Positives from negative testing in our daily life

(For me) Testing is the way of satisfying my needs of breaking, finding faults in others works (means their understanding does not match with of the customer or people who are supposed to use the software), lack of quality…and to ensure that quality remain intact with the software I use many types of testing and one of them is “Negative testing”.

Hmmm... many people will think why Negative testing, a simple answer would be Negative testing is nothing but an ‘Art of creative destruction’ where I try to destruct the software in a creative way (I mean to say that whatever I do is creative…hehehe)…another question crawls in mind how destruction could be creative? In software and especially in testing whatever problems I find in the software whether it is a simple spelling mistake or a complicated server crash it always help the developer to understand the hidden problems that may spoil the image of the organization in front of the customers, users and indirectly if affects the business.

When I focus on negative testing I always think of the user who don’t know about the application and how badly or in a wrong manner s/he can use the application that may break the application, lets take a simple example where user enter alphabets in date field and then submit the data, if the application has not gone through such kind of testing or if there are no such validations on UI then I am sure that this simple (wrong) data entry can crash the application.

As a quality assurance and software tester I sometimes think what will be the impact of my work on me when I am with my family, when I do shopping, when I am talking, when I meet my friends, when I am getting information from someone, when I am listening…overall I am trying to see the impact of my work on my day to day life. I try to list down few points that I observed over the years:

1. Shopping:- At the time of shopping my negative mind always help me to choose the right product like I always check the expiry date, manufacturer details (a big ‘NO’ to China made ), contents of the product, guarantee, warranty etc. Some time back when I am buying a DVD player, the shop owner try to convince me with some very good offers on the Chinese stuff on which they are not giving any guarantee but at the same time giving me a very good price. My negative mind intercepts and stops me from buying a Chinese made DVD player. However I had to spend a few bucks more at that time to buy a good quality product but I am satisfied with my decision.

2. Gathering information/ listening from known or unknown person:- negative mind helps me to listen and gather information that is actually relevant to me. When I am talking to someone and try to retrieve some information from him/her, at that time I am doing critical listening ”I am trying to evaluate the message by logic of argument, strength of evidence, implications, intentions and motives”. This way I will evaluate the message and assure that whatever information I am getting will be useful to me, will not harm me if not help me.

I observed that negative thoughts in mind really help me in evaluating the things, situations, people….above all I can say that it improves my judgment over a period of time.