Tester’s day – 9th September 2009

The sale of the much-awaited CAT vouchers began yesterday. Scores of CAT-aspirants rushed to various branches of the Axis bank. I received several ‘pings’ on my chat box enquiring if I had got my copy. Some of my friends have even completed filling in the forms. So much of discussion about the time-slot! The way people reacted was too-much-to-handle. Finally to save myself from the agony, I had to log off from all the chat sessions I was online on.

Yes! I have still not bought my CAT voucher. And I don’t intend buying one till the end of this week. Its’ not a superstition I am nurturing. Neither is it my laid back attitude. This exam is as important to me, since I have a lot at stake this time. It’s a big risk I have taken. I am happy about it but nervous at the same time.

For 3 years now, I have been working in a QA (Quality assurance) and QC (Quality Control) domain. I loved my work, and I don’t mean job. I mean my work. The kind of tasks I took up and the way I delivered results. To be true, I was a passionate workaholic. And that is how I like things to be! I can shamelessly admit this. I worked so much that I didn’t even realize when my personal life went numb.

But recently, about 2 months back, I gave a microscopic look to my life. I realized that I had really lost on my tact to converse with people from the non IT-fraternity. Not that I bored them with any geeky stuff. But I didn’t have anything ELSE to talk about. All I could keep bragging was about work, work and more work. Also, I realized that I had turned a deaf ear to the company’s policies, salary concerns etc.

Finally enlightenment struck and I decided to quit. My curricula vitae, even after 3 years of experience, were a modest one. I had gained a lot of knowledge over the years but that which could not be used outside my company’s bounds. In short, NO SKILL SET/ EXPERTISE. No Java, Perl, UNIX, etc. Those technologies, that other companies bid for.

If put in the words of ‘Pursuit of Happyness’, “This part of my life is called Pitying”. All I did was brood and brood. I sulked about everything. I even had those bouts of crying. I wallowed for long periods especially during the weekends.

Then one day I rushed to my manager and told him that I wanted to quit my job. He asked me the reasons. I told him the truth. About all that I felt which includes company policies, peanut-salary. He in turn, spoke to his manager. A meeting was scheduled. Both, my manager and my super manager, yet another manager and me were in a conference room. The meet went on for an hour. I came out with a decision to re-consider my resignation. I went home that day and felt quite agitated. I spoke to my parents. My sister. My friends. No respite still.

One week later I finally put down my papers. I decided to answer CAT 2009. The spice here is that CAT was declared to go paper free, that is, online. COMPUTERIZATION! This would be my 4th attempt. By this time, I was convinced that my work, the kind of testing I did, wasn’t viable.

I started following CAT and related news. Yesterday after CAT forms sale began people posted several issues about the user-friendliness or should I say non-user friendliness of the UI (User Interface). Lack of error-checking, ambiguous language and above all, no editing post-submission. The servers seem slow too. After a person enters his voucher number and submits, there is a long wait for dawn to come. Two hours is minimum that was reported so far. The sole aim of Computerization was meant to make life easy. But this has caused people a lot of loss, financially and emotionally. People had to purchase new forms only because some had not put their father’s name, some had not entered their SSC marks. Thankfully, the issue has been taken up seriously by the IIM administration and a solution is expected soon.

But what has caused all this? Its’ because either the TESTERS didn’t do their job well or the company which made the UI didn’t think rigorous testing was required. Enlightenment strikes again. My job, my work was after all not something tending to null. It meant something! In fact more than that. Put in the ‘Pursuit of Happyness’ style, “This part of my life, this part here, is called Acknowledging”.

Yes! Testers play a major role in the product’s life cycle. A good tester is one who is not only good technically, but also the one who has a good insight. Testing the traditional way is expected but ad-hoc testing is the one that gives value-add. There are several testing tools now available in the market. But again, they are clichéd. The thoughts that pop while observing the product are the keys to actual testing. They are the ones, if worked on them, which make the product better in a true sense.

If testing is treated as a part of daily chores, a sense of donkey-work is bound to creep in. A good tester is definitely, the one who understands the product. Proactively learns about its aspects. Finds on the search engines about similar products and issues faced. To put it in simple words, a tester has to be, necessarily, a good researcher too.

From here on, we could easily conclude that testers are as important as the developers as long as they understand their role, value and their responsibility well. The tester’s road is, no doubt tough, but its’ worth the drive.