Jim from Netscape was renowned for his ability to voice his beliefs and summarize situations in manner at once ‘down home’ and exactly to the point. Barksdale’s “rules of snakes” where snakes allude to business issues and problems can be also be applied to testing profession.
Below is my version of Jim’s snake-ism rules:
Rule 1: Think of bugs as snakes, if you see a snake, don’t call committees, don’t call your buddies, don’t form a team, don’t get a meeting together, just kill the snake.
Learning: Report the bugs as soon as you find them and highest priority should be tracking them to closure.
Rule 2: If you kill a snake, or get a bug fixed, tell other testers and developers.
Learning: That way they too can keep a lookout for them in that area.
Rule 3: Don’t go back and play with dead snakes or bugs that have clear resolution.
Learning: Once the resolution and the impact is clear, it is advised not to keep spending more time on it.
