10 Things About Testing That Should Die

I've taken some heat for discussing the whole "is test dead" concept due to a feeling that I was validating the concept of testing being unnecessary. Allow me to clarify my position. I do not believe, for one heartbeat, that testing as an activity is in any way unnecessary. I do believe that there are things related to the current state of and common beliefs about testing that should die. With that said...

Scott Barber's Top 10 Things About Testing That Should Die: 

10. Egocentricity

Face reality testers, neither the product nor the business revolve around you. Think about it. No business, no product, no developers => no need for testers. In fact, if developers wrote perfect code, there'd be no need for you. You are a service provider and your primary clients are the managers, developers, and/or executives. Your secondary clients are product users and investors. So stop whining and stomping your feet when your clients don't make decisions you like with the information you provide. It's not your call. If you want it to be your call, get on track to become a project manager, product manager, or executive, otherwise, get right with the fact that you provide a service (hopefully a valuable one) and get back to providing it.

Best Ice Cream Practice

A twitter conversation from Friday, Oct 21...

@TesterAB Anna Baik: What's best practice for icecream? I don't know what flavour of icecream I should eat, and I'm afraid to get it wrong.

• @skillinen Sylvia Killinen: @TesterAB Test ALL the ice cream, that way you'll know which one best satisfies conformance. :)

• @TesterAB Anna Baik: @skillinen I like this idea very much :)

• @adampknight Adam Knight: @TesterAB it's vanilla, if you're not eating vanilla you are doing it wrong. I'd suggest getting yourself CVM certified as soon as you can

• @adampknight  Adam Knight: @sbarber @TesterAB we should be specific. I'll clarify in my "10 ways to check if you are truly vanilla" blog post #BestIceCreamPractice

• @sbarber Scott Barber: @adampknight @TesterAB Certified Valuation Manager ™? No, no, no, that's only appropriate for *children's* icecream! #BestIceCreamPractice

• @testingqa Guy Mason: @TesterAB Best to go for that which you most prefer at that point in time?

• @TesterAB Anna Baik: @testingqa No no no. There must be one flavour of icecream that is best for everybody to eat at all points in time.

• @sbarber Scott Barber: @TesterAB @testingqa ROTFL!! That would be the #BestIceCreamPractice, right?

• @TesterAB Anna Baik: @sbarber @testingqa Yes! None of this wishy-washy nonsense, I only want to eat the BEST flavour of icecream. #BestIceCreamPractice

• @sbarber Scott Barber: @TesterAB @testingqa So chocolate, pistachio, lemon sorbet, raspberry swirl, topped with caramel & orange soda, right? #BestIceCreamPractice

• @TesterAB Anna Baik: @sbarber @testingqa #BestIceCreamPractice Finally, someone who'll give me an answer! ...wait. How do I know you're qualified?

• @sbarber Scott Barber: @TesterAB @testingqa #BestIceCreamPractice I founded a non-profit to establish BICP qualification stds and issued myself a certification.

• @TesterAB Anna Baik: @sbarber @testingqa #BestIceCreamPractice Sounds reassuring, I knew there'd be an Official Body somewhere to tell me what icecream to eat

• @sbarber Scott Barber: @TesterAB @testingqa #BestIceCreamPractice The invoice for my services are in the mail. $400/hr + $25,000 for the BICP flavor report.

• @can_test Paul Carvalho: @sbarber @TesterAB @testingqa do you have a template for that report? ;)

• @sbarber Scott Barber: @can_test @TesterAB @testingqa Oh yes, but it's only for members. Membership is a modest $2,500/year #BestIceCreamPractice

• @TesterAB Anna Baik: @sbarber @testingqa Eeek! Don't I even get something to show to people to prove I now know #BestIceCreamPractice?

• @sbarber Scott Barber: @TesterAB @testingqa #BestIceCreamPractice when check clears we mail you a Certified BICP Practitioner Certificate (suitable for framing)

• @testalways Eusebiu Blindu: @sbarber @adampknight @TesterAB I am thinking to create some "opensource" certificate, free to use in CV, with listings in some website

• @sbarber Scott Barber: @testalways @adampknight @TesterAB #BestIceCreamPractice no worries, I have mtgs w/ governments to mandate BICP certs for icecream buyers

Questions?  No? Didn't think so.  :)

 
--
Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
     you will find it in your life."

Please, no new "certifications"

I just saw an advertisement for this Building a Certification Testing Program - Cutting through the hype to see how it really works on LinkedIn, and I couldn't stop myself from adding the following comment:

Please make it stop. We don't need more "certification" programs -- not unless you are going to be the first organization that allows itself to be held legally and financially accountable when people you "certify" can't do what you "certified" they can.

Otherwise, conduct all the training you want. Assess student performance if you want. Only "pass" students who "pass" the assessment if you want.

Just do us all a favor and *STOP* calling it certification until you are willing to do things like:

• reimburse hiring expenses to employers who hire folks you certified as being able to X who can't X
• implement periodic re-assessment to enforce some bar of continued knowledge/skill/ability over time
• implement some way to revoke certifications of folks who fail to demonstrate knowledge/skill/ability in the workforce

The list goes on, but I know it's pointless. The certification machine will continue no matter how loudly, or how frequently I point out the ways in which it is frequently (at least arguably) unethical and fraudulent - at least in "testerland."

Seriously, this drives me insane.  Others can make stands about content, assessment methods, etc. -- I have my opinions on those things, but honestly that part of the topic bores me.  People decide what university to attend, what to major in, what electives to take, etc. for their degree programs ... they can decide on whether or not the content of some professional development program (with or without "certification" program) is worth their effort.  What I want to see is the "certifying bodies" being held accountable for complying with the claims they make about the individuals they "certify."

I mean, seriously, have any of you seen any data that you'd consider either statistically significant, empirical (vs. anecdotal), or free enough from obvious experimental design flaws to support the claims we see from "certifying bodies"?  If you have, please share the data with me and I'll list it in line -- unless of course, it's flawed, in which case, I'd be happy to point out how and why the data doesn't support the conclusion.

Otherwise, please, please, please don't engage in creating more of these things.  Please.

--
Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
     you will find it in your life."

Uruguay surpasses world with professional development program for software testers.

The Centro de Ensayos de Software (CES), a non-profit software testing laboratory in Uruguay, has recently launched a program that is certain to become the new “gold standard” in professional development for software testers.  The program, endorsed by the Universidad de la Republica (Uruguay), the Universidad Castilla La Mancha (Spain), and sanctioned by the Uruguayan IT Chamber (CUTI), is the most comprehensive, affordable, and publicly available training program for software testers on the market.  Based on my market research and comprehensive review of the program, I have no reservation in rating it as market leading.

Software Testing, the software development activity responsible for identifying issues with software and providing a wide variety of quality-related information to stakeholders and decision-makers prior to release, is the primary job of many millions world-wide, yet the majority of software testers learn their craft entirely on the job.  Yes, there are various “take a class or two, pass an information-based (not a skill-based) test, and receive a certification” programs – some more respectable than others and most far more expensive than the CES program.  There is even a new certificate coming to market that involves three, one month, on-line courses where students are taught and assessed by experienced testers and university professors, but none of those rise to the level of the CES’s program.

Latest Column -- Inspired by taking AST's Bug Advocacy Class

I recently completed (successfully, I might add) the second of the Association for Software Testing's all online, free to members Black Box Software Testing course. Each of these courses is four weeks in length. I've been involved with this program since years before it became a program, and I am an instructor for the first course in the series, called Foundations. For this course, called Bug Advocacy, I was a student.

Bug Advocacy focuses on the skills and concepts needed to compose high-quality, easily understood, appropriately compelling and well organized defect reports. I know, it sounds pretty boring to me too, but it was anything but boring. These classes are designed so that you watch recorded lectures (in this class the lecturer is Cem Kaner), answer some quiz questions (to make sure you watched the lectures), participate in class discussions, do both individual and group projects (in this class the project centered around evaluating and enhancing unconfirmed OpenOffice bug reports), peer reviewing one another's assignments, and taking a far-from-trivial closed-book essay exam. All in all, I spent about 40 hours participating in the class over the four week period.

This approach isn't just about writing a good bug report, it's about making sure you do the right testing after you find a bug.
There was one idea in particular from the class that I found absolutely brilliant and wanted to share with you. Below is actually a very lightly edited version of my answer to one of the exam questions asking us to describe a six-factor approach to bug reporting that Cem remembers using the mnemonic "RIMGEA." If you are a regular reader of mine, you know that I have a fondness for mnemonic devices, but that's not what I thought was so great about the approach. What I think is brilliant is that this approach isn't just about writing a good bug report, it's also about making sure you do the right testing after you find a bug to enable you to write a good bug report. Take a look -- you'll see what I mean.

Click here to read the rest of the column

Click here for more information about AST's free-for-members, online training
 
--
Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
     you will find it in your life."

Testing Lessons From Civil Engineering

Below is the paper I submitted as a prologue to an experience report, discussion, and (hopefully) additional research that I'm presenting for the first time during CAST08:

Engineers don’t look at the world the same way that testers do.  Engineers look at the world with an eye to solving problems.  Testers look at the world with an eye toward finding problems to solve.  This seems logical.  What is less logical is the fact that engineers, and I’m talking about the kind of engineers that deal with physical objects, seem to be much more sophisticated in their testing than testers.  In fact, most of what I know about testing, I learned as a civil engineering student.  We didn’t call most of it testing.  We didn’t even identify it as anything other than “You really want to get this right.” Maybe Civil Engineers test better than software testers because of the motivations to “get it right”.  Consider what happens when a piece of Civil Engineering, like a bridge fails:

From The Web: "Noncertified IT pros earn more..."

Stop the presses! Can it be true? The industry wants effective, qualified, multi-dimensional people who are capable of understanding business drivers & risk mitigation and applying that in a sapient way to their job as opposed to folks who paid someone to teach them how to pass a multiple-choice exam?!? Amazing!

 

Noncertified IT pros earn more than certified counterparts: survey

 
--
Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
     you will find it in your life."

Thoughts on Certification

 I got an email asking a question about certification that I thought others might find interesting.

Hello,

I'm new to the QA arena, and haven't found a mentor yet, beyond the publications of those like yourselves. So far, I don't see that there is one internationally accepted certification for QA in general. I know there is the CSTE http://www.softwarecertifications.org/, and the ISTQB http://www.sqe.com/certification.asp?f=dis&ci=stf , which at least one of you worked on. My perception is that CSTE is a bit more accepted (when I search dice.com for both acronyms, I get a few more for CSTE, but still not many), but otherwise it's certification specific to tools like WinRunner or languages.

I have found also that CompTIA ( www.comptia.org) suggests these:

CompTIA A+
CompTIA e-Biz+
CompTIA i-Net+
CompTIA Server+
Certiport's Internet & Computing Core Certification - IC³

But no one else inside QA seems to have heard of them. Are they helpful, or is CompTIA just trying to earn money? Are there general certs that help QA?

Thanks for any insight you can offer! Keep up the great QA work!

and my response...