Battleships Ahoy

I had a great day today.

My youngest son, Alex (7) persuaded me to buy him a new game today. Its not hard. I’m easily persuaded. But the game of choice was interesting. It was Battleships.

Now, I remember this game. I played it (and loved it) when I was little.

Battleships requires a good strategy, not different to a testing strategy in fact.

You have to guess where the  ships/bugs are. Sure there are some strategies that are effective, (I confused my kids by placing all but one of my battleships on the outer perimeter).  You might have some idea of where they might be based on experience, but as one of my kids put it.

You basically have to guess first, and then after that start thinking.

sometimes I perform exploratory  testing like that.  I just have a go!

But that doesn’t mean I perform ET without thought.

What my son was trying to say (and incidentally what lots of testers try to say) is that sometimes we have to suspend observation and inference.

Sometimes, what gets us going is a best guess.

Let's not ignore our best guess, because just  like in  battleships,  even if the first decision …A/9 is a random suggestion, after that you will  need a strategy.

What the hell, the kids loved the game. I loved playing the game.

We all had fun.