Damn it all, it's just not cricket..or is it?

After fifteen years of living in Australia, some things have rubbed off on me. One of the them is cricket.  I have to confess I have spent many a sun drenched day watching the cricket whilst imbibing the odd beverage here and there.

One thing that I have noticed in the game, is the impact of the new ‘unknown’ player. It surprises me the impact the unknown can have on the game. Michael Clark (or Clarky to his mates) on his debut in Bangalore went out and scored 151 runs (thats a lot btw).

Here comes the testing bit…

Fergal O’Riordan,  pointed out a similar result in his software testing teams.

When testing is all but hung up and dry, he enlists a new tester. This tester must be new to the team, and never worked on the application before.  He finds that doing this dramatically increases the number of bugs found in that day.

He breaks the bugs down as follows:

• The majority are known issues, but previously where not considered to be bugs. The new tester didn’t know that and raised them. Changed circumstances and attitudes now regard these bugs as valid.
• Most of the other bugs were also known issues, but were either seen as not relevant to the stakeholders or were being dealt with in future releases
• a small number were new and relevant bugs that required fixing.

So why is it that a new tester is able to have such an impact? He puts it down to the following reasons:

1) These bugs have been seen before but previous experience led testers to believe they were of no relevance to the stakeholders

2) A new set of eyes brings a fresh perspective and outlook to the testing

Doing something different, unpredictable can bring benefits to your team, no matter what the ‘sport’ is.

So there you go, who would have thought that the world of testing and cricket had something in common?

Tea break!