Myopia or Familiarity

The other day while changing my son's diaper I noticed that I am following a process, every time I go to change the diaper I get my materials together and set them up in a certain way to make the process go quick.  He hates being placed still for too long, this also eliminates the time it takes when he is still asleep and I need to change the diaper without waking him up; I have this down to 5 minutes.  But then it happened, part of my process had changed to where I no longer was using the cloth to cover him in case of a liquid projection, and when it happened I was unprepared.  Luckily none on me, though I have been close, but the area around him and his clothes required changing.  Yet another bullet dodged.

When it comes to testing something on a consistent basis eventually I discover a sort of too familiar attitude crops up to the point where I am going over some areas quickly, and others not so quick.  In the same way as my process just becomes second nature, to where I don't think about it at all.  It's then I consider that I am either too familiar with the product, which does allow me to test it faster as I know the Test Cases by heart, or its that I have become myopic in my evolution of the Test Cases and pretty much just do the ones I know and maybe do a tinge of Exploratory Testing.  I could say that familiary breeds contempt, though I don't exactly hate the application or feel any sort of disdain for the testing I am doing, its just that I have spent so much time with it that I have come too close.  I no longer see the whole picture.  Being so focused that I see only the design, and the paths that the Test Cases have generated over time.

In a growing group this sort of work can be shared, fresh eyes can come in and look at the Test Plan and find a new way to do things, or enhance the Test Cases.  Perhaps adding more for that new piece of functionality that I considered covered by another Test Case; duplicate coverage is another thing best described in the future.  Or I can find myself in front of the monitor again, looking to test the application for the umpteenth time and try to pull myself back, in order to get back that freshness and see the whole picture once again.  Sometimes I find that I circle around and get back to the same close up view, and its hard to pull myself back to review all the Test Cases again and see if perhaps something needs to be added.

Reading the Cases backwards is one way I've found to add in some novelty to get myself thinking again about how I should go about testing once more; almost like starting over.  That's really what I try to do, even if its the thousandth time I have looked at the same Test Plan, I at least try to fool myself into thinking its the first time.