It is a long time ago that I have posted a message on this blog. There are just a couple of reasons for that. One of them is the busy time at the customer and doing a lot of research and development for my company. I’m still working on Model Based Testing, or let me say it different, automated test case specification. Quite a challenge but it offers a lot of benefits.

My second good excuse is that we are setting up another blog. Let me say it this way, we are working out a new hobby. Tasting wine and more specific Chinese Wine at this moment. We started an adventure trip to explore the Chinese wine market. To know what is going on, do they produce great wine or only vinegar. This cost some time.

If you like to read Dutch blogs please visit wijnuitchina.com, here we posted already several tasting notes but more important, the story behind the wine. Exploring the Chinese wine market is quite similar to software testing. Doing research and tasting wine gives me important lessons for software testing and vice versa. This post is the first one in a small series of posts about the similarities between testing software and tasting wine. The first one will point out some general similarities while another post will describe in detail some important lessons learned.

The 7 similarities between tasting wine and testing software:

1. Both need a staged approach to be successful
A lot of testing blogs and also this one tries to explain that software testing needs some structured approach to find the most important bugs. Most of the test approaches have something like planning, preparation, execution and something like completion and reporting. Tasting wine needs exactly the same. Sure you can start with writing down the tasting notes but without tasting they are worthless. Sure you can start without a proper preparation, you will taste something but the better you are prepared from an earlier stage the better the findings are.

2.The better skills you have the better the results are
With the Chinese wine blog, we are far from the expert scene, we are just a bunch of wine fools. But as soon as you start with training yourself, learn more about wine, taste and smell wine, the better tests you can execute. Software testing is exactly the same. Testers need continues training to be successful. They need a broader view and experience than only testing.

3.Knowing more will gives you different findings
It is important to realize that the more you know from the climate (environment of the application), the more you know about the grape (software), the more you know about the production process (production process), the more detailed and more specific the findings are.

4.Each product is different
You all know that no piece of software is the same as another. Even with Commercial Of The Shelf (COTS) software there are big differences during a company specific implementation. You can reuse parts of earlier work but at the end you need different tests in detail.
By tasting wine you should keep in mind that no bottle of wine is the same. Exactly the same grape can give a different result another year. Never trust outcomes of the past but determine each time over and over again what you taste in the wine.

5. A lot of parameters influence the outcome
Does this need some explanation for software testing? People, organizations, technology, budget, processes, climate, country and much more determine the outcome of a certain piece of software. What about wine?
This is exactly the same, there are maybe even more parameters which influence the outcome and the taste of a bottle of wine.

6.The price doesn’t say anything about the quality
Having expensive software doesn’t mean it is bug free, maybe it is the other way around. Each euro spend to create a certain complexity can have a negative influence at the quality of the software, so more findings.
Having expensive wine doesn’t mean it tastes very well. Even very expensive bottles can taste disgusting and a very cheap bottle of wine of only 5 euro can taste very well.

7.The outcome depends on the testers
If you are testing wine or testing software, you as the subject matter expert determine the outcome. Based on a lot of values as described above, at the end it is how you approached it, how you decided and what you determined.

These are seven similarities between software testing and tasting wine. In the other post in this series I’ll go in dept on specific points. But before closing the first one, let me mention one big difference between tasting wine and testing software. Tasting wine is much easier than testing software. Tasting wine is black or white.

Tasting wine has only two different outcomes: it tastes, or it doesn’t taste. And you are the expert even without having experience, so you determine the outcome.

Happy tasting
Andréas

1. Lava Kafle Says:
   November 11th, 2011 at 08:00

   wowow great site for qa testers