Power of analogy to explain testing to children

In the recent interview that I gave to Tieturi, I pondered how well analogies work in explaining something difficult. It works for children and adults alike. I've used this approach for children in the book Dragons Out, comparing the fantasy story into software testing and IT concepts. Similarly, in my IT blogs of the past ten years, I've honed the practice of using some analogy to explain a particular testing concept. It is also good fun to create the analogies, and also to read them. 

The interview was done in Finnish and can be read here. Enjoy.

Let me give you another analogy via a Dragons Out book excerpt:

As the discussion shifted to assembling a construction team, Tom and Ted emphasized the importance of experience. Ted wanted to call experienced knights to guide the construction. Tom wanted to invite his cousin Laura, who had encountered dragons more often than any other villager. The villagers accepted both proposals. They would assemble most of the construction team from the village's stonemasons. They already knew how to work with stone.

In the story, the village assembly decides to get some dragon experience to the construction team. Similarly, in information technology projects, it is important to have testing personnel involved from the start, making it cheaper and easier to design the system to be easily testable and to anticipate some defects.





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