Many software testers I know are relatively young, just finished their study and haven’t much experience with complex business processes for example in the banking or pension business. And specially these people have to test, for instance the finance and insurance application of large banks and insurance companies. It looks like they are selected especially for these kind of software testing.

The problem
Try to imagine what the effects are of the quality of, for example the choice for test design techniques or some specific test cases. Take also into account that these “experts” are just from school. What they did is they studied only their books and have just a couple of weeks experience in the field. After they are ready with school they start working. But there is a difference in what is written down in the books and what happen in practice. What happen in practice is different, they meet other people with other theories, and other problems.

The effect of this, is in my opinion that we not always have the right experts at the right place. Because they can’t image what the best test cases are, they simply don’t understand the complexity of these products or can’t imagine how it works out if they defined their test cases.

Some of you will think, you can train them and show them how this business works, let them feel what these products are. The problem is, this is not a tangible product you can touch, but only bits and bytes in a system. Besides the fact that they are in the beginning unfamiliar with the business they also don’t have much experience in the testing field.

To create better test cases that fit real situations people need to use their imagination. The complexity increases if they have to learn new business processes at the same time.

A solution
Therefore lets people start with business processes they already know. Many of these people are very familiar with, for example the retail industry, because they worked in supermarkets. Or they are familiar with the public transport, call centers or the hotel industry. They worked during their study in this particular industry.

However they are still working with IT-Systems, that exist of bits and bytes, they can use their imagination with the products that are processed in these applications. If they use their knowledge they already have about these products and combine this with the knowledge they have of software testing they will create better test cases that hit all the corners of the system.

While using their imagination they can learn how software testing works. With this experience they can step up to more complex systems.

Knowledge and skills are both needed, but imagination is the key for successful testing. Therefore start testing in the simple applications and increase step by step the complexity.