Test the pencil

(Not to be mistaken for the pencil test)
 If the requirement for a pencil was to write 10 pages, and during testing the pencil ended up writing 12 pages.
What should the testers do? Pass it or fail?
Should the testers PASS the pencil test because the result was better than expected?
Should the testers FAIL the pencil test because the result was not per spec?
May the testers ask for more specs regarding the weight and thickness of the overall pencil?
May the testers ask for more specs regarding the weight and thickness of the lead core?
Should the testers re-test the darkness of the writing?
Should the testers use other kinds of paper for executing re-testing?
What would you do as a tester?
Why should you do anything else besides testing and giving a pass or fail?



Possible defects – 

1. Longer pencil than mentioned in spec
2. Thinner lead core than mentioned in spec;

Possible concerns – 

1. More money is being spent on the pencil
2. Less return of investment may be the result.

A few opinions I collected over the years - 

1. Need more clarification and information
2. It is a FAIL because the company could be losing its return on investment.
3. It is a PASS because more the merrier
4. When the requirement was to test till 10 pages, the tester should have stopped testing at 10 pages. The extra testing is exhaustive testing. We should limit our tests to the resources we are provided only.

What would you suggest and do, if you faced such a situation?

Dead cat in the well

“Once upon a time there was a village. The village relied upon a well for its water consumption. One day a cat fell and died in the well. The water was stinky and made the villagers sick. The villagers did not know how to take care of the issue.

During those days a Sage came by, passing through the village. The villagers sought his advice; they told him about their issue asked him for a solution. The sage told them to drain all of the water in the well and clean it up with water not from the well and drain that water too and wait for a few days till the new water oozes. This water will be safe to drink from then on. The villagers thanked him for the advice and wowed to follow it. The Sage went by his way and promised to return the following month.

A month went by.

The Sage returned to the village. He asked the villager how things were going on. The villagers told him their situation had not become better even after they had followed the Sage’s instructions. The Sage was surprised. He asked one of the villagers to bring him a glass of water from the well. In the water he found a cats hair. He immediately went to the well and looked into the waters. He found a dead cats body in it.

The villagers had indeed cleaned the water in the well, but never realized that the dead cat’s body needed to be removed. The sage gave them a solution suitable for the problem, but failed to understand the villager’s ways before he advised them.”

Moral of this story is “remove the dead cat’s body before cleaning up the well”, "Understand the villagers before advising them".


Remove the problem before making an improvement. It is not enough to paint over the walls when there is a hole in the wall. It is necessary to fix the hole and then may be paint it. It is necessary to fix the back-end of an application before making new and improved changes to the front end. You may take this example and make it your own, to fix a problem before making or adding improvements.

QA in most companies is like Sex Ed in most schools

The movie Mean Girls has a sex Ed class scene in it. The gym coach gets a bunch of teenagers into a room and explains about sex like – “at this age you will have urges to touch each other. If you do you will get pregnant and die. Don’t have sex. Guys promise you won’t do it!!” at the end of the class the coach brings out a bunch of contraceptives and offers to the students to make it look like they are serious about the "education".


Companies have QA teams. The QA team is trained for a release as such - “at this time you will have urges to do boundary value analysis, top down testing. If you do it and find bugs, we do not have resources or permission to fix them. Guys just do testing and nothing more.” At the end of the project they throw in automated testing for regression tell themselves that they are serious about testing.


This is (fortunately) not true with all companies. But if you are dealing with a situation similar, laugh out loud and do your best. You are not alone. Do your best for your product and help your developers do a better job. But don't give up.

Now, I cant say the same to the sex Ed teachers.