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James Bach's Blog

The Consulting Software Tester

What Impressed Me at OredevNovember 23

Fredrik Scheja did a wonderful talk about testing against requirements. I’m so glad he avoided the common tropes about the importance of “testable” requirements (he offered “Scheja’s Law” which is “any requirement that can be implemented can also be tested”). I also happen to know he’s a gifted leader of exploratory testers. He works through Sogeti for a client I cannot name– apparently because that client does not want to publicly admit they do ET. Oh when will they learn?

I met and conversed briefly with Rikard Edgren with whom I had tangled online. I was pretty upset with him after the email stuff, but in person I was pleasantly surprised. I will go back and reevaluate, because he has a look in his eye I love to see; clever and a bit cynical; ready for an argument. Keith Stobie has perfected that look, and gives me no end of fun trouble. Rikard did a talk about testing creativity, though I didn’t see it. (I generally don’t attend talks when I haven’t been invited, because otherwise the speakers get upset when I start asking questions.) 

One fellow who invited me to hear him was

Hello, South Korea!November 7

A couple of weeks ago, I taught Rapid Software Testing in Seoul, South Korea. I was there at the invitation of Wonil Kwon, executive director of STA Consulting. It was a professional operation in all respects. Mr. Kwon even brought in a team of translators to help. It was like the United Nations, with the translators in a small wooden booth and everyone wearing an earpiece. (I couldn’t resist saying “Dorsal Lateral Prefrontal Cortex” and “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” a few times, just to give them a challenge. But the startling thing was to discover that there is no Korean word for “coverage” or “oracle.”)

Turns out there is a substantial South Korean testing community, and Mr. Kwon is a major player in it. Apart from outsourcing and consulting, he has written a few testing books, and teaches testing. Wonil also showed me some flashy online training. It was all in Korean, but done very professionally. The most interesting part, to me, is that he runs testing clinics. Clinics are cool. We need more of them in our industry. As I understand it, in each clinic, someone brings test documentation from a real project. The class then analyzes and comments on it.

Schools of Testing… Here to Stay.November 5

The world of testing is divided into camps. Those camps argue with each other, sometimes. Mostly they ignore each other. These camps are like religions of software testing. They are determined and persistent patterns of belief, speech, and behavior. They could be called paradigms. In my community, we call them “schools.”

I didn’t create the schools (only the members of each school can do that) but I helped make labels for them. The labels represent these persistent patterns. Paul Gerrard wants them to go away. This puzzles me. It’s like trying to make culture go away. You can ignore cultural differences, of course, as long as you only work within one culture. You can ignore cultural differences if you wish to remain ignorant and provincial.

I’m a pluralist. I have my own testing religion (the Context-Driven School), but I recognize that there are others in the world. Besides Context-Driven, I share the world with adherents to the Factory School, Quality Control School, Analytical School, and Test-Driven Design School, and I share the world with people who form their own schools drawn from each of the other ones.

Paul suggests that no one wants to be a member of a school and that the schools don’t align to real-life testing. Paul’s wrong about that, and profoundly so. Actually the only people NOT a member of a school are those who have no beliefs or ideas about testing. But if you test,

My TravelsOctober 8

I will be embarking, soon, on a series of classes and speaking engagements in several countries.

October 20-22, I’ll be in South Korea, for the first time, teaching rapid software testing.

After that I’ll be in different parts of Sweden for most of my trip, through December 3rd. However, on November 3rd I will be in Amsterdam, and on the 5th I should be in Zurich, although that booking is still tentative. I do not plan to be at Eurostar. I will be teaching in Stockholm at that time.

I hope to meet with a lot of testers and talk a lot about testing on my trip. I’m told that in South Korea I will be working through a translator. My class is so interactive, I worry how that will work, but I’ll give it my best.

Brother’s Got a Brand New BlogOctober 8

My brother, Jon, is now a test manager at LexisNexis after being a consultant with Quardev for some years. Jon is one the best test managers in the business, so I’m excited about this. His role will enable him to apply context-driven testing and exploratory testing methodology on long term projects. His team– whether they know this yet or not– is going to be a laboratory for advanced approaches to managing testing as a sapient process.

Anyway, he has a new blog, too. Check it out.