Small things matters.

As a Software Tester I was working on a project and I used to interact with the client, also I was the one who needs to update the status of the project via e-mail to the client. As per my practice, I type the e-mail in a word document so that there are no spelling or grammar mistakes in the e-mail. Then I double check the content of the e-mail and I copy paste the content into the E-mail compose box. I only concentrated about the spelling mistakes, grammar and punctuation but I never thought about how actually e-mail works when you are sending an e-mail to a group of people.

I did not save the e-mail addresses as contacts in my mail box. I saved all e-mail addresses in a notepad and I used to copy paste when I need to send the e-mail. I copy pasted my e-mail content in the compose box of my mail box. I copy pasted all the e-mail addresses in “To” text field and “CC” text field, and then I have sent the e-mail. I did this for 5 days and one day, Santhosh asked me “Are you keeping me in “CC” when you send the status update e-mail?” I said “Yes”. But Santhosh said he is not receiving any e-mails of status update. I tried to open the sent e-mails, but I was not able to open the e-mails. I thought some issue with the mail box. And I tried to send one test e-mail to check if everyone receiving my e-mails. I typed a test e-mail and selected the email addresses from dropdown of the “TO” and “CC” text fields.

Santhosh was observing the process, when I selected the e-mail addresses from drop-down, immediately he said “Wait!” and he noticed that there were no commas (,) after each email address. I missed the comma (,) and that is the reason, why the e-mails were not delivering to the project team.

Here, the problem occurred because of lack of concentration and observation skill. If you give your full concentration about the work you do, then you will not make any mistakes. But, even after doing mistake, you have to learn by realizing what mistake you have done. There comes the observing skill which is very much important to a Tester. You know that, you have done some mistake that’s why e-mails were not delivering. Now, you have to observe what you did and repeat the same steps to reproduce the issue and in each step you have to observe every minute thing. We learn skills by practicing and exploring. So, one has to be like a detective to find bugs. Do mistakes but learn by mistakes and do not repeat the mistake.

There is a quote which I follow “I never lose. Either I win or I learn.” Everything whatever you do it has to be filled with positivism, think positively and the result will be positive.