Sunday 1 June 2014

Darkwing Duck about testing

"Darkwing Duck" is my favorite Disney TV series. It's awesome. It has superheroes, cool variety of villains, puns, cultural references, a very active extra smart girl and crazy plots.

Recently I've been watching episode 7 "Dirty money" again first time in few years, and realized: that's a saga about ISTQB vs Context-driven testers! :-D Agent Grizzlikof tries to force DW to do everything by the book, but instead our hero succeeds using his own genuine methods and situational awareness.

And in the end of the episode Darkwing Duck shows us one of the few ways in which ISTQB Foundation textbook can be useful. Yep, that's how it goes - it's only as useful as the paper on which it has been printed. Ignore the letters, use the paper... works for crime fighters!

And more on this topic, I believe that detective work is a very cool area to learn from for a tester. It's a similar business: go into the unknown and find information you seek using scientific methods, reasoning and wide domain and technical knowledge.

P.S.: I'm sure in actual law enforcement structures there are a lot of useful rules, because in their case people get hurt when someone makes a mistake, so inventing the bicycle each time has price too high to pay. And there are plenty of useful rules in testing (e.g. "Ask questions to understand") too, but ISTQB book is not about those nice flexible recommendations-rules. So my metaphor stands. :-)

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