For those of you writing automated checks and giving scrum reports, status reports, test reports, or some other form of communication to your team, please watch your language…and I'm not talking about swearing.

You may not want to say, “I found a bunch of issues”, because sometimes when you say that, what you really mean is, “I found a bunch of issues in my automated check code” or “I found a bunch of issues in our product code”.  Please be specific.  There is a big difference and we may be assuming the wrong thing.

If you often do checking by writing automated checks, you may not want to say, “I’m working on FeatureA”, because what you really mean is “I’m writing the automated checks for FeatureA and I haven't executed them or learned anything about how FeatureA works yet” or “I’m testing FeatureA with the help of automated checks and so far I have discovered the following…”

The goal of writing automated checks is to interrogate the system under test (SUT), right?  The goal is not just to have a bunch of automated checks.  See the difference?

Although your team may be interested in your progress creating the automated checks, they are probably more interested in what the automated checks have helped you discover about the SUT.

It’s the testing, stupid.  That’s why we hired you instead of another programmer.