Musings on testing, my research and other activities.

The interpretation of a test by a human being is influenced by the state of mind of the tester before that test is run.

For example, if we run a test and experience a failure:

• If the failure is in the area we are 'looking for bugs' e.g. a newly written piece of code, we are disappointed but not unnerved (say) because we expect to find bugs in new code - and that is the purpose of the test.

• But what if the failure is in an area we trust, to the degree that we have no specific tests in that area? The failure is unnerving, undermining our confidence. e.g. suppose we experience a database or operating system failure. This undermines our confidence in the platform as a whole. It also challenges our assumptions that the platform was reliable (so we didn't have any DB or OS tests planned).

Our pre-disposition to software aligns closely with our perception of risk.