I saw an interesting interview with Rob Sabourin today http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZRXdaN7gkY (Thanks for the tip, Jon Bach!)
One thing he says in this video is: “… There are a lot of template junkies out there. [Testers are] filling out templates and not actually testing. That frustrates testers…”
Hey, isn’t this the same thing that happens in strictly scripted testing environments?
When testers are following detailed test scripts they are actually ending up filling out templates. With the same frustration as when filling out templates where you also don’t have to bother use your brain.
The result is the same for scripted testing as with a filled out template. Little mind work has been involved and so the information is very narrow and/or shallow…
It is sometimes said that templates are good because it is prevent someone from doing mistakes and/or making sure that the format is the same all the time. But isn’t a template to a document the same as what a script is to a test? A prescribed recipe on how to complete the task. I.e. it is about management control.
Isn’t it so that you easily can be hit by inattentional blindness as you fill out the template and only worrying about not screwing up the format? As with scripted testing, the focus lies in the format rather in the content. Both in scripted testing and in filling out templates you worry about making sure all things are filled out as expected, not the actual testing or the actual writing of informative text.
And, as with scripted tests, if we could fill out the templates automatically, we wouldn’t need to do them manually.
