Slipping on test

As winter has arrived for a short while in Sweden a discussion got me thinking.

A friends mother has apparently decided that it will be slippery everywhere, as there is about 1 mm of snow on the ground and therefore is a bit scared to actually go out.

Do we experience similar behavior when testing ?

Do we test in different ways depending on the state of the software?

If the software is in a bad state, or early in development, where issues are common:

You are expecting issues and therefore test in a different way, as: “it will not work anyway”, and you catch the small issues and might miss the big one. Or even worse give up before even trying one scenario.

I.e one is expecting to slip on the ice and therefore stiffens up and walks completely different and is probably more likely to actually slip on each little patch of ice

Or do you “walk” normally but is aware of the ice and prepared that the foot might skid a bit. ie you test as you normally do and if you “slip” are prepared for it and can handle that issue and continue to the really important ones

Keeping the focus

After doing some interviews for possible new assignment, the approaches have been quite different. They have ranged from the “traditional” question - answer to one that felt more like I held a presentation. And given the interaction with the interviewer my own performance have been quite different.

Is there a similar interaction when you test ?

Regardless if you are running test cases or using an ET approach, the way the system under test responds might dictate they way you continue to interact with the system.

for example if the test scenario takes a long time, ie running large sql queries, one might lose focus during the waiting time and might miss issues once the system actually responds. On the contrary if the system responds quickly you can keep focus better and more likely to spot the possible issues.

For me the more challenging the interview is and if there is a good interaction with the interviewer I seem to perform better. Its a similar feeling when running tests. Early in the project the system is new and its challenging to test. One must get “to know” the system/function and issues are often common. You get continuous feedback and expand you knowledge.

But the longer the testing runs you start to know the system and issues have been handled so the interaction and response might not be that immediate. which in turns might mean the focus is dropping of and issues can be missed

How do you keep focus if the interaction and response from the system drops, or when the test phase is long ?