If...

First published 08/12/2007

With most humble apologies to Rudyard Kipling...

If you can test when tests are always failing, When failing tests are sometimes blamed on you, If you can trace a path when dev teams doubt that, Defend your test and reason with them too.

If you can test and not be tired by testing, Be reviewed, and give reviewers what they seek, Or, being challenged, take their comments kindly, And don't resist, just make the changes that you need.

If you find bugs then make them not your master; If you use tools – but not make tools your aim; If you can meet with marketing and salesmen And treat those two stakeholders just the same.

If you can give bad news with sincerity And not be swayed by words that sound insane Or watch the tests you gave your life to de-scoped, And run all test scripts from step one again.

If you can analyse all the known defects Tell it how it is, be fair and not be crass; And fail, fail, fail, fail, fail repeatedly; And never give up hope for that one pass.

If you explore and use imagination To run those tests on features never done, And keep going when little code is working And try that last test boundary plus one.

If you can talk with managers and users, And work with dev and analysts with ease, If you can make them see your test objective, Then you'll see their risks and priorities.

If you can get your automation working With twelve hours manual testing done in one - Your final test report will make some reading And without doubt – a Tester you'll become!

By the way, to read If... by Rudyard Kipling you can see it here: http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm

Tags: #kipling #poetry #if...

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