The Role of Pessimism in Testing

Pessimism is usually defined as a certain tendency to something bad or a belief that negative things happen more frequently than good ones.

In our world, where many psychologists prefer positive thinking, a pessimistic approach tends to be seen as a very bad feature.

But everything is different in testing — a certain level of pessimism, better known as defense pessimism, can even be helpful under certain conditions.

We will talk further about the role of pessimism in software testing.

What is defense pessimism?

So defense pessimism is in some way a strategy to use doubts and worries to increase motivation and human performance.

For example, you are absolutely sure that the X device will not work properly under certain conditions and then you make up factors that can cause such conditions.

This practice allows to deal with refusals to do the work.

The software testing sector is obviously a field where defense pessimism can come in handy.

Basics of defense pessimism while providing web testing services

The usage of defense pessimism can be helpful while executing software testing since it can help to obtain crucial data on a product that is being tested, make small changes, and finally, it will become useful for a client.

For example, a pessimistic perception of the product’s quality will make you doubt each aspect of the development, testing, and release of a product.

Moreover, it will make you search for bugs in an application more intensively.

In the future, you will do everything to make such issues fixed as soon as possible.

A tester as a pessimist

Pessimism and a pessimistic approach to software testing are not always bad traits of an employee who works in a QA company.

But you can still make a development department or certain stakeholders crazy if you always tell them negative news on the current quality of a product.

But the most important thing is what you actually do with your pessimism and how (in what form) you tell your teammates about the results of a pessimistic approach to product testing.

We can’t underestimate the importance of familiarity with product bugs, their rapid finding, and fixing before the official release.

Instead of conclusion

Everything we have mentioned above should not be perceived as a recipe to analyze the topic of pessimism in testing — it is simply a list of facts and arguments to protect pessimism as a possibility to fix and improve a web product.

Testing is important only in a case when it goes together with a thorough intellectual process, various practices, and concepts of testing.