I hate manual testing!

Every now and then when you sit among testers you can hear:

"I hate manual testing !"

I tried once to follow this sentence and asked additional questions:
"What do you specifically hate in manual testing ?"
I received following answers:

"I hate doing repetitive tasks!"
"I hate regression tests !"
"I hate writing test scripts for someone else!"
"I hate following someone else’s test script!"
"I don't want to just click around this like a monkey!”

I replied: "What you would like to have instead?"

"I would like to automate something, I would like to do automation testing!"

It's obvious that regression part of testing is best candidate for automation because people are often inefficient with doing repetitive tasks.
What about preparing test scripts in advance or following test script created by someone else? I think that with: creating test scripts from requirements, writing test scripts without seeing product to test, executing test scripts without possibility to do own research, the testing is simply disappearing. The problem is not in manual testing itself but in treating testing like linear office activity whereas in my opinion testing should go beyond verifying what is to what is expected. Secondly why not take advantage from people having "testing DNA" instead of treating them like clicking monkeys ?

Below is the definition of exploratory testing from Cem Kaner’s blog

"Exploratory software testing is a style of software testing that emphasizes the personal freedom and responsibility of the individual tester to continually optimize the value of her work by treating test-related learning, test design, test execution, and test result interpretation as mutually supportive activities that run in parallel throughout the project."

I think that with above approach to testing we wouldn't hear often "I hate manual testing!” Do you agree?

Alek

Tester and challanges

One of the common question you can hear during job interview for tester role is : why do you want to work as a Tester ? I can see in this question great opportunity to say about passion for testing, to mention about value tester can create and of course it's chance to mention something about solving problems and challenges.

Since I remember I always liked puzzles. It was sometime after I had started my first job as tester when I realized that this kind work doesn’t need to be necessarily boring and I can have a lot fun from it. When you work as tester you often encounter situation where you touch something new that you have never seen before: new system developed in new technology which works in new business environment and you have to collaborate with different stakeholders.
To create value with your testing you need learn quick and this is often great challenge. Of course tester work doesn't always look like this, depending on context you are sometimes obligated to work for same project for long period, to do repetitive task, to create tones of documents and to create evidence for every single piece of test activity. In such situation there is great opportunity to stay in shape as tester and have some fun from testing - it's Weekend Testing movement. These challenges occur usually during weekends. For those who hasn’t had chance to participate there is a place where some of the weekend’s challenges are archived

You can also create challenges by yourself, simply by challenging your thoughts with colleagues, by working on imaginary problem and ways to tackle it, you can try reverse engineering on some web application. There is a lot of ways to keep your Testing DNA in good shape. Good Luck!

Alek