It’s a bit slow in telephony-testing-land, I’ve got long-duration load tests in progress but don’t have anything going on that needs interaction from me.  And there’s some GUI stuff that’s overloading the people who normally do it, and more pressure than usual to make the currently promised ship date.  So I’m helping with some GUI testing.  Fortunately I have both a test plan to follow (so I know what sorts of things to try) and a test oracle to consult (I ‘m checking something that got re-implemented, so I can compare behavior to the original).

Pro:

I have stuff to do, which is good, because “bored Meredith” is a bad thing.

I’m getting exposed to parts of our product that normally I have very little contact with.  I’ve already had a few “that’s kinda cool, I didn’t know it could do that” moments.

Con:

My usefulness is limited.  I can and have found discrepancies, such as features that work fine with one browser, but show no data if tried with a different one.  But I don’t know what sorts of things developers of this stuff tend to get wrong, so I don’t know where to go exploring for problems.  And sometimes I retest something, and I think I’m running the same test, but I get different results – I’m sure I’m doing something different, but I don’t know what it is, or where to look for clues, so my bug descriptions aren’t as good as they might be.

Well, the telephony work should pick up again soon.