Writingpublic
Verdicts
The space between PASS and FAIL — what counts as evidence, and how much a machine may decide alone.
In twelve years of QA the hard part was never finding the bug. It was deciding what to call the thing I found.
Give automation only PASS and FAIL and it will lie to you. Cases you aren’t sure about have nowhere to go, so they get pushed into one of the two — and the one they get pushed into is usually PASS.
Written
| Piece | The problem it has |
|---|---|
| I didn’t touch the threshold | The case where you could turn it green and don’t |
| Broken, or not there yet? | Where the grounds for that distinction come from |
| “Probably right” is not a verdict | What happens when you never grade what counts as evidence |
Not written yet
- How many verdicts a suite actually needs
- How a failure-reason string changes what the next person does
The rule for this category
If you know how to make it pass, say that you knew — and that you didn’t do it. Otherwise the piece becomes a boast, and a boast helps nobody make the next call.