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The product owner demonstrated the new journey perfectly. I asked whether I could try it. He said there was not enough time for exploratory testing during the demo. The demo was forty-five minutes long. My part would have involved clicking Back once. Spoiler: it would fuck everything up.
We had 28 open defects. The project manager wanted zero for the Friday report. Testing refused to close them, so he closed them himself. Friday’s report celebrated zero open defects. On Monday, testing reopened all 28. We were asked why quality had collapsed over the weekend.
The business user was too busy to complete UAT. She signed it off anyway because QA had tested it. After go-live, the business process failed. She joined the incident call and asked why UAT had not caught it.
I raised a release risk. The delivery manager asked who owned it. I said the project owned it because the project was choosing to release. He assigned it to me because I had raised it. Apparently discovering a fire also makes you the building owner.
The project dashboard showed testing as green. Testing had not started because there was no build. The project manager explained that there could not be any test issues if testing had not found any yet. Two weeks later, the build arrived and testing turned red. Testing was asked why its status had deteriorated so suddenly.
The developer changed one shared date component. The project manager allowed thirty minutes for testing because it was “a small change.” The component appeared on 46 screens. Testing was accused of expanding the scope.
Developer: “I’ve tested it.” Tester: “What did you test?” Developer: “That it works.” Tester: “What happens when it doesn’t?” Developer: “Why would I test that?”
I spent half a day proving that the defect was still present. The developer spent half a day proving that it was fixed. DevOps eventually checked the deployment logs. QA had yesterday’s build. Both of us had excellent evidence.
The acceptance criteria said: The user receives an appropriate error message. The application displayed: Something happened. The business analyst marked the test as passed.
Tester: “A read-only user can delete accounts.” Developer: “Only by calling the endpoint directly.” Tester: “The Delete button calls the endpoint directly.” Defect reopened.