The Pear Tree & Testing !!

An interesting story I read recently and it relates so much to the testing .........
If you are passionate about testing ....you can relate every word to some activity you do as a tester ....including the lessons learnt !!

The Pear tree!!


There was a man who had four sons. He wanted his sons to learn not to judge things too quickly. So he sent them each on a quest, in turn, to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away.

The first son went in the winter, the second in the spring, the third in summer, and the youngest son in the fall.

When they had all gone and come back, he called them together to describe what they had seen.
The first son said that the tree was ugly, bent, and twisted.
The second son said no it was covered with green buds and full of promise.
The third son disagreed; he said it was laden with blossoms that smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful, it was the most graceful thing he had ever seen.
The last son disagreed with all of them; he said it was ripe and drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfillment.

The man then explained to his sons that they were all right, because they had each seen but only one season in the tree's life.

He told them that you cannot judge a tree, or a person, by only one season, and that the essence of who they are and the pleasure, joy, and love that come from that life can only be Measured at the end,when all the seasons are up.

Lessons learnt :
If you give up when it's winter, you will miss the promise of your spring, the beauty of your summer, fulfillment of your fall!!

Don't let the pain of one season destroy the joy of all the rest!!

Don't judge life by one difficult season… don’t judge a person by one single incident!!

Managing Traceability - yes / no ?

In my opinion, managing traceability is difficult especially if the product is very complex in architecture.


Though it is tough, I do not perceive it as impossible.

The only place this falls through the cracks is when the product starts to grow and people do not have time to maintain or reuse it efficiently and effectively.

One of the easiest ways to maintain it for the benefit of all groups in SDLC is to maintain it centrally. Have a few people team working very closely with architects who track each and every impact.

The methods to track can be either through something as simple as an xls or through various tools available in the market. BPM and BPT(Business Process Modeling and testing) can be one option.

A small tracker will need to be maintained further as a subset of traceability tracker to know proper coverage of: Positive tests, Negative Tests, Performance/Load/Stress, usability... etc ..etc based on your needs.