Once upon a time there was three friends; the Zealot, the Anarchist and the Robot. They were best friends and all worked together to produce high quality products. Until their differences got in the way.

The Zealot said he was the best, but the Anarchist disagreed. So the Robot designed the Documentation challenge. They worked the whole night through and in the morning the Zealot produced a wonderful, standards compliant, audit-able document with lots of citations and references. The Anarchist had produced a couple scribbles on scraps of paper he had in his pockets in a few short minutes then went to bed. The Zealot was declared the winner.

“I’m the Best! I’m the Best”, shouted the Zealot. But the Robot disagreed.

So the Anarchist designed the Coverage challenge. They worked through the night and in the end the Zealot had barely scratch the surface as coverage was not in their Book(s). The Robot create a large volume of work which covered a large part of the product in a repeatable, robotic way (as only a robot can do). Ignoring his true nature, the Anarchist declared the Robot the winner as it will, robotically, cover the product. (The Anarchist then spent the next hour or so trying to convince the Robot to forsake his Robotic ways and join the Anarchist cause).

“I’m the Best! I’m the Best”, danced the Robot. But the Anarchist disagreed.

So the Zealot designed the Exploration challenge. They working through the night and in the end the Anarchist had bounced around and followed hunches and had explored throughly. The Robot had reproduced their work of the Coverage challenge adding some extra hooks for dynamic inputs. The Zealot begrudging declared the Anarchist the winner as they did explore the most even through their process could not be encoded and etching in Holy Writ.

“I’m the Best! I’m the Best”, gloated the Anarchist in self congratulating glee.

Having reached a stalemate, the three friends went their separate direction in a huff.

And they thought.

And they thought.

The Zealot realized that while he was great at producing structure documentation, he wasn’t as good exploration or generating coverage. The Robot realized that he could generate lots quite, repeatable tasks he wasn’t as good at exploration or documentation (after all, the tasks are all the documentation is all that is needed). And the Anarchist also realized that their knack for exploration was countered by their lack of repeatability and documentation.

Having realized that they each have both their own strengths and weakness, the three friends decided that fighting was silly, acknowledges their differences, set them aside and went back helping each other produce high quality products.

The End.

*Of course, this is a fable. The one thing I have learned from the Zealots, Robots and Anarchists in the testing community is that they are good at acknowledging differences but seem incapable of setting them aside for any great length of time. While is a shame.

It should also be pointed out that this is completely stolen from The Legend of Ninja Cowboy Bear.*