“What do you mean you do not accept my bug?!” *Flying kick*
No - not that!
In this post, I will highlight some of the important, sometimes forgotten aspects of testing via some observations I made from watching possibly every Jackie Chan movie ever made over the years (kung fu movie fan here) - hence the ‘Jackie Chan Approach.’
Jackie Chan is an absolute master at martial arts performance and arguably the greatest stuntman to appear on film. Known for his unorthodox approach to martial arts action, I believe we can take some important reminders from Sensei Jackie.
It is my belief, that Jackie Chan would be the greatest tester ever, had he ever tested software for a living. I know, I know, but hear me out…
Firstly, **Disclaimer - this post is not to condone any acts of violence**
And so we begin. Martial arts movies typically follow the standard plot formula. Something like:
if bad.thing happens to main.character
and main.character seeks revenge
using.KungFuPowers
then movie.genre = 'martial arts'
end
Putting my poor attempt at coding aside, the Jackie Chan movies follow the same structure but there are two things that make the Jackie Chan movies distinctly relatable to our job as Testers.
Establishing the Mission
In our role, like the movie genre above, we want to start out by establishing our mission.
Has this product upset us in some way, or someone of value to us? A client, or end user perhaps? ‘Upset’ here, meaning we have experienced a problem of some kind.
In this case, we would probably be addressing a particular bug or pain point of the product found by somebody else. Not a great place to be in, as ideally we would have found this problem during testing, before our person of value did, however it is a very real possibility and a most certain reality that will occur at some point in our careers.
When addressing problems found by others, our mission will consider these factors and how we embark on that mission will be a great learning experience. Our mission in this case could be:
Verify the conditions of the problem and try to ensure that under the same circumstances, this bug no longer occurs.
Taking a more general approach, as Testers our mission should be:
Find potential and actual problems
This general approach can encompass risk-storming at the beginning of a project, all through the development cycle up to and after delivery of the project. All of our testing activities can happen in the context of this mission. For example, When refining or building requirements for it, how can we find potential problems?, what are the risks?, in what ways is it testable? Are we sure we have understood our clients? How would things look and playout in the worst case scenario, if everything goes wrong?
In trying to get some answers for those questions, we are achieving our mission.
Unfamiliar Places
In ‘Rush Hour’ and ‘Rumble in the Bronx’, Jacke Chan plays a detective arriving in the USA from his home country China. Whilst in pursuit of his mission, he is forced to get familiar with the unfamiliar very quickly, adapting to new places, new relationships and new situations.
This is very similar in testing. We are regularly faced with the unfamiliar and are forced to work in these new contexts, otherwise our job, and the quality of which it is performed suffers greatly. We are met with new features and enhancements, and to help us make sense of these, we have to build relationships with new people and teams, often speaking with people we haven’t met before, again - with the aim of achieving our mission.
Naturally, in unfamiliar situations there is a lot of exploring and there are many questions asked. The answers we get for those questions help us ask more specific questions until we start to get a more clear picture and we can then begin to build a story around our mission. Much like Jackie did in those movies.
Challenges Along the Way
Here is where I find one of the two things that make Jackie Chan unique in his movies, which I believe can relate to testing.
Typically in a Jackie Chan flick, the obstacles that stand in the way of him and his mission take the form of ‘bad guys’. You know the type, angry facial expressions, speaking in grunts and not the most friendly of people. Combat ensues and this is where Jackie becomes the ‘greatest tester that never tested software’ in my books.
The obstacle has presented itself, in the form of a group of bad guys but lo’ and behold, there’s a ladder in the room. We know what ladders are for, but being the creative person Jackie is, he decides to use this ladder as a weapon! And ladders aren’t the only victim of his innovations. For example, one viewer online noted, that in just one movie there was use of:
- A belt
- A pool cleaning net
- A bicycle
- Some chairs
- A pot of spaghetti (flung by his feet onto head of assailant holding him from behind)
- Some plates (flung Frisbee style)
Now I haven’t ever used any of the above tools to test a product but I thought to myself, here is someone that will use every possible thing available in order to address any challenges - utilising tools that were not intended for use in a martial arts encounter.
I relate this to testing because I believe we should have the same approach in our roles. I want to find and use any tool possible that will help me succeed in my mission. We should be testing beyond requirements and acceptance criterias. Communication is a great tool. I once met with a team to get some valuable data regarding a project I was working on. The team never had a tester speak to them prior to that. Like Jackie, I want to take a look around and see whatever is there that can be utilised. This can span from meeting with other colleagues and teams to get valuable information, reading through documentation to using tools that perform specific functions on our product under test (and much more depending on your context, and more importantly whether you care to look!)
No Replacements
It is well known that Jackie Chan performs his own stunts in his movies and certainly pays the price for doing so. Over the years he has broken many bones and his body has taken a real beating. This brings me on to the second thing I believe we can apply to testing.
Jackie Chan, like every other actor has the option of brining a stunt man in to perform the stunt on his behalf - but that’s not Jackie. You watch a Jackie Chan movie, in anticipation of what great stunts will perform, and then for the 20 minutes of bloopers that playout at the end as the credits roll.
As the tech world rapidly evolves, there are now many tools on the market that we can use as testers - but these are exactly that, ‘tools.’ The tools help us as we conduct our testing. We use tools that can automate things, generate data for us, extract, upload, report and much more but we should never want to replace the importance of a skilled tester actually testing. Jackie Chan doesn’t want a stunt double, why should we want someone to ‘act’ as a tester on our part?.. If Jackie Chan needed to fly over a castle wall, then perhaps he might need some CGI tool to help with that. Likewise if we needed a hundred thousand-odd records of enduser data created in our database, we too might look for a tool to help us do that - but that tool isn’t the one testing - just like that wouldn’t be Jackie flying over that castle wall!
Mission Accomplished
And so, those are my observations. What I call the ‘Jackie Chan Approach’ - establish your mission, utilise all things possible that could (even unexpectedly) aid you in achieving your mission and replace your efforts with tools when reasonable, never seek to replace testing itself.
Roll credits!
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