Have you been spotting mythical creatures lately?

Right... This is no after-the-weekend delirium post but a testing post instead. At least I think so... The other day I was browsing the magick land of Interweb and stumbled into a word "unicorn". I stuck into my mind and today as I was travelling to work I started thinking what mythical creature I would be (I have a soft spot for fantasy literature and all sorts a coo coo things). I thought about the unicorn and poof - a testicorn came into mind.

What a testicorn is? Here a list that I came up:
- mythical creature no-one really understands
- avoids human contact
- has a protruding thing coming from the forehead
- a long face like that of a horse
- its blood will cure the sick

When put into context the testicorn is much like a tester in some bad apple companies (no pun intended). At some companies a testicorn is a lonely creature that lurks in dark corners of the Developland trying to do its magick. He is rarely fully understood except by other testicorns who sometimes try to rise against the tyranny of the Developland, shy creature that rarely comes out in the open anymore. These creatures are forced to behave like they are expected to; work as to detect wrongness in the universe and report the findings. Sometimes they are forced to present a magick scroll into which they must write the spells they use to get rid of the evil but are rarely encouraged to cast spells from their memory or develop new spells to get rid of a certain kind of evil entity. These spells are then stored into a library by the head wizard and the spells are given to new testicorns when old ones are expended. "Testicorns are of plenty. Why try preserving them? We have new testicorns coming from the School of Magick as much as we want!" And testicorns retreat into their magical forests to do the things they are forced to do.

At first the testicorns didn't have a "horn" in their forehead. They developed that during overtime conjuring and after getting their mythical rights trampled upon. They also developed a long face with dark spots under their eyes. They do what they are forced to do and the horn grows. A sad thing actually as at some point (and in some benevolent magical kingdoms) they are regarded as beautiful and wise creatures. They used to be highly regarded for their expertise in evil ridding spells and a mind for the common good. Now they are the grease that lubricates the machine of tyranny.

Testicorns were the healers of the magic kingdoms once. They taught the ways of healing to people. The testicorns still have the ability to heal (and do it with plethora of ways known as Schools of healing. To mention one the School of Exploratory Healing...) with their innate ability, but the blood of the testicorns is known for their incredible healing abilities. The Chief Magickmen use the blood of the testicorn to heal the sickness without regards of the testicorns health. They are bled to heal the hurt. This consumes the testicorns power and at some point they have no more strength and they wither away.

In some kingdoms you see  these mythical creatures laboring their tailed behinds off to get from day to day. At some point they are replaced by a hornless, careless little testicorn and the old withered one gets laid off. A sad story actually...

The kennings above were used as stark image of the way some companies use testers as a way to increase the quality. They are put into a mold and told what to do instead of doing what should be done. They are exhausted with stupidifying tasks and are kept as a scapegoat for bad quality and bugs in the system. Instead of being a mythical creature a tester should be intelligent and self aware. Testers are not “the final gate of quality" but “the defender of the quality”. They do what they can and sometimes must to defend the quality and provide as much information about the current quality. That may include healing (fixing) of some sort and other gimmicks that improve the quality, but I think it’s not the essence of testing.

Now some people may recognize themselves as testicorn (at least I did - I was one in my early testing career). Are you the beautiful and wise testicorn, who uses its abilities for good, or the long faced, horny (no pun intended) testicorn who has been greasing the machine of tyranny?