Testing is common sense

I saw a tweet lately that said: “Context-driven testing is common sense”. I was not paying too much attention to that, but it stuck a bit.

I met a tester that had attended a well-known testing course from some context-driven test guru, but he doesn’t use the information from that testing course. This is because he is doing testing already in the best way he can think of: using common sense.

Common sense is different for every person, every culture and even for the two different genders male and female. It could be something that is created out of own experiences and learnings. If you experience or learn more about a subject, then your common sense of doing things is changed.

Also common sense is partly something that is accepted generally as something logical to do, act or to be. This public wisdom is part of you and you’ve learned it from the knowledge, rules, norms and values of the culture you are part of.

If common sense would be something that is the same worldwide and testing is just ‘common sense’, everybody could be a tester.

Would you be doing this with common sense (as a few examples):

•        Choosing the right test design technique

•        using the right tools on the right moment

•        programming an automated tool

•        doing security testing

•        ask the right questions at the right moment

•        risk exploration and finding the right risks

•        discuss testing with programmers, configuration specialists, project managers or the customer

This would be impossible to do when you just started with software testing without learning something or studying some principles of software development.

Maybe it is me, but learning testing, and especially thinking about the context-driven way of testing, for me it is not equal to common sense. Maybe starting off with a new idea with using you own common sense is, but then to stop thinking after this first step is not common sense at all.

What do you think?

For more information:

Independent software tester from the Netherlands, my company: Chickenwings Test Consultancy

Website http://www.testevents.com and Dutch website www.chickenwings.nl

Email: rob@chickenwings.nl

Linkedin profiel: http://nl.linkedin.com/in/robvs

Twitter: @rvansteenbergen

Weblog: http://rvansteenbergen.blogspot.com/ (Dutch and English language, according to mood)