Let s Play a Round

For a bit of practice, let's play a round:

Tester: I really think the Output Window should use a 6-point font by default.

You: Why? A 6-point font is completely illegible.

Tester: Trust me, it would make the product much better.

Right now, an alarm should sound off in your head. You now know that you are playing QA Gefahren. You realize that the tester has a problem with the program and has presented you with a poor solution to the problem. Rather than wasting time debating the merits of 6-point fonts, you should immediately shift the focus away from the proposed solution to the actual problem. Ask the Magic Question!

You: What problem in the program would this solution solve?

Tester: Well, if I select the verbose option and display a summary in the Output Window, much of the information gets chopped off on the bottom. I then have to resize the window to see what I want. With a smaller font, I can see everything without resizing.

You: What if the Output Window had a vertical scroll bar so that information wouldn't get chopped off?

Tester: I thought of that, but another problem is that if I resize the window to be narrower than the default size, text would still get chopped off on the right unless we also had a horizontal scroll bar, which I definitely don't want.

You: What if the contents of the Output Window were to use a dynamic layout so that it would take advantage of whatever space is available when the window is resized? This approach only requires a vertical scroll bar.

Tester: Well, I guess that would work…

This example round also reveals another trick: you have to be persistent. When a tester decides to play QA Gefahren, he has already decided what the solution is. Your initial counter-solutions usually will not get a warm reception. And the tester might have several problems that he's trying to solve at once with the proposed solution, so you might have to make several attempts before you come up with something acceptable.

Believe it or not, this example is loosely based on an actual incident. Early testers of the original Macintosh wanted to have really small fonts so that they could get more information on the screen.