In my blog How To Make Your Team Hate You #3, I wrote about Barbara, a Tester who I used to work with that caused a lot of conflict and was constantly trying to get out of doing work, whilst taking credit for other people’s work.
Recently, when going through old chat logs, I found some brilliant “dirt”, which, in hindsight; I could have probably used to get her sacked because it was fairly strong evidence that – not only was she not doing work; she was falsely passing Test Cases. When you are paid to check if the software is behaving correctly, claiming you have tested it is very negligent.
When running test cases, if you pass each step separately, and haven’t disabled the recording feature, Microsoft Test Manager would record your clicks and add it as evidence to the test run.
I think the feature worked really well for web apps because it can easily grab the name of all the components you clicked, whereas on our desktop app, it mainly just logged when the app had focus and read your keystrokes.
The bad news for Barbara, is that she liked going on the internet for personal use, and liked chatting using instant messenger as we will see.
The Remedy
Type 'Hi Gavin. ' in 'Chat Input. Conversation with Gavin Ford' text box
Type 'Hi Gavin. I've been telling everyone about this concoction and it really worked wonders for everyone that's tried it, myself included. This is for cold, cough and general immunity. 1 cup of milk + 1 tablespoon honey + 1/4 teaspoon of turmeric - bring to a rolling boil. Add grated root ginger (2 teaspoons or 1 tablespoon) and let it boil for another 5 mins. Put thru sieve and discard root ginger bits (or drink it all up if you fancy), but drink it hot before you sleep every night and twice a day if symptoms are really bad. Hope you feel better soon. 🙂 ' in 'Chat Input.
Pumpkins & Tetris
Type 'Indian pumpkin growing{Enter}' in 'Address and search bar' text box
Type '{Left}{Left} {Right} {Left}{Left} {Up}{Up}{Up}{Up}{Up}{Up}{Left}{Left} {Up}{Up}{Up}{Right} {Up}{Up}{Left} {Right}{Right} {Up}{Right}{Left}{Left}{Left}{Left} {Right}{Up}{Left}{Left}' in '(1) Tetris Battle on Facebook - Google Chrome' document
Click 'Amazon.co.uk:Customer Reviews: 100ml Bergamot Pure...' label
Click 'Close' button
Click 'Essential-Oil-Blends_Chart.pdf' label
Click 'Checkout' label
3 days Small Regression Pack
Me 11:26:
Barbara has been doing the Assessment regression pack for 3 days
she says there is only a few left in this morning's standup. There's 15 left out of 27
Dan Woolley 11:28:
lol
Me 11:29:
I don't even think she is testing them either. It looks like she is dicking about then clicking pass
Click 'Inbox (2,249) - [Barbara@gmail.com]Barbara@gmail.com - Gmail' label
Click 'Taurus Horoscope for April 2017 - Page 4 of 4 - Su...' tab
Click 'Chrome Legacy Window' document
Click 'Chrome Legacy Window' document
Click 'Close' button
Click 'Paul' label in the window 'Paul'
Click image
Type 'Morning. ' in 'Chat Input. Conversation with Paul' text box
Type '{Enter}' in 'Chat Input. Conversation with Paul' text box
Step Completed : Repeat steps 6 to 19 using the Context Menu in the List Panel
End testing
Next Day
Me 12:42: Barbara said this morning that all the Assessments test cases need running. She has just removed them instead
Greek Salad
Type 'greek salad{Enter}' in 'Chrome Legacy Window' document
Type 'cous cous salad' in 'Chrome Legacy Window' document
Type 'carrots ' in 'couscous with lemon and coriander - Google Search ...' document
Click 'Vegetable Couscous Recipe | Taste of Home' tab
Click 'Woman Traumatized By Chimpanzee Attack Speaks Out ...' tab
Marshall 11:50:
oh damn haha
these are things that were inadvertently recorded?
Me 11:51:
yeah
Marshall 11:51:
ha you've stumbled upon a gold mine
Me 11:53:
I don't think she is actually testing anything. I think she just completes a step now and then
the other day Rob went to PO approve an item and he couldn't see the changes because they hadn't even patched
Haven’t Been Testing From The Start
we are in Sprint 8 and Barbara suggested Matt does a demo on the project so we know how it works; it’s a right riot
Me. 4 months into a project
Bad Audits
I wonder if Barbara was inconsistent with how she ran the test cases, or realised by the end that it tracked you. So near the end of her time, she was just hitting the main Pass button rather than passing each individual step. Managers liked the step-by-step way because if you mark a step as failed, it is clearer what the problem is.
Me 16:15:
Barbara called me. Matt is monitoring our testing!
Dan Woolley 16:15:
how?
Me 16:17:
looking at the run history
she said he was complaining it wasn't clear which step failed because we were just using the main pass button, and also bugs weren't linked when they had been failed
I told Barbara I linked mine, then she checked and said it was Sam that didn't. I checked and saw it was Sam and Barbara
so only the developer did testing properly 😀
you just can't get the staff
Obviously The Wrong Message
Me 09:12:
Bug 35824:Legal Basis text needs to be clear
what's all that about?
Barbara Smith 09:12:
Charlotte asked me to raise it for visibility
We need to fix the text that appears on that tab
Me 09:13:
what's wrong with it?
Barbara Smith 09:21:
It says that on the Bug LOL
And with a screenshot (mm)
Me 09:22:
it says "needs to be clear" and has a screenshot with a part of it underlined. But it doesn't say what the text should be instead.
She rarely logged bugs because she did minimal testing. Then when she did log something it didn’t have enough info to be useful.
Karma
Barbara got well conned in the end. She was gonna take the entire December off but delayed it for the end of the project and then she has been told she has lost her job, so they are telling her to take the holiday now. She had just bought a house so would be relying on the money for the mortgage payments. Luckily for her she got accepted for a new job, but she was looking for a brand new way of getting out of it, as we will see below.
Tax Fraud
Type 'what if I don't contact hrmc about my tax{Enter}' in 'Address and search bar' text box
Sam 11:23:
Ha ha
You are savage
Me 11:24:
she is gonna get jailed for tax evasion
Maternity Fraud
Click ‘How to get pregnant fast | BabyCenter’ tab
Stranger Coding Tings 