Thursday, March 1, 2012

With the Context-Driven School "closed" what's next?

This is Part II in a series of entries related to the following quote from the "about page" of context-driven-testing.com hosted by Cem Kaner:

"...However, over the past 11 years, the founders have gone our separate ways. We have developed distinctly different visions. If there ever was one context-driven school, there is not one now..."
If you haven't done so already, I recommend starting with Part I: Is Testing Dead? Dunno, but the Context-Driven School Is


Much like when one completes an educational program at one institution and ponders whether or not to enroll in another program (and if so, which one), or to enter the workforce and continue their learning along the professional development or self-education path, I think it's fair for those who have come to self-identify as members of the Context-Driven School to be asking themselves similar questions.

And much like completing an educational program does not equate to losing the lessons learned (as opposed to the lesson's taught) in the program, the Context-Driven Principles and the lessons many of us have learned by studying in (or, for that matter, rebelling against) the Context-Driven School remain despite Cem's announcement that (in my words) the school is now closed.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Is Testing Dead? Dunno, but the Context-Driven School Is

Well, I'm sure this is a bit of a shocker for many of you, but the following quote comes from the "about page" of context-driven-testing.com hosted by Cem Kaner:

"...However, over the past 11 years, the founders have gone our separate ways. We have developed distinctly different visions. If there ever was one context-driven school, there is not one now..."
This is Part I of a series of entries on this topic. Links to subsequent parts will be added to the bottom of this entry as they are posted.


Of course, this doesn't  negate or erase the Context-Driven Principles, and Cem has committed to keeping the original content on landing page of the revised site:
"...When you land on this site, you see the context-driven-testing.com landing page (the Principles) as it was when we originally published it. I’ll keep it that way (with the same set of Principles), because several people have found it useful..."
To my way of thinking, the *most* important point made by Cem on the About Page is the following:
..."This notion of evolution comes with a built-in assumption: If my thinking will evolve to something else in the future, it must be wrong today. Progress on my path to better understanding and practice of testing (and of anything else that I’m serious about) includes discovering what needs to be changed in my thinking, and changing it.
This is an important aspect of science. We don’t run experiments to confirm what we already know. We run experiments to prove that what we think we already know is wrong. And to help us develop something better..."
This is the point I'd like folks to focus on.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Curse of the Performance Tester?

Seriously?!? After wrapping gifts until nearly 5am (I was behind by even my standards due mostly to work travel, client commitments & preparing to close the corporate books for 2011), and getting up before 8am to celebrate Christmas with my boys, I finally stole a few minutes when I noticed they'd both fallen asleep on the couch to play with *my* new toy (i.e. install Skyrim), only to be foiled by...

Friday, December 16, 2011

10 Take Aways from STP Summit on Metrics

I had the pleasure of hosting the third Online Summit, delivered by Software Test Professionals: Deliver Value with Testing Metrics: Move Beyond the Myth.  The online summit format consists of 3 sessions each for 3 consecutive days.  The sessions for this summit were:
One of my duties as host was to try to summarize the most valuable nuggets of information from across all of the presentations into a "top take aways" list.  This is what I came up with:

Scott's Top 10 Take Aways from: