Can you see beyond the visible

As mentioned in “Diversity is important in testing” my view is that the best testers are those that know that testing can be done in many ways. “Testing practices appropriate to the first project will fail in the second. Practices appropriate to the second project would be criminally negligent in the first.” ( http://context-driven-testing.com/) There is no “one way to do testing” (despite what standards tells you). Granted there are – in context –  best practices.

The best testers are those that can see beyond the current project and company framework. Those that realize that there is a fundamental difference between life-science validation and modern enterprise IT projects – and for agile projects even more. If the company frameworks fails to keep current and allow clear tailoring, then “life finds a way“.

There will be contexts where UX is not very interesting, where there is no software as such, where they release directly to production (so what we have TitW). There will even be contexts where structured software testing has very little business value. As well as, there will be contexts, where it’s one-shot only and testing and dress-rehearsals are done, over and over again. (consider though that for space launches superstition and good-luck charms play a very large role).

But don’t confuse your one context and what you have seen in some domains to be directly applicable in others. See beyond the visible, extrapolate your testing knowledge and approaches for different contexts, and you are the better tester.

Iceberg Factory. Torsuut Tunoq Sound and Kulusuk Island. Southeastern Greenland. http://www.mikereyfman.com/