Testing Zombie – Are you becoming one?

Slowly and steadily, with reasons or without, deliberately or out of innocence, many of us are becoming the Zombies of the testing world. Some people become part of this immediately after college when they start the job and some become as they grow up the ladder and start losing interest as they lose the aim and motivation.

Who is a Testing Zombie?
A Testing Zombie is a person that has been turned into a creature capable of testing without any rational thoughts.

How to find a Testing Zombie?
It is easy! To find a zombie around you, just look for the following symptoms/ characteristics

• Is (s)he just coming to work as (s)he has to and does not take any ownership of actual testing?
• Is (s)he hiding behind processes instead of testing?
• Is (s)he pointing fingers on others instead of owning the failures?
• Is (s)he does not understand the product functionality under test?
• Is (s)he does not understand the technology behind the product under test?
• Instead of owning the release and working in collaboration with product stakeholders, does (s)he wants to block the release to avoid future failures or blames?

Though, the above is not the only comprehensive symptoms list that can help you identify a Zombie in testing, you can add more negative behaviors to this list. But, if the answer to any of the above is “Yes”, you have potentially found one around you.

Types of Testing Zombies
These zombies can be found at any level in hierarchy. I have defined only the 2 broad categories below and will leave rest of them onto you to define.

• Zombie Tester: These are the people who, land a job in testing just because they did not get anything else to work upon. There is no inbuilt motivation in them to work as a tester. They start working on the project as they are assigned one, execute the test cases that are written by others, word by word, point to the test case author for any missing step and reasons why they missed anything during testing and try to look good as a tester. They only have one mastery and that is to how to blame others for their misses.
• Zombie Test Manager: These people, though have grown up the ladder in the organisation based on the years of experience, but do not understand the basics of the need of testing. Test Strategy and Test Plan for them means to fill up the information in  the templates. They are highly diplomatic and use their team(s) to run the show till the things mess up. They do not understand the complexities involved in the product, both at technical or non-technical front. They have the mastery to hide behind processes and create a hidden trap which is hard to break. These are mainly “Yes Boss” kind of people and do things mainly to please their bosses.

These kind of people are increasing in numbers at an epidemic rate in the corporate world and the time is not far when we all might be surrounded by them and it might lead to the end of the world for “Testing”! With time, we might also be bitten by one such Zombie and  will be pushed to become part of them.

It is a high time and imperative for each one of us to do some retrospection and see if we want to correct our paths so as to save ourselves in becoming a ZOMBIE!