Principles

• You are a living school of thought in yourself. Everybody else is too. What you see next is not the school, they are just bullet points. The idea of a school is to grow and improve with successes and failures of its followers (people who find value in atleast one of its principles) delving on their intelligence and experiments. Hence it is always a bit late to catch up with their collective intellect at any point in time.
• There is no absolutely right way of testing. All methods used by all people for all testing problems, taken together comprise the absolute. (Anekaantvaad)
• Don’t be dogmatic. The buzzwords become oppressive over time. Focus on the concepts behind them for their true worth and values. Imbibe them in your style if you like them.
• Mutually conflicting approaches can deliver same value. Focus on value.
• Yen Ken Prakaaren. If not by this manner, solve by that manner. Solve the damn problem.
• Maxims do not work. Your methods should be born out of the discovery, tailoring and amalgamation of multiple methods, that work for you. Anything else is a lie that you have chosen to live with because of laziness or fear or business interest or anything else that you know of, or a combination thereof.
• Diverse is beautiful. Co-existence breeds competition. Competition encourages better ideas. There is value in the co-existence of this school of thought along with other schools.
• Quality is not an absolute. It is a perception. A multitude of such perceptions exist. A feature from one quality angle could be bug from the perspective of another.
• There can never be an absolute assessment of context and risk. Work with the multitudes of these along with others to arrive at an assessment everyone can go by. Decide what should be done and what can be done. Revisit these assessments regularly.
• A tester with a singular focus misses the elephant. While there is value in focus, de-focusing and appreciating other aspects help in better testing in the focus area itself.
• Debate over the testing subject, not people. Learn from everyone.
• You earn your living by finding flaws in others’ work. When it comes to criticism of your own work, debate constructively, change if needed.
• Acknowledge your biases. Fight them. Belonging is a bias. Belonging to (just) this school and confining your learning is biased as well. Learn from other schools.
• If you think your methods of testing have worked every single time, either it is a lie or you haven’t experimented enough.
• You are the un-monitored you. Everything else is a facade.
• You must constantly try to outsource, what can be, to code and machines. Free yourself to explore.
• Exploration is an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. If you haven’t got it, get it.
• Enjoy what you do.