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.

Tool is only as good as the user

As a SDET, I believe that the automation tools wrongly called testing tools, can do no testing. It is a tool that does what I tell it to do. I can tell it to go through all the pages and it will. I can tell it to pass a failed test and it will pass. I can tell it to fail the whole application and it will fail. Once again, it is a tool that does what I tell it to do.



Kind of like this story - 
Once upon a time there was a King who owned a device that worked like a lie detector. The device had a pointer that would point to the left when a person wearing it lied, and to the right when the person spoke the truth. The king was very happy that he found a device that will help him in judging people rightfully. The minister was concerned though. He did not believe the device was of such great use. He also feared, if would cause harm in certain cases.

One day the cops brought in a farmer who killed his landlord.  The cops put the device ("lie detector") around the farmer's throat and asked him if had committed the crime. The farmer replied "No". The device pointed to the right, which meant the farmer was telling the truth. The cops released the farmer. But the village folk complained again that they had witnessed the crime.

So, this case went to the King and the minister, where the farmer was asked the same question and the device pointed to the right upon the farmers answer. The King tried the device on himself and lied while wearing it and the device pointed to the left. This got the King confused. The minister stepped in and asked the farmer if had 'indeed killed the landlord?'. To which the farmer replied, "Yes". The device pointed to the right again.

The farmer killed someone, but he did not consider it a crime. So, that explains why the machine reacted the way it did. The machine did its job.


Tools will always be tools. Tools are only as good as the user. To find answers, we have to ask the right questions. To find bugs, we have to ask the right questions. Too many questions or less questions are not the key here. The right question in the right context matters. Even when using Google search or queering data base tables, testing an application, it is our responsibility to choose the words / questions / tests wisely.