As a test lead, I was always overloaded with spreadsheets! A whole bunch of them, day in and day out, tracking various configurations and status. In the team, we always have funny conversations on how we were becoming better Excel sheeters than testers. It was all part of infrastructure testing, which is part of Software Testing.
At one point of time, it all just went over my head. And I decided to stop that madness, and breathe. Because it was too much to take. All those technology keywords stopped having meaning to me, and I felt enough is enough.
On hindsight, I could tell that too much information was being thrust on me – without mind space to digest those things. But having said that, I respect the importance of each of those parameters in combinations with other parameters – that make the system work.
Take for example an application testing. Typically you would have infrastructure considerations like operating systems to be tested, devices to be tested, browsers, etc. Most of the time, it turns out that test engineers just check-mark when a feature works with a specific combination, say an operating system with a specific browser. But, do they have the time to digest and understand the intricacies of that specific operating system’s characteristics or a specific browser’s internal workings to make sure that they are doing testing in the correct way? Most often, they don’t.
When we say we test with a specific infrastructure, we need to know the nuances of that particular infrastructure (as far as possible), so that our testing can be effective. Let’s keep this in mind when we say we test something; we need to keep the entire stack in our understanding!
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