A tester that is new to a project, has little knowledge of
the system he is testing. Thus testing with a black box approach. More often
than not, this tester finds new bugs the experienced tester haven’t seen.
Does this mean that black box testing is a better way to find
more bugs that influence the end user, rather than a deep knowledge of the
system (that clouds the mind?)
Interesting observation..
ReplyDeleteIt is not really a case of one being better than the other.
The established tester with deep knowledge of the system may be experiencing pesticide paradox - http://www.softwaretestingclub.com/profiles/blogs/defect-clustering-pesticide-paradox
Whilst someone new without the biases and influences of working with the system are more likely to ask "I wonder what happens if I do this..." etc.
The established tester can help to prevent some of the issues of deep knowledge by attmepting to reset themselves mentally and use creative thinking techniques to try and avoid becoming stale. Some ideas can be found here - http://steveo1967.blogspot.com/2014/01/using-games-to-aid-tester-creativity.html as a starting point.
I hope that helps and keep up the blogging.
Hi and thank you for the comment
ReplyDeleteMy idea with the post was to get me and others to think what the best angle of attack, when testing a system, does not need to be the most obvious one.