- Orders a beer
- Orders ten beers
- Orders 2.15 billion beers
- Orders -1 beers
- Orders a nothing
- Orders a cat
- Tries to leave without paying
This joke is prevalent among the Software Testing community - and it serves as an important lesson to anyone wondering what Software Testers actually do for a living.
Your garden variety Tester will ensure that a piece of software will behave in certain expected ways - take the joke for example - it's not unreasonable that a bar will have beer for sale, it's also not unreasonable that the same bar will have up to and including ten beers for sale, maybe a round of drinks for a team celebrating something.
It's also a Software Testers job to ensure that software handles errors correctly, so when a piece of software meets an unexpected result (such as ordering 2.15 billion beers at a bar) the software responds with a correct reply - it's the difference between the barman explaining that they don't have that many beers in stock and the barman spontaneously combusting on the spot. That's a little graphic perhaps but it's still relevant)
A Software Tester should also think about 'fringe' scenarios for the software. What *would* happen if you ordered -1 beer? or nothing? or indeed a cat? Whilst the joke still remains one of my favourite and sufficient methods of explaining my job it's also laced with interesting hints to what lengths Software Testers need to go to sometimes.
Which I suppose begs the question "Why am I doing this?" and the absolute truth is I can't NOT do it. I've reached that point in my life where I have found a career that I am completely infatuated with and it plays on my mind. It keeps my brain happy to write about Software Testing - it's not something I can really control either.
You may be aware that I have another blog, Screaming at a Joypad, this 'alter ego' if you will has a deep and burning passion for videogames and the industry surrounding them, I found this love for the gaming industry when my now wife was at university back in 2008. It took my nearly two years to figure our that I had this passion for videogames and the gaming industry - but I'm getting off topic (I do that, you'll see)
So, back in 2011 I was offered the chance to apply for the position of a Software Tester at my previous company - I had worked in the IT department for a while prior to this and had grown tired of the same support calls or the same jobs through the Tech Support team. So I took the chance and tried something new.
What I found was a terrifying world of complex flowcharts, headache inducing meetings and enough animosity flying around to make the Pope want to kick you in the shins. I realized that Software Testers weren't liked or even reasonably respected in business - within a few weeks I felt like I had made a huge mistake.
Then I found it, nestled among a couple of text fields on a new charge request which had come through from our Business Analyst - a showstopping bug - something that, if an end user had clicked on it, would have caused their system to freeze and potentially ruin their user account. This was the moment I realized I loved my job.
For those interested, the bug was fixed shortly after I found it and the change request went in with no other known issues but I felt like I had made a difference and that's what I needed. After years of working dead end jobs in my hometown and then working in a department with no creativity or imagination, Software Testing offered me that taste of responsibility that I was looking for.
So, if I realized this all those years ago - why am I only just writing about it now? Well, back to my alter-ego again for a moment, early in 2013 I stopped writing for gaming websites and started focusing on my YouTube channel. I've always been just a guy who loves videogame, it's part of who I am. It's more than a hobby or a past time. The same way people say "I read a lot of books" or "I watch a lot of movies" without people judging them - I play a lot of videogames.
So getting myself started on YouTube was actually more difficult than I first anticipated - then a while after that I was drafted to join TGN.tv which took up more of my spare time. I had an abundance of games to play and content to create - all the while doing my absolute best with my day job - the reason I'm writing this right now.
On top of working at my previous company I also knew I wasn't in any position to offer guidance or real opinion on Software Testing: I was still fresh out of the box after all and whilst I have a certain amount of ego I wasn't about to start lecturing people about practices or procedures.
Then we started our last big project - the project which would not only save my previous company millions of ponds a year but also mean the end of my job and many others jobs around me. You see my previous company was going through financial difficulties and had to close down, as such they had to reduce overheads where they could including replacing a robust software system with a simpler software.
As romantic as I might be making it sound - the few people left in the IT department really did band together to create something wonderful that year, through that time I learnt a lot about software testing, project management, release handling and managing team of User Acceptance Testers.
Which now leade me to this blog - I know that I'm in love with Software Testing - it's the longest job I've ever had and the one which has offered me the most satisfaction - I've never found myself reading text books about my previous jobs during my spare time or asking for books on my previous jobs for Christmas. This is how I know I love what I do. Which is why my brain is now at the stage where I can't NOT write about Testing.
But then again, who knows if I'll update this again...after all, I don't do Blog Posts.
