I have been to a course about estimations in the past and the first thing that pops out in my mind when I think about that course is that estimations are not precise, never were and never will be. There are so many things that could influence the timing of a project that every time we are under the impression that we have nailed it down we are taken by surprise by something we have never thought off (and this is valid for any kind of projects not only software).

But this post will not be about estimations; it will be about being precise vs. accurate in software testing.

We often tend to think that our goal is to learn to be precise when actually we really should start focusing more on learning how to be more accurate. I know that this could look like something that has nothing to do with software testing but just think for a moment about the way we are testing software.

We start with an idea (actually, we start with someone telling that it is a new product to test in town but we will jump over this step)about how to start testing a product and without knowing it the next second we are up to our neck in that idea, trying to squeeze it as hard as we can to get more and more from it and when we get to the end we squeeze it one more time just to make sure that we haven’t forget something.

This often makes us overlook important aspects of the product we test, and most of the times this will only make us more precise while losing the accuracy. What can we gain from this? At the end we could say that from one point of view, the one with the idea from which we have started, the product is tested thoroughly.

But if I think about all the products, or features, I have worked on I can say that I have found myself not only once but multiple times, believing that I have tested the product thoroughly and finding at the end the I have missed some important aspects or bugs that could have been covered or found with only a small effort. But with my head deeply buried in the sand I had ears and eyes only for idea I have started with. I was like a racing horse running to the finish line right after the last corner in the last lap.

So what do learn from this? Every time we test something we must have our mind open to new ideas on how to better test the product and create new ones as we learn more and more about the product we are testing.

In the end the accurate factor must be higher than the precise one. There is nothing wrong in being more precise in some aspects and less in others. But it is very wrong to be precise in some aspects and not knowing anything about the others, we lose the accurate factor.

The horse alone will not win you the race.