Wednesday, March 2, 2016

WRITING 101: Why I love to write about testing ...

I have obviously written a lot about testing - I've over 200 articles here, a couple of books, and such an assortment of postings in various testing publications that I don't remember them all.

All of which might sound like a brag, but it isn't.  Writing might seem to come easy to me, but it doesn't ... on my blog there are a lot of articles which are "in progress", but aren't ready.  Sadly one of those is the upcoming article on test reporting, which I've spent several weeks on, but still aren't happy about the direction.

But this is an excellent time for me to talk a little about the writing process, and maybe encourage you to take it up a bit yourself.


In the heart wrenching movie Shadowlands, there is a line (amongst many very thought provoking moments from that movie) that I've always resonated with, "we read to know that we're not alone".


I have my own quote for writing, "we write to make sense of the world".  To me, it's the heart of why I write - because I've got something to say.  Often when I start, I'm not exactly sure what it is I've got to say, and it takes exploration to really discover what it is I want to say.  And sometimes that surprises me.

Right now, on test reporting, I know that test reporting really links back to your "test exit criteria".  They are a measure of "done" against your test exit criteria.  It logically means that your test reporting can only be as good as your exit criteria.  So guess what happens when you have shallow and lazy exit criteria?

Damn - that's thrown me, and rather than a simple article about test reporting, I now need to have a deeper think about what makes good exit criteria.  But it doesn't disillusion me - not at all.  It means I have to think deeper, and search harder through my personal experience.

But it also means that when I come on "the other side" of that article, I'll end up with a deeper understanding of the topics and the pitfalls.  An understanding I hope I can take to my next project - onwards and upwards!

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