The Curling Tester

When talking about parenting the danish psychologist Bent Hougaard created the term “Curling Parent” to describe one of those parents who always try to sweep the way of their child. This word has been used both in a good way, describing a parent helping their child to reach their goals. This word has also been used in a bad way, describing a parent doing too much which stops their child to learn how to do things their own way.

A couple of years ago, I worked in a project with lot of interacting systems. All developers did a great job developing their own system. When we started to do end-to-end-testing between the interacting systems we found bugs that could not have been found by looking at the systems one by one, which was what the developers had  been doing. Starting as a joke, we created the word “Curling Tester”.  The word kind of stuck. I still like the metaphor of the tester sweeping the way for the developer, helping the developer to come closer and closer to the target.

Comparing with the “Curling Parent” we must be careful not to do too much sweeping, then we may end up seeing developers putting a lot of stones into play without control and we then not only have to sweep but also have to watch our legs not to get swept away our selves.

The developer still has to put the stone into play with good precision aiming at the target. And the tester continues to sweep, getting the stone the last few inches closer to target. Keeping the customers satisfied. Helping developers to become heroes. Together with us.