

What is a Program Test Manager?

What is a ‘Program Test Manager’? I think

every year new positions are made up just
to confuse the real workers, but someone
thinks they are recruiting for this position.
I guess if you don’t know that you are one
then you ain’t one, but I’d still like to know.
Anon

Dear Anon,
I don’t know what a ‘program’ test manager is.
I know what a ‘programme test manager’ is. A ‘programme
test manager’ is the fall guy for the ‘programme manager’
when the ‘programme manager’ delivers the system to the
‘programme test manager’ and the ‘programme test man-
ager’ can’t make the system work. Then the ‘programme
test manager’ is the person that the other people in charge
of the ‘programme’ blame.
Did you mean ‘programmable test manager’? i.e. someone
who will do whatever the upper level management team
ask? And whom they can blame for anything?
It might be that your organisation has decided to create
the management hierarchy from hell. And split the system
into ‘programs’ that are individually test managed by a
‘program’ test manager.
Unpublished Questions 58

Hopefully you’ll move over to micro-services and then the

‘program’ test manager will have less responsibility than
the ‘real’ workers and you’ll finally have someone that you
can boss about and blame.
I’ll let you into a secret though. ‘They’ do create new
positions to confuse the real workers. And not just every
year. Every chance that ‘they’ get. And ‘they’ do this so
that you keep your head down, and don’t pay attention to
the organisation. ‘They’ want you focussed on what you do.
‘They’ want to make it as complicated as possible for the
‘real’ workers to understand how a ‘project’, or a ‘team’, or
a ‘department’ works.
Because ‘they’ know that if the ‘real’ workers ever figure
that out. Then the ‘real’ workers would realise how much
power they have and start changing things.
And that can’t be allowed to happen.
Yours,
Agenda Test Manager Evi
Unpublished Questions 59

Tell me about ad-hoc

Tell me about ad-hoc!

Anon

Dear Anon,
I’m not sure you grasped the ‘question’ concept. You see the
aim is that you ask about something you don’t know, in a
way that models weakness, then I answer with mocking.
See, what you wrote was a command. “Tell me…”.
A question might read “Oh gracious evil one, I don’t know
what ad-hoc testing means, can you please enlighten me?”
Did you spot the obsequiousness? And the question mark?
So let me tell you about ad-hoc.
Google⁷ definitions tell me that it means “created or done
for a particular purpose as necessary.” And its use has
grown massively since 1950, either because population has
grown massively (I did not compare the Google graph to
a population graph), or because we do more things for
‘particular purposes as necessary’ now, or for some other
reason.
Regardless, things for particular purpose.
And that means intent.
⁷https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?q=adhoc
Unpublished Questions 60

Have you heard people call some testing ‘ad-hoc’, but they
didn’t mean ‘for a particular purpose’, they meant ‘doing
stuff’ and they meant it in a derogatory fashion?
Now perhaps those people didn’t understand what the
testers were doing. Perhaps they didn’t ask. Perhaps they
observed a process, but not seeing what they associate
with a test process (scripts, cases, etc.) they assumed it was
‘stuff’.
If the process had no intent, and it was not for a particular
purpose, then it was not ad-hoc.
But what if that was its purpose? What if intentlessness
was their intent. What if they were channelling Eris, the
Goddess of Chaos, what if randomness was their aim. Then
it would look as though it was not ad-hoc, but it really was.
We have to learn to ask questions, and model processes so
that we can understand them. Only then will we identify
how appropriate they are for a particular context, and how
‘ad-hoc’ they are for the purpose they are used.
And we have to test with intent.
Hail Eris!
Unpublished Questions 61

Who invented Liquid Soap?

Who invented Liquid Soap and why?

Jim

Dear Jim,
I don’t know.
Alan
PS. Please read my answer to ‘What is Sanity Testing?’

If “system testing
is a necessary Evil”
then “Evil testing is a
necessary system”.
Unpublished Questions 62

Why do we have labels?

Evil Tester, going back to the dawn of test-

ing time… why oh why do we have labels?
Regression testing, functional testing, pen-
etration testing. Do we (the testers) need
this? It’s all testing isn’t it? Maybe for those
that don’t understand our craft? Maybe for
that never ending search of common lan-
guage? Oops, more than one question in
there.
Davey

Dear Davey,
I have labels on my plugs so that I know which plugs go
in which games console. Seriously, you think they could
have standardised, but oh no: “I’m an Atari Jaguar, I need a
different display adapter from a Sega Dreamcast otherwise
people will get confused”.
And that’s why.
When you own the name, you control the marketing.
When you control the marketing, you control the brand.
And if you control the brand, you get the budget.
Yup. This all comes down to cold hard cash.
Penetration testers get paid a bucket load of hard cash.
Functional testers do not.
Unpublished Questions 63

Sure. Its all ‘testing’, but then ‘testing’ doesn’t cover it all,
so really ‘testing’ is the wrong word for it ‘all’.
And, more than half the time ‘penetration testing’ isn’t
testing. Its running tools that check for known versioned
exploits. Can we say the same thing about ‘functional
testing’?
Labels become a problem when we use them, believing
that other people interpret them in the same way. After
all, “Regression testing” is not “testing” (it’s a whole 11
characters bigger for a start⁸).
Labels can help shortcut communication when we have a
shared understanding of what we mean by the label. And
remember, we do not need that to be universally shared.
We just need it to be shared among ourselves.
The hard part is remembering when you move between
groups, which vocabulary you need to adopt, to avoid being
identified as “one that can see⁹”.
⁸My reviewers perform project roles in a ‘test’ capacity. This makes them
incapable of reading a statement of fact without questioning it. One such
reviewer claimed the count of 11 was true only if we counted spaces, and
therefore made the case that there were in fact only 10 extra characters. The
dictionary definition of character supports this view “a printed or written letter
or symbol”, “a symbol representing a letter or number”. Of the top 5 results
that Google returned for my search “online character count”, only 1 of the 5
tools I tried agreed with the dictionary and my reviewer (which is a pity, had
none agreed then I might have ignored the comment entirely). Also, in Regular
Expressions, Dot ‘.’ matches ‘any character’ including space. What a quandary.
All of which just goes to show that ambiguity is present in the simplest of
statements, and you should always have testers review your manuscript.
⁹http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096256/
Unpublished Questions 64

I can tell from your question that you have yet to be

initiated into the secret order of “The Tester”, otherwise you
would already be aware of our Craft’s “Ultimate Common
Language” and would not worry about “The Outsiders”
(those that do not understand our Craft).
I am not prepared to initiate you.
But I am prepared to tell you a secret which will allow you
to survive in all of the many disparate groups that comprise
“The Outsiders”.
Don’t use the labels.
Tell people what you mean, and tell them what you are
going to do, using normal dictionary words. Words that
have not become overlain with a discipline’s interpretation.
For example, instead of “I’m going to do some penetration
testing”, say, “I’m going to run tool X with configuration Y
to see if we are vulnerable to exploits A through G”.
This will work, but will not lead to acceptance. “They” will
know that you are not one of “Them” because you are not
using their shared language.
But, as I always say. “Better a quizzical frown, than being
hunted down (by skull faced aliens who actually control
the planet)”.
Yours,
33rd Degree Crafty E.
Unpublished Questions 65

How do you invent?

How do you find a good way to invent

something?
Wolf

Dear Wolf,
The easiest way to ‘invent’ something is to build something
without looking to see if it already exists. This explains
many of the libraries and frameworks that exist in the
world.
Clearly we would not class that as a ‘good’ way.
Another way might be to bring together a committee and
discuss it for a long period of time. You are almost certain
to bring in to existence something that has never existed
before, since committee thinking is rarely focussed on a
particular purpose and is often focussed on generic situ-
ations which do not actually exist. So while you may bring
into existence something ‘new’ it is likely to be impractical
and unusable.
I would not class this as a ‘good’ way.
Sometimes people invent things by accident. This often
happens in chemistry and engineering. But in software we
typically class these things as bugs. And while we may have
brought something new into existence, we often don’t want
it.
Unpublished Questions 66

I’d suggest that you focus on a problem, and if you can’t

find anything else that helps you solve that problem, and if
you can’t find anything you can tweak and tailor to solve
that problem, then you set about creating a solution.
The important thing though is to drop your invention when
necessary. For example, when :

• something equally good comes along that is main-

tained by others, and it is cheaper and easier for you
to use their ‘thing’ than your ‘thing’.
• you no longer exist in an environment which has the
problem that your ‘thing’ solves.
• you have expanded the ‘thing’ to the point where it
becomes hard to maintain, and it doesn’t generate
the funds required to maintain it. Either find some-
thing else, or strip it back to point where it solves
the problem you need and consumes the time and
cost that you can dedicate to it.

This might mean that you bring into existence something

glorious, but which only exists for a short period of time.
So be it. There will always be a problem around the next
corner, and perhaps by giving up on this ‘thing’ you can
create a new ‘thing’ to solve a new problem.
The hard part is looking at the problem differently from
everyone else, such that you can see a way to solve it.
Hope that helps,
E in Stein
Unpublished Questions 67

Difference between a guru, mentor

and expert?

What is difference between a testing guru,

mentor and expert? Please also, how to find
a learning plan and certifications to become
the one with highest salary?
Yam

Dear Yam,
Wow. So many marketing words.
Guru has so many negative connotations, since almost
anyone can call themselves a ‘guru’ and have a flock of
disciples. But lets assume that ‘guru’ means teacher, and a
teacher that is generally ‘influential’ or ‘well known’.
A mentor is generally someone more experienced than you
who gives you advice.
An expert is someone who is supposedly very knowledge-
able or skilful.
I only use words like ‘expert’ and ‘mentor’ in marketing
literature, and I only expect to be labelled with those
words by conferences when they want to sell tickets to
the conference by claiming to fill it with world renowned
experts, gurus and mentors.
Unpublished Questions 68

Dear Conference Orga-

nizer
Throughout this book you will notice that I
do my career no favours. It seems as though
I’ve just alienated the conference organiz-
ers. But here’s the thing. I was talking about
all those ‘other’ conference organizers. Not
you. You wouldn’t do that. ‘They’ might.
Those other ones. Not you. I didn’t mean
you. I meant ‘them’. You know who ‘they’
are. Right. Yup. ‘Them’.

All three words can be used to describe someone that talks

to you, but doesn’t do anything. Much like I’m doing here.
I’m passing on information. I’m pontificating on topics. I’m
not actually ‘doing’ anything. And I’m not demonstrating
any capability or ability to actually do anything. So all three
words can apply to someone who talks but can’t do.
And that’s why the words have a bad reputation. And why
there isn’t much difference between them, as words.
But there can be a big difference between them in your life.
Categorise the people who you have learned from as gurus,
to you. But don’t tell them that, because of the negative
connotations in the words. Just thank them and tell them
what you learned from them.
Categorise the people who you can go to for advice, that
you trust, as mentors. But don’t tell them that, because of
the negative connotations and the implied responsibility
Unpublished Questions 69

that you have put on them. Instead, thank them for their
help, and take responsibility for the implementation of their
advice i.e. don’t blame them if you fail when you apply
their advice, take responsibility and learn, and then decide
if you ever want to go back to them for more advice.
Categorise the people who demonstrate skills in an area as
experts. But don’t tell them that, instead, ask them “How”
questions so that you can improve your expertise in the
areas for which you admire them.
I don’t think there are any general rules for which of the
three has the highest salary. Although I suspect the more
fraudulent they are, the higher the salary they manage to
gather. Gurus typically have the higher salaries. Particu-
larly if you take it to the extreme of creating your own
religion.
I suspect however that you don’t really care about the role
distinctions. I suspect you just want to improve your skills,
and that the path of the ‘expert’ is the path for you. So
practice. Learn. Ask question of the people that you identify
as gurus, mentors and experts. Study and improve.
Hopefully, by developing and demonstrating your skills,
and learning to sell your experience and expertise, you’ll
increase your salary.
I can tell you what doesn’t work though. Writing a book.
That won’t boost your salary. Nope. Don’t do that for
salary. It might mean that some people describe you as
a Guru, or as an Expert, and it might mean that you can
Unpublished Questions 70

better sell yourself as a Guru or an Expert, but names don’t

pay the bills.
Being paid for skills, pays the bills.
Hope that helps,
Careers Advisor Mister E

Evil Tester and The Headless Browser

Unpublished Questions 71

Is ‘Test Automation’ a waste of

time?

Is test automation a waste of time?

Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,
Thank goodness someone asked about automating. I was
afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to cross promote my
other books¹⁰ and training products¹¹.
Certainly engaging in activities to automate processes can
result in wasted time. Sadly, so can many other activities
in testing:

• writing ‘scripts’ that require maintenance with every

system change.
• writing ‘test cases’ in advance that you will never
‘execute’.
• writing documents that no-one will ever read.
• to list but a few.

We must endeavour then, to minimise waste across our

entire test approach.
¹⁰http://compendiumdev.co.uk/page/books
¹¹http://compendiumdev.co.uk/page/online_training
Unpublished Questions 72

Fortunately that is one of the aims of effective automating.

(In fact of effective anythinging.)
Instead of wasting time testing a system that has been
installed incorrectly. We could instead automate the instal-
lation and execution process so that we know the system is
installed correctly prior to us testing it.
Instead of wasting time setting up data to test against.
We could instead automate the generation of data and
population of the system with said data.
Now in some environments, neither of the two examples
above, would be considered waste.
If our ‘testing’ demonstrates that the system has not in-
stalled correctly then that might be viewed as an effective
use of our testing. Or is it? Perhaps we could find a way to
automate the reliable checking of an effective install faster
and more reliably than the ‘testing’.
If we view the entry of ‘data’ as ‘testing’ because we are
checking that the system allows us to enter said data, then
isn’t that an effective use of our time? Perhaps. But perhaps
we could automate the data entry, and also automatically
check that the system has accepted it correctly. That might
give us more time to do even more testing.
Certainly it is more likely to be wasteful to attempt these
automated actions in environments without the skill to
do so. Certainly it would be wasteful if the tools and
approaches were incredibly expensive and more time con-
suming than performing the action without the aid of an
Unpublished Questions 73

automaton.
In any event, waste becomes contextual, and any generic
answer I could give, would have to be “No”.
Your helpful handy Auto Mate,
Mister E.

I’m not Evil, I’m neces-

sary.
Unpublished Questions 74

Most common project failings?

Evil Tester, what is something that fails the

most in projects?
Lupi

Dear Lupi,
Wow, that’s a hard one.
At least to be specific. That would be hard.
Here are some easy possible answers:

• Communication
• Process

Actually that’s probably it, since you could model any

system as a set of communicating processes.
Is one more important than the other though?
Does one contribute to failure more than any other?
If a process is bad, and impacts the viability of a system,
then the rest of the system knows that because of its
communication. If the system doesn’t know that then it is
a communication problem because we were not communi-
cating the right things to allow us to maintain the viability
of the system.
Unpublished Questions 75

So I guess I have to say communication.

And now I feel bad. Because that is so generic, so woolly,
so vague, so in-actionable and so intractable.
Guess what we have to do?
We have to take responsibility for, and own, the communi-
cation that we find ourselves part of.
In order to avoid falling prey to that big vague monster, we
have to communicate well. Communicate using words that
we understand. Communicate using words and phrases
that clearly represent our intent.
We have to ask questions (a form of communication), to
check if ‘they’ have understood what we tried to say (a form
of feedback).
If we do that. And we do that well. And if everyone did
that. Perhaps it is less likely to fail.
Did that make sense?
Yours,
Communiqu E
Unpublished Questions 76

Is retesting a subset of regression

testing?

While searching an answer, regarding the

difference between regression testing and
retesting, I found that, regression testing is,
testing all the test cases (both failed and
passed) of a build after a new build has
released. Retesting is testing only the failed
test cases. My question is, can we say that
retesting is a subset of regression testing?
Ana

Dear Ana,
We could say that “retesting is a subset of regression”, and
what would we have to believe for that statement to be
true?

• Retesting means testing only the failed test cases.

• Test cases exist.
• Test cases can ‘pass’.
• Test cases can ‘fail’.
• We can test only ‘failed’ test cases.

If you can believe those things then yes, you can say that
“retesting is a subset of regression”.
Unpublished Questions 77

I don’t believe those things.

Do I use the phrase ‘regression testing’?
On occasion. Even though I believe that the phrase has no
valid meaning. So I instantly regret it, and then have to say
what I mean.
I don’t believe that systems ‘regress’. I believe systems ‘are’.
I believe systems can exhibit behaviour that we don’t want.
I believe systems can exhibit behaviour that we don’t want
and which we have seen the system exhibit before. But I
don’t call that regression.
I test systems to find out information. New stuff. Stuff I
didn’t know. Stuff I thought I knew, but which my testing
has demonstrated I had a false belief about.
For example, if we could login to the system, but now
can not login to the system. Is that a regression? Or have
we merely exposed a false belief that we held about the
system?
I’ll go for the latter.
When I use the term ‘regression’ testing, I’m thinking of
approaches which are designed to confirm existing beliefs.
Or rather, when they succeed and do not report an error,
they offer no new evidence to make me doubt my exist-
ing belief. In some environments I might describe this as
‘testing all the test cases (both failed and passed)’.
When I think of ‘retesting’, I also think of attempting
to confirm existing beliefs. And, in addition, since I’m
Unpublished Questions 78

‘retesting’ (testing again) I will be attempting to find out

new information about the system. In effect, executing ‘test
cases’ which I haven’t executed before.
I try not to use the phrase ‘regression’ testing because I
don’t know what other people mean by that term.
I do use the phrase ‘retesting’. At least, I did. In the future
I will avoid the phrase ‘retesting’, because I was not aware
of the connotation you provided in the question.
In the future I will probably just say ‘testing’.
Hope that helps. And thank you. You helped me.
E.

Not all testers are evil,

just the good ones.
Unpublished Questions 79

Which is the best test tool?

Which is the best tool to help me test? And

why is preference given to the experience
letter rather than one’s skills?
Myers

Dear Myers,
The best tool to help me test is my brain. I then use that to
help me find other tools.
Generally I look for tools that help me:

• observe,
• interrogate,
• manipulate.

Observe means that I want to see more deeply into the

system. I want to notice stuff that I might not otherwise
see. By using a tool, I can have the tool observe something
while I go off and observe something else, and the tool can
alert me if it spots something I’ve asked it to monitor for.
And I can go back and review to see what it has observed.
Interrogate means that I want to drill down into an observa-
tion and see what’s what, at a level I haven’t told the tool to
monitor, or a level that I need to learn how to interpret. Or
Unpublished Questions 80

look into for a specific investigation, rather than an ongoing

activity of ‘seeing’.
Manipulate means I need to change something in the
system. Generally at a level that the system doesn’t expect
or support. I might want to manipulate values in the
database. Or I might want to manipulate an HTTP request
the browser sends to the web application. I use tools to do
that.
If you have a specific activity in mind e.g. observe HTTP
traffic, manipulate a MySQL database, interrogate the ob-
fuscated JavaScript code; then the tool I use is [insert name
of generic internet search engine so as not to imply that one
search engine is better than another], coupled with a well
written query which my brain has helped me craft.
I’m often motivated to find tools because my brain has had
enough and said “I hate doing this, find a different way!”
or “I want to do this, and these clumsy human meat fingers
are incapable, find a new way!” or something similar. By
allowing my brain to pay attention to the signals my brain
puts out, my brain can alert my brain to take action.
Much as I’d like to recommend “The One Tool”, I can’t. It
does not exist. And I’d love to recommend “My Brain” but
it works for me, and probably isn’t as good as other brains,
and probably isn’t what you need. So the tool I’m going to
suggest for you, is your brain.
Build it up. Develop it. Let it learn. Listen to it. And it will
serve you well.
Unpublished Questions 81

And as to why preference is given to the experience letter

rather than skill. Well, if you were a lazy hiring manager
what would you do?
Would you go through a practical audition based interview
that required you to understand the skill set in advance and
have the requisite ability to grade that skill in comparison
to other people?
Or would you rather read an experience letter and check
the spelling of a tool or skill you had been told you needed?
Yup. A lazy manager will go for the letter, and we can
either:

• Don’t worry about it and apply for roles where they

look for skills. Develop our skills so that we build
competence, and our confidence, such that we can
demonstrate our skills on demand.
• Pad out our experience letter with buzzwords ar-
ranged to look like sentences, but make no sense
when you read them because they are just collections
of buzzwords separated by punctuation and conjunc-
tions; safe in the knowledge that the lazy manager
isn’t going to read them as sentences anyway and is
just going to scan them for the buzzwords.

Yup. Good choice. I’d do that too.

Yours, in a slightly less motivated mood now,
E-man.
Unpublished Questions 82

How to interest people in testing?

Hi Evil! Could you please give me some tips

on how to get my colleague testers inter-
ested in testing? Actually they don’t know
much about testing, and they are not full
time testers (they do the programming too).
They were assigned with testing activities
by the boss. Thank you in advance, Lal

Dear Lal,
Why are you interested in testing?
What makes testing interesting to you?
I assume that everyone is the same as me until proven
otherwise. This ‘otherwise’ is usually proven very quickly
when I ask them about their collection of small plastic
religious iconography. At which point I quickly change the
topic of conversation to testing.
I then describe and demonstrate what I find cool about
testing the system we are working on.
The technologies and decisions we’ve made, and the in-
teresting risks that have resulted from those decisions. I’ll
describe the challenges I face when attempting to identify
if those risks have manifested in the system or not.
I’ll describe the wild things I learn while testing the system.
The new tools I master: to observe, and interrogate, and
Unpublished Questions 83

manipulate, the system at the different technological levels

I’ve found the system to be composed of.
I might describe the challenges I faced customising the
modelling and reporting I used to fit in with our System of
Development. And the refinements I made to avoid ‘waste’,
and the changes I’ve made from previous implementations
to make it more effective for our project.
I might sit down with one of the current features and
describe it from the point of view of a tester:

• the ambiguities that only become clear under a tester’s

gaze,
• the questions we have left unanswered,
• the risks we have implicitly accepted,
• the ideas we know we will explore, and how we came
to find them,
• the possibilities that we might investigate, and why
we might not,
• the tooling we might use, and the things we can’t do
if we don’t.

Oh, the places we could go! If you are interested, and

you can communicate your interest, then others will be
interested too.
Sigh. Now I’m interested in your system, but it’s not here.
Yours Interestedly,
I.E.
Unpublished Questions 84

How do you test quality?

How do you test the quality of a product?

B

Dear B,
I don’t think I do test the quality of a product. I think I test
‘qualities’ of a product.
I test observations of those ‘qualities’, against models that I
have made of the ‘qualities’ independently of the product.
And then I put the product into different states, allowing
me to observe the product in different ways. I compare
my observations of the product ‘qualities’ to my models
of those ‘qualities’. And when I see a difference, I can
then offer commentary upon the differences between my
observation and its comparison to my model.
Sometimes the commentary, after subsequent interrogation
and investigation, will lead to me changing my model. At
which point I can revisit the comparison of the system with
the new model.
Sometimes I will have to convey my commentary to others.
I have to refine my commentary into information, which I
enter as feedback into the control mechanism of the System
of Development that we are working with.
Unpublished Questions 85

At least I think I do. At this point in time. In response to

your question.
Vaguely yours,
E.

I’m not evil, I’m just do-

ing WHATEVER it takes
Unpublished Questions 86

Oracle database did not respond?

Increasing the size of the Temp file of the

Oracle database, the database did not even
respond after restart. What was that?
Moz

Dear Moz,
Yeah. I know. Seriously.
What was that all about.
Databases!
Right! Am I right! Yeah. I’m right. I know.
Seriously. What was that?
Yours,
Admin E

I’m not Evil. I’m doing

this for your own good.
Unpublished Questions 87

What’s in your Test Tool Utility

Belt?

What do you keep in your Evil Tester Test

Tool Utility Belt?
Vernon

Dear Vern,
It’s your second question, so I feel like I know you. I feel
like I can call you by a familiar colloquial name: ‘Vern’ or
perhaps ‘Vernie’ or ‘V’.
It almost feels like we’re buddies.
Run away now.
No, Seriously. Good to have you back. So I can abuse you
some more.
No, but seriously…
I used to have an imaginary belt. I did. I had a list of
tools that I used, and I’d add new tools to the list when
I encountered them. And I’d have another list of tools that
I needed to investigate in the future.
But what I found was I spent a lot of time building a list,
and less time using the tools.
I spent a lot of time investigating new tools, and less time
learning how to effectively use the tools I had.
Unpublished Questions 88

So I changed approach.
No lists.
No belts.
Instead, I identify an activity that I need the ability to do:

• Observe HTTP traffic.

• Create a file of test data from a Regex.
• Manipulate HTTP Form submissions before they
reach the server.
• etc.

Then I ask <insert your favourite search engine here> “How

X?”, where X is the identified activity.
This means my ‘tool’ list is maintained by everyone else in
the whole world (how’s that for a bit of effective delegat-
ing). And all I have to do is work out what I need to be able
to do.
And, sadly, that’s the hard part.
The hard part is not finding tools, and making lists of tools,
and learning how to use tools.
The hard part is figuring out what you need to do, to add
value to your test approach.
So I’ll tell you how I do that.
I look at my model of the system and I see which parts I’m
not observing, or manipulating, or interrogating. I try and
Unpublished Questions 89

work out what risks I’m not testing for, because of that.
Then I work out which of those risks I want to target. And
I go looking for a tool to help.
And here’s another thing.
Once I have a tool. I learn what it does. Because it probably
does more than I need it to do. So I look to see if any of its
features are things that I can see value in doing.
Having said that. I do have a tool belt. For mobile testing.
Filled with sim cards of different sizes, and sim adapters.
Because “I’m Batman”¹².
Yours,
Secret Identit E.

¹²From every Batman film ever.

Unpublished Questions 90

Why do we test?

An evil, but simple question. Why do we

test?
Jools

Dear Jools,
Why? Why? Why do we ask why?
“Why?” is a question that targets beliefs.
If I answer you, then I’m just telling you what I believe.
Why do you care what I believe?
In “The Gestalt Approach”, Fritz Perls wrote:

If we spend our time looking for causes instead

of structure we may as well give up the idea
of therapy and join the group of worrying
grandmothers who attack their prey with such
pointless questions as “Why did you catch that
cold?” “Why have you been so naughty?”

What would you gain from my answer?

Ah, but if you had only asked “How?”

“How do you test?”

Unpublished Questions 91

That would have been hard to answer.

I would have had to dig deep. I would have to codify my
approach so that I could communicate it.
And you could have followed up, each step of the way,
“When you say you do X…”:

• What happens when you do that?

• Who cares about that?
• When would you do that?
• How specifically do you do that?
• How else could you do that?

And I would have been in such a mess. I mean I’d learn a

lot about my approach to testing, but I don’t think I’d find it
so easy to answer, or so easy to dodge the question. Would
you?
But when you ask “why?”, I can answer without thinking:
“Because the system is there to be tested.”
How many definitions are tautological?

• What is performance testing? Testing the perfor-

mance.

How many beliefs are tautological and without founda-

tion?
Unpublished Questions 92

• Why do we do performance testing? To test the

performance of the system.

How many practices are the same?

• How do you do performance testing?

– Erm… I just use tool X (i.e. I don’t know)
– Well… I <insert explanation here> (and then
you can ask more questions to explore my
expertise, or lack thereof)

People seem to love “The five Whys?¹³”.

The portable TV is dead. (the problem)

1. Why? - Is the battery dead?

2. Why? - I think Bob used it all day yesterday.
3. Why? - Because he’s an idiot
4. Why? - Because he watches daytime Soap Operas.
5. Why? - Because he claims he needs ‘break’ time
away from everyone.
6. Why? - sorry, you are out of Whys and I could go on
all day with this particular belief chain.

And yet people use this technique.

Why? I don’t know, perhaps it works on everyone else, but
not me.
¹³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys
Unpublished Questions 93

Why? I don’t know, perhaps everyone else interprets “Why?”

as “How?” and answers that question instead.
I try to only ask “Why?”, when I want to know someone’s
belief chain.
Why do you ask why?
What question could you ask instead? How would that
have triggered a different answer?
OK. I think I dodged the question.
Good night all,
Mr E lusive.

The untold story of the Test Plan

Unpublished Questions 94

Why are some testers called QA?

Dear Evil Tester, Why are some testers

called QA? Is there a difference between a
tester and a QA?
Dil

Dear Dil,
QA is used in Agile environments because everything has
to be lean and fast. So people don’t use real sentences, and
if they write, they use SMS text writing rather than words.
Also everyone is called by their initials rather than their
names, except when the initials clash and then they use a
nickname like “Test Boy” or “Ninja Dev Rockstar”.
I have been told that QA is an Americanism. Apparently
in America “Tester” is hard to spell, so they use the letters
“QA”. “QA” is also used as a verb, a department, and a role,
because unambiguous clarity is paramount - I think that
was the 9th amendment, or an old bylaw, or something.
Personally I find this unacceptable. “QA” should only be
used in reference to Laphroaig’s Quercus Alba Single Malt
Whisky, or the process of “Quality Assurance”.
As a tester, I’m not in the business of “Quality Assurance”.
I’m in the fear business.
And as far as I’m concerned the “QA” job starts with the
CEO, and encompasses every other role down. If it starts
Unpublished Questions 95

with me, it ain’t QA.

I think this stems from people buying a few “Quality”
Management books and then not reading them. If they did,
then they might realise that “Quality is everyone’s job”.
I personally refuse to take on the mantle of “QA” even to
help those people whose lazy speak prevents them from
writing or speaking the words “Tester”, or “Testing”. That
is their problem, not mine. And like all minorities, I defend
myself against derogatory and prejudicial labelling, so I do
not allow people to call me a “QA”, call my actions “QA”
or call my work “QA”. I understand that some people don’t
like it when I correct them. But I don’t care.
I once channelled Theodor Geisel¹⁴ and produced this little
ditty that might help, I call it “But do not call me a QA”.

I do not like that name QA,

I do not like it, not at all, QA we do not say.
Tester, I do say,
It describes me bester, and how I play,
So it’s far bester, to say tester,
And do not call me a QA.

Yours, in a hat,
Dr E.
¹⁴https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss
Unpublished Questions 96

What are the new trends in

testing?

What are the new trends in software test-

ing?
Steve

Dear Steve,
This is great, I get to answer a question that when people
read the answer in a few years, think I’m an out of date
Luddite idiot.
Thanks Steve.
Of course, since no-one knows when I wrote these answers
I could pretend that I’m back in the 80’s and one of the new
trends is how we react to changing requirements.
You see Steve, here in the 80’s, we have our big hair, and
shoulder pads, and we realised that requirements have a
habit of changing.
And you know, changing requirements are a pain. You
know what it’s like. You’ve sat through the week long
requirement document review meeting. And now the de-
signers are ‘designing’ and writing the design document,
and the architects are ‘architecting’ and creating the archi-
tecture document. And the testers are ‘testing’.
Unpublished Questions 97

‘testing’
Writing a document, or multiple docu-
ments, with lots of test conditions, cross
referenced to test cases, where each test
case has a test script that tells the ‘tester’
what to do to ‘execute’ the test case: what
buttons to press, what data to use, what
to look out for on the screen. Because we
‘might’ ask someone off the street to come
in and ‘execute’ that script for us. Of course,
we wouldn’t, but we ‘might’, so it has to
be really detailed, just in case, you know,
because we ‘might’.

And the programmers are ‘starting’ because they have a

fairly good idea of what they think the ‘requirements’
are demanding. So they’ll get started and change it later
when the ‘designs’ are designed and the ‘architecture’ has
been ‘architected’ and they’ll ignore the ‘tests’ because the
‘testers’ deal with that.
Because if the programmers don’t start, then you know
what they’re like. They’ll end up hacking into the pentagon,
or something technical that no-one else can understand,
because they’re programmers.
Anyway. We write all this stuff down in big documents
that we have to review and discuss. And then. Would you
believe it. We learn something. And we have to change
the requirements. Which means we have to change all the
documents.
Unpublished Questions 98

But the problem is that the testers have to go through every

test, and every test script and change the same thing in a
million different places. And that takes too long.
So the current trend will solve all that.
We call it “change control”.
Basically. We ‘control’ the ‘change’ so that the ‘change’
doesn’t happen.
We call it ‘document sign off’. Every document has to be
signed off. Including the test document. (And frankly no-
one wants to read that. Blah blah blah boring.)
This means that we can avoid the impact of change on
the ‘test’ documentation. And the testers can write all
the test cases and scripts without having to worry that
a requirement change will have a knock on impact on
their detailed test scripts which anyone off the street could
execute (but won’t).
And our testers are so good, that they write many more test
cases and test scripts than we could ever ‘execute’ in our
lifetime. But that’s good because now we have a measure
of ‘test coverage’ which will tell us exactly what we didn’t
test, and then we have a number that will tell us the risk of
going live.
The only problem is that the users keep wanting to change
requirements. And so we have to have ‘emergency’ changes
which we can make as small amendments to the designs
and the architecture, and the programmers can change the
code. Yes that’s risky, but that’s what the testers are for.
Unpublished Questions 99

Unfortunately this creates an ‘emergency’ in the test team

and they tell us they can’t update all their scripts in time…
and blah, blah, blah, boring. You know what they’re like.
And we’ve just bought a new tool which the testers can use
to ‘record’ their test when they ‘execute’ it, and then we’ll
be able to play back that recording when the programmers
make changes and best thing is that the testers don’t need
to understand anything about how the tool works. Its
like ‘magic’. The testers call the tool ‘shelfware’. Since
the internet hasn’t been invented yet, I can’t [insert your
favourite search engine name here] it and see what that
means.
Anyway. This is all working out.
The project is estimated at five years. We’re only into year
two and I suspect I’ll be promoted in a year, and I will have
moved companies by year four, so I don’t know if this will
work yet.
But we’re on track for a successful launch in the future.
Yours,
Marty McFlevil
Unpublished Questions 100

How do you talk at conferences?

Dear Evil Tester,

You speak at a lot of conferences. How did
you start and how can I do that?
Gary

Dear Gary,
Maslow’s work presents us with a model of a hierarchy of
needs. As each lower level need is satisfied we then work
towards satisfying our next need. People use this as a model
of motivation. You might want to position yourself on the
hierarchy and see if your ‘needs’ can be met by talking at
a conference.
Personally I don’t use that model for motivation.
Some people are motivated towards a utopian ideal. The
notion that they have stories and experiences that will help
enlighten other people and help them move forwards in
their lives and careers. If you have such a utopian ideal
then perhaps talking at conferences is a step towards you
manifesting your vision. Focus on your utopian goal and
keep that in mind as you submit to conferences. Allow it to
motivate you to take action.
Personally I don’t use that model for motivation.
I used to attend conferences as a delegate because I wanted
to learn as much as I could about testing. I still want to learn
Unpublished Questions 101

as much as I can about testing. So I still enjoy conference

talks that provide me with actionable advice, experience
and ideas. Some of that advice may stem from the speaker’s
need to create their Utopia. I don’t know. I don’t focus on
their motivation. I focus on what I can learn.
But learning wasn’t the motivation for speaking.
I remember attending a conference and becoming so an-
noyed at the misinformation and the single-minded inter-
pretation of other people’s experience that flew in the face
of my experience. I remember speaking to other delegates
who were swayed by the speaker’s talks and were about
to embark on courses of action which they felt were the
only path open to them, now that they had heard it from
an expert; courses of action which I knew there were
alternatives to. Courses of action that I thought were more
effective, but I wasn’t an ‘expert’ so I could not sway them.
That is what motivated me to talk at conferences.
I was not prepared to pay to listen to ‘opinions’ presented
as ‘the only way’ and as ‘facts’ and ‘inevitable outcomes’. I
still wanted to learn, but I wasn’t prepared to put my cold
hard cash down to front this propaganda.
I was not prepared to passively allow a vocal minority
present a single view of testing. When I knew, and had
experience of, other options.
Even if my voice wasn’t heard by many, I wanted to have
some alternatives out there.
Unpublished Questions 102

I started to talk at conferences as a reaction. I was motivated

‘against’ a system, rather than towards a vision.
And I learned a lot by doing so. I learned to ground my talks
in experience rather than opinion. I learned that when it
was opinion, I had to state it as opinion. I learned that there
are alternatives, especially to the approaches that I present.
I learned that it wasn’t just about presenting ‘the expe-
rience’. It was about the decisions we made that led to
‘the experience’, the lessons that we learned from ‘the
experience’, the actions we took, and will take, based on
‘the experience’, and trying to present all of this so other
people can evaluate and take what works for them.
Now I have become part of the vocal minority. I talk at
conferences and I hope some people listening react to what
I say, by standing up and putting their experience forward
as an alternative. Then we can learn from them.
We need more alternatives.
When we have alternatives, and options, we have to choose
between them.
Choices force us to take responsibility.
And we need to take responsibility for our testing.
Start by finding out what motivates you, and then you’ll
have no choice.
Yours,
Vocal is E
Unpublished Questions 103

Can one be technical without

knowing how to automate?

Can one call himself Technical Tester, if

s/he is not good at test automation (e.g.
Selenium, Watir)?
Alek

Dear Alek,
One can call oneself, whatever one wants. That doesn’t
mean one can live up to the designation.
But in the context of “Technical Tester”, yes you can. GUI
automating can become a very technical subject. But you
can automate the GUI without understanding the technical
aspects of the application. You may not know the database
or the architecture, you may not even be aware of the HTTP
requests flying about.
Technical has a broad scope. Far broader than limiting it to
just automating stuff.
I suspect a technical tester will learn to automate as part
of their test approach because it helps them, and they are
likely to learn one or two programming languages along
the way. But if they stand firm and refuse to improve their
ability to automate then they can focus on other technical
skills. In fact, they have to, they have no other choice.
Unpublished Questions 104

When a phrase has a contextual definition, as “Technical

Tester” does, then it can mean pretty much anything. We
get to choose what definition we live up to. Others get to
choose how they judge us by their definition.
Wars have been waged over lesser things,
Uncle E.

Evil Tester uses Selenium WebDriver

Do whatever it takes!
 Essays
Wot! We don’t want no stinking essays.
OK, call this the padding section or something. I don’t care.
This is stuff I had lying about on my hard drive that I wrote
when I was trying to make sense of the testing world.
It is no longer ‘stuff’ because I’ve re-written it. Yes. I did
that for you. To make it more concise and readable. And to
explain some of the mindset that lies behind the answers.
You can skip this section if you perform a week long ex-
ercise that involves you re-reading the letters and answers
previously. And for each answer ask yourself one question:
“What would I have to believe, to answer the question this
way?”
And if you can’t do that, or aren’t prepared to do that. (I
wouldn’t.) Then this section is for you.

Go on. Break it. You

know you want to.

105
Essays 106

What is Testing?

What is Testing?
Do you care?
Why?

• Do you want to know because you want to know

where the limits of your job start and end?
• Do you want to know because someone asked you
that question and you think you need to give them
an answer?
• Do you want to know because you really like defini-
tions of abstract concepts?
• Do you want to know because you need to pass an
exam and give someone the right answer?

You might have a whole bunch of other questions - most

likely you do since I only provided four alternatives to the
“What is Testing?” question.
Questions I would rather people ask themselves include:

• What do I do?
• Why do I do what I do?
• What do I need to do now?
• What risks can I think of?
• How can we find out if this software can …?
• I wonder if the software can still do that when …?
Essays 107

But enough questions. Let me provide a simple answer to

the first question “What is Testing?”
I don’t think that such a ‘thing’ as “Testing” exists. Conver-
sationally, a normal person might say something equiva-
lent using the word sequence:

• “There is no such thing as testing”

And while that might not help you pass your exam, and it
fails as a definition, and ‘they’ probably don’t want to hear
that answer, it might help you figure out where your job
starts and ends.
Regardless, the above answer provides comfort and guid-
ance to me during times of trouble.
If I ever find myself in a mess and think “What is Testing?”
I can politely answer myself “There is no such thing as
testing, figure out a better question to ask”. Or “Stop hal-
lucinating, concentrate on what you see happening now,
figure out what to do next.”
If I had an actual answer, and if I knew what a thing called
testing looked like then I fear that I:

• might never look at the testing thing differently.

• might think that as a “tester” I couldn’t do anything
that didn’t look like the testing thing.

Over the years I’ve come to believe that my job involves

looking at things and processes and concepts differently.
Essays 108

I want the freedom to make stuff up, to pull in resourceful

concepts as required, and the freedom to do what it takes
to achieve the identified needs of the projects I work on.
I don’t find the question “What is Testing?” helpful. I care:

• what preconceptions other people might have about

my role and their expectations of me and people like
me (“Testers”).
• about the processes we use to identify, mitigate, and
make manifest, risk.
• about making what we do efficient and effective.
• about agreeing actions and who will take those ac-
tions now.
• about a whole bunch of stuff.

And I test, because I care.

I just don’t care about questions like “What is Testing?”.
Do you? Why?
PS. I think I managed to avoid all mention of reification and
e-prime. Did you notice?
PPS. If you don’t know what ‘reification’¹⁵ means or what
‘e-prime’¹⁶ refers to, then look them up.
¹⁵https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification
¹⁶https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
Essays 109

Unconventional Influences

I submitted this as the supporting paper for

my Keynote to Eurostar in 2012 therefore,
no-one has read it and this is the first time it
is been properly published. Which is a pity,
because I think it is really rather good.

This time. I think I’ll start with a rhyme.

The future of software testing requires you

to take responsibility for what you do,
and harness the things that make you you.

Your influences and experiences make you unique,

so you can speak from your heart (when you speak).

You will take responsibility, this writing demands.

The future of software testing is in your hands.

Sometimes I get worried about the future of software

testing.
Essays 110

I see people getting heavily involved in standards and

methodology frameworks, things that seem to change in-
credibly slowly, and ignore the feedback from the world
around them.
I worry that people who adopt them, choose to bind them-
selves to historic moments on other people’s evolutionary
time-line.
I worry because I don’t believe the world of software
testing will improve until everyone involved in it, takes
responsibility for their unique piece of it.
I don’t want to see a world of homogenised, interchange-
able ‘testers’ that all speak a high level language laden with
ambiguity.
I want to see a world populated by software professionals.
Individuals, who take responsibility for what they do; who
can bring in new ideas, and can add unique value.
Perhaps it’s just because I’m getting old. And when you get
old, you are allowed to get grumpy, that’s one of the trade-
offs for grey hair. Young people don’t know this, because
they haven’t had the “Laws of Ageing Handbook” through
the post yet.
I get concerned because it seems like too many people are
squandering their uniqueness.
Everyone is unique. We know this, we have unique DNA,
we were all brought up in different ways. Even identical
twins raised by the same people could not occupy exactly
Essays 111

the same space at the same time, so they had different

experiences. Everyone is unique.
So why the urge to homogenise? To talk the same? To do
the same things in the same way?
I want to see more mutation in our communication. Ideas
which change as they spread. Ideas which survive only
because people take meaning from them and pass the
meaning on anew.
So why the urge to homogenise? To talk the same? To do
the same things in the same way?
Our uniqueness means that we all have the opportunity
to harness our unique influences and use them to add the
value that only we can. Everyone can add mutation to the
testing DNA.
I know that some people don’t think they have anything
unique to add. They are wrong.
Some people think that unique means ‘new and completely
unlike anything else’. If you are one of those people and
you’re worried about it, then don’t.
A unique and different slant might be just what someone
else needs to hear to change. Your unique slant might
help someone understand something that they had heard
a dozen other teachers say without really grasping it.
Everyone has a unique perspective on the situation. Every-
one can talk about their unique experiences and explain
what they think worked and what they think didn’t, what
Essays 112

conclusions they have drawn, and what experiments they

are going to try next. And they can do it in their own words.
Everyone has unique influences they can draw on to open
up new possibilities for themselves or the people they
communicate with.
Everyone has life lessons, learned from different environ-
ments, which they can transform into a mutant strain of
testing DNA and unleash it upon the world.
The secret is that you are allowed to use your own words.
You assimilate the lessons and learning from other influ-
ences. And you own the forward communication of them
to other people.
Make a decision about how best to communicate your
learning. Don’t rely on a call to authority to make your
point. If it is a quote that resonates, then quote the quote,
and say who said it first. But the fact that someone else said
it, won’t sell the depth of meaning that you took from it.
You don’t have to say that you remembered words of wis-
dom from the “My Little Pony” cartoon: “Maybe that’s our
special talent! Arguing!”, and therefore you want to change
the structure of the team meetings so that you explore more
dissenting positions. You don’t have to mention “My Little
Pony”, and you don’t have to quote “My Little Pony”.
Assimilate. Communicate the lesson you learned. Use your
own words and talk from your heart.
And here is the real secret.
Essays 113

When you use the influences that are unrelated to software

testing. You have to take responsibility for the assimilation.
No-one else can. They are your influences. And that helps
you take responsibility for your testing, because you start
to own how you think about testing.
You’ll start to make choices that seem obvious to you
(because of your influences) that didn’t occur to other
people.
You’ll have to use your own words to explain those choices
because other people won’t have the context to understand
your influences, so you’ll start to take responsibility for
how you communicate testing.
When you do this, you’ll know that you won’t have bound
your ideas about testing to moments in the past on someone
else’s evolutionary time-line.
You’ll be building your own.
And I’ll worry less.
References:

• My Little Pony, Episode 17, Series 1, “Stare Master”

by Chris Savino. Script transcribed by Alan Back,
– http://www.equestriadaily.com/

Selected Influences:

• Ross Ashby, “Introduction to Cybernetics¹⁷”

¹⁷http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASHBBOOK.html
Essays 114

• Stafford Beer, “Designing Freedom”

• Charles Fort, “The Complete Books of Charles Fort”
• Robert Anton Wilson, “Quantum Psychology”
• Dr David Bourland Jr. “To Be or Not: An E-Prime
Anthology”
• Alfred Korzybski, “General Semantics Seminar 1937”
• Herbert A. Simon & James G March, “Organizations”
• Richard Bandler, “The Structure of Magic”
• “Horton Hatches The Egg”, Dr. Seuss
• “The Lorax”, Dr. Seuss
• “Scrambled Eggs Super!”, Dr. Seuss
• “Oh, the places you’ll go”, Dr. Seuss

OK! To be honest, I do it
‘cause it’s fun.
Essays 115

Slogans

A version of this text was posted on Evil-

Tester.com in 2008¹⁸

I always thought the slogans would prove the most con-

troversial part of EvilTester.com - more controversial than
the cartoons, and more controversial than the name Eeeevil
Tester. (You do have to say it like that, otherwise you take
it far too seriously.)
So after putting these slogans in the text, with no expla-
nation, I now present some reasons as to why the slogans
exist.
And note… I regard this set of reasons as the ‘serious’ set.

“I’m not laughing…at ‘you’!”

People take testing way too seriously.

I take it waaay too seriously at times.
In the past I took it waaaaaaaaay too seriously.
These slogans act as a reminder, to me, to loosen up.
To make sure that I can laugh at myself and my mistakes,
so that I can learn from them more quickly.
¹⁸http://blog.eviltester.com/2008/05
Essays 116

I still take things seriously. But in a different way than I did

before.

“I’m sure it seems as though I’m Evil. But it’s

only because I care.”

and

“I’m not Evil, I’m doing it for your own good.”

When I moved into testing, some people I knew could not

understand why I made that move. I had the skills of a
perfectly capable developer, and yet I moved into testing.
I did that because I cared.
In fact I cared too much.
I cared enough to adopt the identity of a quality policeman.
I cared enough to pursue quality with the same gusto that
others pursue “World domination”.
I did do stuff for their own good.
Now I try not to.

“Now I do it ‘cause it’s fun”

Oh dear, I can’t seem to switch my ‘Evil Tester Sloganiser’

off!
Essays 117

I do not want to adopt those traits any more.

These slogans remind me not too.
And they have the benefit that they make me laugh… which
has the benefit of helping me remember them… and if I ever
find myself heading towards that fixed and dogmatic type
of state or emotion in my work life again, then the ‘Evil
Tester Sloganiser’ kicks in with an EvilTesterism and stops
me.

“I’m not Evil, I’m Necessary.”

When I got into testing it did bug me that people would

call ‘testing’ a necessary evil. I later learned that those
people also thought words like ‘thinking’, ‘planning’, and
‘learning’ were necessary evils.
I remember scribbling the reversed statement “I’m not
necessary. I’m Evil.” during a ‘what is testing’ thinking
session.
I added that little ‘spurious’ note into my more ‘lofty’ notes
on testing because I really wanted to find different ways of
doing ‘testing’.
Many of the things that I did as a tester, I did because they
were ‘Necessary’ or because they were ‘Mandatory’:

• Scripts before execution

• Xrefs to requirements
Essays 118

• Test Scripts so detailed that a trained monkey could

execute them (provided the monkey could read En-
glish - no doubt seconded from the Infinite Monkey
Project¹⁹)
• …I used to have so many of these type of things.

Those little notes got me thinking about what else I could

do, when I did not have other words to explain it.
And even now the notion of “Eeevil” generates a state, a
mindset, a view point, that can help me test that little bit
differently very quickly.
A humorous state. A Mischievous state. A sneaky state. A
“well what if I just… oops… wasn’t me… quick leg it!” state.
You probably have your own trigger words. Identify
them. Use them for your own benefit.

“I’m just doing WHATEVER it takes.”

Prior to learning the concepts of “Exploratory Testing” or

“Context Driven Testing” all I had was the nagging thought
that ‘there had to exist better ways of doing this stuff’.
And that also contributed to the concept of “Eeevil”.
Diverting from the ‘happy’ path and taking the left hand
path.
Leaving the script and going tinkering.
¹⁹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
Essays 119

Doing some misdeeds to the system…

• Pushing and prodding it.

• Sticking it with a pitchfork or two.
• Gently roasting it over a roaring hellfire.

“Eeeevil” provides me with a rich set of metaphors, and

they help me test. I guess some people use the term ‘nega-
tive’ testing for that.

“Of course I’m not Evil… Do I look Evil?”

I spend a lot of time improving my testing skills, re-assess-

ing my thoughts about testing and incorporating models,
approaches and belief systems from other disciplines to
help me expand my ‘goodness’ as a tester.
Sadly, the better I became, the more distance grew between
me and the ‘traditional’, ‘best’, ‘right’ or ‘good’ ways of
doing testing.
What other word could I use other than “Eeevil”?
And unfortunately after too many years of studying hyp-
nosis, and cultivating long hair and a beard, some people
may think I look slightly Eeevil. That is their choice, people
will judge, people will generalise, people will assume, we
all do; testers need to do train themselves out of that.

“Go on. Break it. You know you want to.”

Essays 120

But, you protest, we don’t break software, it is already

broken.
Well, it probably isn’t even ‘broken’. Broken suggests that
it was working, then you did something, now it doesn’t
work. With software, it probably never worked. Just no-
one noticed.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t try.
Remember, we’re trying to build an attitude here.
Go on. You know you want to.

“Not all Testers are Evil… Just the good ones.”

Ha. Now come on, comedy gold.

It instantly activates my ‘over-generalisation’ alert, and I
always avoid over-generalising.
Each of the slogans violate what Alfred Korzybski²⁰ called
the “Is of Identity²¹”. Korzybski wrote a book entitled
“Science and Sanity” which presented some of his thoughts
on abstraction, generalisation and sanity.
Robin Williams on “Reality…What a Concept” said “You’re
only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.²².”
²⁰http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski
²¹http://everything2.com/e2node/The%2520%2522is%2522%2520of%
2520identity
²²http://www.rd.com/your-america-inspiring-people-and-stories/quotes-
from-comedians/article28210.html
Essays 121

On the same track of the album, Robin Williams then went

on to say “And they haven’t figured out how to tax that
yet” (although I think I just paraphrased him).
Anyway, words to keep close to your heart if you don’t
have any room for any EvilTesterisms.
Summary

• Draw your own conclusions.

• The slogans are for my benefit not for yours.
• Write your own slogans.
• Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop. And don’t let anyone
stop you.
 Seriously, an Afterword
Most people won’t get this far. You did.
So I can level with you. Seriously now.
If you think this was about making fun of testing then…
you’re partly right. But really…

…this was about taking

responsibility, and cre-
ating a future that you
want to be part of.

Sometimes we ask questions when we really don’t know

the answer, and we want help.
Sometimes we have no choice. We can’t ask anyone. We
just have to decide.
Try something.
Take responsibility.
Take action.
Create a future.
You will make mistakes. I guarantee it. You can learn from
those.

122
Seriously, an Afterword 123

If you succeed, and everyone says how great you are, you
probably won’t know why. And then you’ll be annoyed
when you go to your next job, do the same things, and
everyone calls you an idiot.
Because you didn’t learn from your actions.
The feedback you received caused you to do it again
without thinking.
When you fail. You figure out why. And you do it better
next time. Regardless of whatever anyone else says to you.
You know you’ve changed.
Did you react?
Did you react to any of the answers?
I hope you did.
I hope you thought:

• Well that would be the wrong thing to do.

• Well… maybe…
• Ha! No. Do this instead.
• something else

I hope the answers entertained, but made you think about

what you would do. I hope you have a better understand-
ing of how you think about testing and how you would
approach the work.
Seriously, an Afterword 124

Provocative Therapy
The world of psychotherapy in the 60’s and 70’s was filled
with experimentation. Really, really mad stuff. I mean
really, dolphins! And empty chairs! And… well, you can
look it up if you want.
And one thing they experimented with were systems.
People systems.
You may have heard of Virginia Satir and ‘Conjoint Family
Therapy’? Working with families as systems, changing the
whole system, not just the ‘person with a problem’.
We need to learn systems. We test systems. We work in
a System of Development. And we interact with bunch of
people systems - teams, organisations, projects, etc.
When you learn systems theory and systems thinking, you
will encounter the notion of feedback.

• Positive feedback - the stuff that tells us we are on

track.
• Negative feedback - the stuff that tells us to change.

Positive feedback is important, but hard to react to.

Negative feedback is easy. We react to it. We do something
about it.
A therapist named Frank Farrelly harnessed that and made
it a foundation of something he termed ‘Provocative Ther-
apy’.
Seriously, an Afterword 125

Therapy where he, the Provocative Therapist, provoked the

client with ‘negative feedback’. Very often these were state-
ments of observed fact that the client didn’t like (negative)
e.g. “you spend more time maintaining your test scripts,
than you do testing. Why don’t they just call you a ‘script
maintainer’ instead of a tester.” Harsh huh. But truth hurts.
Why would he do that?
At a time when Carl Rogers was going all humanist and
helping people ‘actualize’, why were some therapists in-
sulting their clients?
Because, we respond to negative feedback. We react to
statements of truth that we don’t want to believe. We react
to statements we want to believe are false. We react.
And in therapy, reacting would imply taking responsibility
for an action. Dropping victim status and starting to take
responsibility. A first step on a road to ‘self-actualization’.
But why did a client sit there and be insulted? Because the
Provocative Therapist used humour, they told jokes, they
phrased things in a light hearted, jovial, manner. Humour.
Listen to Bill Hicks. Listen to George Carlin.
Humour can tell hard truths in a way that people listen.
I noticed early on in my career that in many project
meetings I was in, where the project was in utter disaster
mode, the testers were the only ones cracking jokes. It was
a defence mechanism, because they knew that whatever
Seriously, an Afterword 126

disasters were happening in the project, they were pretty

soon all going to come crashing down on the test team.
But it was also a way to tell hard truths in a friendly, honest,
humorous way. Much like a Provocative Therapist.
I didn’t know that at the time. I learned about Provocative
Therapy later. And when I read “Provocative Therapy” by
Frank Farrelly, I could relate to it.
Take testing seriously
The comedians I like take things seriously. So seriously in
fact, that they will mock them mercilessly. Flay them till
the skin comes off and we can see the rotten innards that
allow us to see the problem and take action that makes a
change.
I take testing seriously.
That’s what this is about.
I take this seriously enough that I will mock it. I will mock
the decisions we make. I will mock the decisions I make. I
will work hard to improve.
And I know, that I still have a lot to learn.
And the things I think I know now, are going to fail me in
the future. So I can’t attach myself to them.
Honest observation does not come easily. But if we are
serious about what we do then we need to step back,
observe, and comment in a way that we will take notice
and take action.
Seriously, an Afterword 127

I tried to do that with these answers. Sometimes more

clinically than others. But for each question, an external
person had to build a model of the questioner:

• What would I have to believe to ask this question?

• What would I be going through if this situation were
true?
• etc.

Then, find a few statements that could open up a seam

in that model to allow the questioner to look inside and
provoke a response.
I hope you take testing seriously enough to question your
models of testing and recognise your ‘absolutes’ for what
they really are: ‘beliefs’, and that when they fail you,
and they will fail you, that you will accept the negative
feedback and learn to adopt a new approach.
I hope you exhibit the requisite variety you need to survive
and that you can evolve your models of the world, and
explore the world in safety and armed with a cutting sense
of humour.
When you do, you’ll take responsibility for your testing,
for your questions, and for your own answers. And you’ll
build a future that you can live in.
I also hope that you are not a despotic megalomaniac and
that you recognise that you are part of system along with
other people.
Seriously, an Afterword 128

Are you a despotic megalomaniac?

Then please read Carl Rogers instead of
Frank Farrelly.

Responsibility
Ultimately this, and much of my work, concerns responsi-
bility.
Providing people with the skills, the techniques, the mod-
els, the motivation, the provocation, to take responsibility
for what they do.
I hope you will.

Be Good
Good and Evil are relative terms.
If you accept that, then words hold less
power over you. Choose your actions well.
Stop labelling them ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’. Take
responsibility. Build your own models. Do
what you need to.
Do what you have to, to be the change you
want to see.
 Recommended Reading
and References
When I was answering these questions, I would scan my
bookcase for inspiration - mainly the book spines rather
than the content. But occasionally I had to crack open a
book to pull out a quote.
In this section I will list some of the sources that I drew
upon.
I like to encourage people to ‘go to the source’. Do read the
references, but also track down the references mentioned
in the references, and read what they were built on; that
can lead to a surprising chain of study.
I will also list some of the popular culture references I
mentioned in the text. I use the word ‘popular’ loosely since
I’m not particularly trendy.

129
Recommended Reading and References 130

Recommended Reading for

Software Testing

To improve our testing we need to study Software Testing.

And when I look at my bookshelf to see what Software
Testing books I still retain, I see many that I enjoy, but only
a few I can recommend to ‘everyone’.
I don’t wish to overload you with testing books, since
studying these will take time. Especially if you ‘go to
the source’ for all of these books, and create your own
interpretations and models of the material presented.
Software Testing Techniques
Written by Boris Beizer, this is the only ‘technique’ book I
keep handy. And one of the few testing books of which I
have multiple copies. There are other more popular books,
but this appeals to me. Densely written, it requires study.
But I think it presents some of the fundamental techniques
in more detail than later similar books. When you read this
you might get the impression that testing has something to
do with Set Theory, Graph Theory and Computer Science.
And you might think that you need to learn about those
topics too.
Lessons Learned in Software Testing
Written by Cem Kaner, James Bach and Bret Pettichord.
This is a book to dip in and out of. It benefits from three
points of view which offer different perspectives on the
same point under discussion. Experience based, it makes
Recommended Reading and References 131

you think, and offers re-read value. The only other testing
book, of which I have multiple copies.
How To Break Software, How to Break Web Software
Written by James Whittaker, with collaborator Mike An-
drews. These books haven’t ‘aged’ well. The software they
use, and the tools are out of date. Which means that you
will have to work to gain the value from them. As a study
approach I suggest you make notes on the techniques,
then generalise them to principles, then identify ways of
implementing the technique with current browsers and
operating systems.
What, is that it?
Seriously dude, there are so many books out there on
Software Testing, you should read as many as humanly
possibly. Really, I read everything I could get my grubby
little hands on. But the ones I listed above are those that I
re-read. The books that have little overlap with other texts.
In some ways, these books are a provocation to you.
When you read Beizer you might go “Whoah! There must
be something simpler than this!”. And there are many
technique books, simpler than this, they just don’t present
the same level of detail or study value.
When you read Kaner, Bach and Pettichord you might
think “Wha! I have to interpret this and decide what to
do!” True, but there are other books that present templates
and processes and approaches that you can adopt without
thinking too much.
Recommended Reading and References 132

When you read Whittaker, I know you’ll have to find ‘new’

tools and ‘new’ approaches to do what they describe. You
will have to identify the aim of their technique and ‘learn’
how to achieve a similar result on your own system.
So yes. That’s it²³.
“What! No books on automation!”. Well, this was a book
about ‘testing’, not ‘automating’. But if you’re interested
I listed my favourite books on automating in the recom-
mended reading section of my book “Java For Testers”.
Other Non-Traditional Testing Books
I only know of two other ‘non-traditional’ testing books,
which educate with a light hearted manner, and both I can
recommend:

• “I am a Bug” - Robert Sabourin’s Children’s testing

book. A funny, slim volume, with a deep heart, a light
step and a lasting presence.
• “Cartoon Tester” - Andy Glover’s compilation of
testing cartoons. Funny, educational, and available
from leanpub²⁴.

²³You can find more books listed at

http://compendiumdev.co.uk/page/bookreviews
²⁴https://leanpub.com/thecartoontester
Recommended Reading and References 133

Non-Testing References

These books were mentioned in the text, and I will offer

some commentary as to why.
Science and Sanity by Alfred Korzybski
The massive tome that forms the basis of General Seman-
tics²⁵. A body of work that aims to make people conscious
of the abstractions that we make and the models that we
interact with. There are many other books which offer cut
down, bite size versions, see also the Wikipedia entry on
General Semantics²⁶. A heavily influential book. Korzyb-
ski’s “General Semantics Seminar 1937” provides a shorter
introduction and summary of his work.
Introduction to Cybernetics²⁷
Written by Ross Ashby. Cybernetics deals with systems,
feedback and control. Ashby describes the notion of ‘Req-
uisite Variety’ - the flexibility of response required by a
system to deal effectively with the ‘input’ that the system
receives. A notion worth its weight in gold when you want
to write contextual test strategies that actually add value to
your organisation, rather than introduce waste and re-use
boilerplate.

²⁵http://www.generalsemantics.org/
²⁶https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semantics
²⁷http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASHBBOOK.html
Recommended Reading and References 134

Designing Freedom
One of Stafford Beer’s Management Cybernetics books.
Where he expands on Norbert Wiener and Ross Ashby’s
work to describe ways of building team and organisational
communication processes to create a ‘viable’ system. A
‘viable’ system being one with the Requisite Variety to
survive and thrive in an organisation. Something we might
wish for every test team and department.
The Complete Books of Charles Fort
Charles Fort collected reports of anomalous phenomena.
‘Stuff’ that science could not explain, but that people ex-
perienced as fact. What I like about Fort is that he didn’t
just do a “Ripley’s Believe it or not” and report on it, he
added his own explanations. I get the feeling that he did this
to ‘provoke’ - if science wouldn’t explain it, he would, in
the hope that science would acknowledge the phenomena
and provide a rational explanation. I view him as an early
provocative therapist.
To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology
Dr David Bourland Jr. developed the concept of ‘e-prime’
to try and find a fail safe way to avoid Alfred Korzybski’s
‘is of identify’ where people get hung up on concepts and
can’t see them as abstractions and models, a process that
Korzybski believed contributed to ‘insanity’ in its many
and varied forms.
Recommended Reading and References 135

Quantum Psychology
I enjoy reading Robert Anton Wilson’s books, and “Quan-
tum Psychology” is the easiest one to recommend to testers.
Written in ‘e-prime’, English without the verb “to be”.
Why? To avoid Alfred Korzybski’s ‘is of identify’ and
attempt to write ‘objectively’. It provides a useful introduc-
tion to abstracting and ‘e-prime’. I frequently write defect
reports in ‘e-prime’, particularly when they deal with a
contentious topic. (I even wrote a tool²⁸.)
The Structure of Magic
By Richard Bandler and John Grinder, this two (short)
volume set of books presents a ‘Meta Model’, a model of the
language structure that therapists use when questioning
clients. Drawing heavily from Chomsky’s linguistics, Vir-
ginia Satir, Gestalt Therapy and General Semantics. This is
very practical way of modeling systems to question their
assumptions and presuppositions. Something that testers
do. I drew heavily upon this for my “NLP for Testers²⁹”
papers which provide an introduction to the meta model
and its application for Software Testing.
Dr Seuss
I specifically want to draw your attention to “Oh, the places
you’ll go” and “The Lorax”, which emphasise personal re-
sponsibility and continual learning to create the flexibility
and requisite variety you need to survive the future. And
²⁸http://www.compendiumdev.co.uk/page/eprimer
²⁹http://www.compendiumdev.co.uk/page/nlp
Recommended Reading and References 136

“Scrambled Eggs Super!” and “Horton Hatches The Egg”

which deal with ‘doing things differently’ from others and
introducing variety into your thinking and processes.
Provocative Therapy
Frank Farrelly created a “Devil’s Advocate” style of therapy
which used humour and provocation to trigger a client
into taking responsibility for their situation and leading
to change. At points, the answers Evil Tester provides are
intended as a humorous provocation which could lead to
change.
Gestalt Therapy Verbatim
Fritz Perls, Gestalt Therapy books contributed to changing
my views on using questions for change. Specifically how
certain questions can target beliefs, and other questions can
explore mechanisms. Both are important when we want to
change behaviour.
Organizations
Written by Herbert A. Simon & James G March in 1958, I
still think is one of the best books on team and organisa-
tional dynamics available.
Recommended Reading and References 137

Pop Culture References

The fact that these are ‘references’ does not mean they
are not recommended. I love them. But they relate even
more loosely to the act of testing than the recommended
reading and are really listed to describe the popular culture
references in the main text. These were referred to in
passing rather than directly listed as references.
By all means hunt this stuff out. But do your research on-
line first and make sure that our ‘popular culture’ tastes
align first.
Consider yourself warned.
Cyborg, by Martin Caidin
I drop Martin Caidin’s name into the ranks of Cybernetic
luminaries like Ross Ashby, Stafford Beer and Norbert
Wiener. Caidin’s “Cyborg” novel was later adapted into the
TV Show “The Six Million Dollar Man”, and therefore no-
one reads his “Cyborg” series anymore. The pilot episode
of the TV Show was fairly close to his first “Cyborg” novel.
But very dark for a Children’s TV series - the hero’s despair
at his loss of humanity and his subsequent attempted
suicide, the philosophising around ‘what makes us human’
- not really what kids want. Later episodes fixed this by
adding springy sound effects when the hero jumped over
high fences, having the hero jump over at least one high
fence in every episode, and at least one super high speed
super slow motion run. Every. Single. Episode.
Recommended Reading and References 138

The Wizard of Speed and Time³⁰

Mike Jittlov’s wonderful film. From which I paraphrased
one of the answer sign off’s, the original quote was “May
All Your Good Dreams and Fine Wishes Come True”. This
is a great film. A film about a short film maker trying to
make it into Hollywood big time by making a big budget
short feature and getting ripped off by his producer. This
plot was subsequently mirrored in Mike Jittlov’s real life
story. Also this film is an inspirational example of content
re-purposing - using your original short films as part of a
feature film movie about a movie maker who makes short
films trying to break into Hollywood and make a feature
film. I can’t remember how many times I’ve watched this.
I kept my VHS player simply to allow future watching of
this film. Then YouTube happened. But I still have my VHS.
They Live³¹
John Carpenter’s 1988 film about an invasion of skull
faced zombie aliens. An invasion which completed suc-
cessfully without anyone noticing, until we invent special
sunglasses. And you should watch it, because we’re all out
of bubble gum.
Discordianism³²
As described in the Principia Discordia³³, this is a con-
structed religion based around the Goddess Eris. I refer-
³⁰http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081766/
³¹http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096256/
³²https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordianism
³³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Discordia
Recommended Reading and References 139

enced this in one of the answers with a “Hail Eris!” sign off.
I find Discordianism interesting to relate to testing because
it is built around deliberate contradiction and humour.
Testers need to contradict the system and the system paths
during their testing, and they need to face the project with
humour. A detailed description of the evolution of discor-
dianism can be found in the book “Historia Discordia³⁴” by
Adam Gorightly.
Malleus Maleficarum
A question about metrics prompted me to draw upon the
“Malleus Maleficarum”, the 1487 text that provided the
double bind mechanisms used in Witch Trials to allow
an inquisitor to demonstrate that almost everyone was a
witch. I decided to mutate the “Rituale Romanum” used in
exorcisms to the “Rituale Exploro” and place it in the hands
of an Indagator (latin for someone who investigates) as a
means of combating the evil of misused metrics. Seemed
like the natural set of metaphors to me, what would you
have written?
Warren Zevon
“poor poor pitiful me” was a direct quote from Warren
Zevon’s first album.
Juggling for the Complete Klutz
This was the book, and bean bag set that I used to learn
how to Juggle. I have subsequently gone on to teach over
50 people how to juggle. Poor poor pitiful them.
³⁴http://historiadiscordia.com/
Recommended Reading and References 140

Pinocchio
I suspect people don’t read Carlo Collodi³⁵, instead they
rely on Disney’s interpretation of the story of Pinocchio.
The book certainly has more adventures, more death, more
torture and moral lessons than the cartoon. Perhaps the
most important lesson for testers happens very early on,
when the experienced Talking Cricket (over a hundred
years old), is battered to death with a hammer by the young
puppet for attempting to raise valid risks and concerns to
the young team member.

³⁵https://archive.org/details/pinocchio00coll
Recommended Reading and References 141

Unrelated Reading

And one last book I would like to draw your attention to

which, while not related to software testing, I think you
might enjoy, on the assumption you enjoyed this.
How to Lengthen Our Ears
Written by Viscount Harberton. Did I just make that up?
Bing it to Google and see. Perhaps I did. Perhaps I made
up the husband of Lady Florence Harberton: the victorian
women’s freedom fighter who created the Rational Dress
Society in 1881 and campaigned for ‘Rational’ dress for
women cyclists (a short skirt worn over a pair of knicker-
bockers), a form of fashion that frequently meant that
she was barred from entering many a hotel and eating
establishment. However, perhaps as an early english advo-
cate for the use of the written spelling ‘alright’, Viscount
Harberton deserves our attention. And then I won’t be
the only tester who has read this ‘enquiry’ into ‘whether
learning from books does not lengthen the ears rather than
the understanding’. Partly a fulmination against putting
‘literature’ before ‘experience’, and partly a condemnation
of the education act and the 1902 revision thereof with
its emphasis on ‘compulsary’ and ‘standardised’ education.
This book may, or may not, be found on archive.org (for
those of you without a 1917 hardback copy handy).
Recommended Reading and References 142

Be whatever it takes!
 About The Author
Alan Richardson is a test consultant. He tests things, and
helps people test better. He is not Evil.
Alan helps people improve their ability to automate -
primarily with Java, but has also worked with Ruby and
.Net. He also helps teams improve their ability to test within
an Agile environment, make their exploratory testing more
effective and test to more technical levels.
Alan blogs at EvilTester.com³⁶, here he mainly writes prac-
tical articles on technical and exploratory testing.
Alan performs keynotes and tutorials at conferences world-
wide. You can find his presentations and papers on his
consultancy web site at CompendiumDev.co.uk³⁷.
Alan also offers online training³⁸. And at the time of
writing has on-line training courses for learning:

• Selenium WebDriver API with Java³⁹

• Technical Web Testing 101⁴⁰
³⁶http://eviltester.com
³⁷http://compendiumdev.co.uk
³⁸http://www.compendiumdev.co.uk/page/online_training
³⁹http://compendiumdev.co.uk/page/seleniumwebdrivercourse
⁴⁰http://compendiumdev.co.uk/page/techweb101course

143
About The Author 144

Alan wrote the book “Java For Testers⁴¹” which teaches

Java programming from the perspective of writing @Test
methods rather than applications. This provides the basic
programming knowledge required to write code to auto-
mate the execution of other applications.
Alan maintains the SeleniumSimplified.com⁴² website which
has articles and tutorials on using Selenium WebDriver.
Alan also wrote the book “Selenium Simplified⁴³” which
taught basic programming skills and Selenium-RC.
Alan Richardson has over twenty years of professional IT
experience: as a programmer, tester and test manager.
Alan works as an independent consultant, and he could be
helping you right now.
You can contact Alan via his website:

• compendiumdev.co.uk/page/contact_us⁴⁴

⁴¹http://javafortesters.com
⁴²http://seleniumsimplified.com/
⁴³http://www.compendiumdev.co.uk/selenium/
⁴⁴http://compendiumdev.co.uk/page/contact_us