Looking forward

Sometimes when testing, a question will arise and the person with the answer isn't available. Say you're in the middle of writing treat scripts and part of the specification has two options and you don't know which was chosen, or a piece of functionality has been deployed and it's not 100% clear how it works. Terribly frustrating and potentially time wasting, but there is sometimes a way round such a block. 

A relevant anecdote from my very early schooldays: when I was about 6 years old it was a snowy winter day and the teacher decided to use the opportunity to teach a bit of science by posing the following question - which is bigger: snow or the water it leaves behind when it melts? There were supporters of both answers, as well as some unknowns, so to settle the argument she proposed an experiment and sent a "volunteer" outside to collect some snow in a tub. The plan was to measure the depth of the snow then re-measure after it had melted to see which was bigger. When they returned she put the tub on her desk and asked if seeing the snow had changed anyone's opinion. I put my hand up and said I thought there would be less water than snow.  "And why do you think that?" she asked. "It's a full tub. If there was more water it would go all over your desk."

Two things to take away from that: one, I was a smartass from a very early age; two, you can find out a lot by looking past the immediate problem and focussing on the end result. So, back to the original problems - if the spec has two options, how do they differ? Will the end user see the difference? If not, the tests can be written without even knowing how it is achieved (although it may be useful to find that out later, especially if there are bugs to investigate). And if a piece of functionality is not clear, is it still possible to work out what the inputs and outputs are, maybe by looking at other parts of the system that it feeds into? Looking past your immediate problem to the end result can often unblock you (even if there are i's to dot and t's to cross later). Plus you'll have the satisfaction of overcoming a hurdle - something to look forward to.