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Why? Why? Why? The questions of a 2 year old AND Testers!

Apologies for the lack of blog posts, but for those that don't know me, not only am I a struggling Tester, but also a struggling Parent! I have 2 kids, a 2 year old and a (soon to be) 5 year old! They are my world, and they're also the inspiration for some blog posts that I tend to write, this latest one is no different...



My 2 year old daughter has begun to question a lot of what I say to her.

"Please don't climb up the slide"

"Why?"

"Because the slide is slippery and you might hurt yourself"

"Why?"

"Because it rained last night"

Ad infinitum!

My 5 year old said to me and Jess the other day "We mustn't ask "Why?" must we because that is answering back" I thought to myself, I don't want him to stop asking Why? to stop asking "What If?" This is a massive skill and something we as Testers should definitely have and encouraged. So I had to explain to him that it's not a problem to ask "Why?" it isn't answering back, if you genuinely don't understand something, then you need to be able to ask "Why?" without fearing anything happening to them.

The last thing I would want to suppress, both in Testers at work and my children at home is the freedom and the environment in which they can ask questions and they can question anything without fear of being laughed at or being told off.

Sure there are times when the questioning becomes too much (especially from the kids!), or it's at an inappropriate time, but that applies to life in a Development team as well. You don't want to be questioning things at the very end of something, similar to finding bugs, the earlier you can ask questions the easier they are to answer and hopefully react upon.

I genuinely believe that there is no such thing as a "Stupid question" but also that sometimes the most silly questions are really good questions and can throw up some confusion around what is being developed. If we don't question things, then we won't improve and we'll stay the same!







Comments

  1. custom writing service reviews7 October 2017 at 07:45

    I agree with you many silly questions really have some positive impact plus some positive answers too. And I think the ones who do silly questions are the real intelligent people.

    ReplyDelete

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