“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.” ― Thomas Paine

If you have followed me lately on Twitter, you may have noticed a slight, well let’s say, fervor pursing answers to the questions I posed to the ISTQB. Since publishing that letter a little over a week ago, an important conversation in the software testing community has been reignited over Twitter, LinkedIn, multiple blogs, and loaded up my inbox. And that conversation is NOT about testing certifications or the rackets employed to “regulate”, train, and issue them. Let me be clear, the certification debate is very important, but it is a symptom of a disease in our business: the disease of not owning our value proposition. Continue reading …

Date: April, 25 2013

To: ISTQB BOD

Cc: ISTQB Governance Working Group

Subject: Open Letter to the ISTQB

To whom it may concern;

Recently a discussion transpired over Twitter regarding the validity and governance of the Foundation level exam you offer through your training partners. Rex Black, a current board member and past president of the ISTQB, was involved in the exchanges and made the following comments in response to my queries about whether there have there ever been problems with the certifications validity, specifically the reliability coefficient:

Continue reading …

“The  single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken  place.” – George  Bernard Shaw

Conference season has started again, and I’ve made some rounds giving talks at QAI QUEST in Chicago and STAR Canada in Toronto. I had a great time at both talking about problems with bias towards software testing (both positive and negative), and what we and the industry do to support them. But despite all the great conversations I had with colleagues and people I met for the first time, it became clear to me that the context driven community needs to do a better job getting the word out. Continue reading …

Recently I had the distinct honor of being interviewed for an article in CIO.com by Matt Heusser of Excelon Development. Multiple conversations and parts of the interview were used to inform the article, so for what its worth, the complete Q&A is what follows. Enjoy! Continue reading …

Loving this article by Lorinda Brandon of SmartBear Software on the Summer QAMP program and the AST…making software testing education accessible to a new generation!

Many thanks to Phil Kirkham at Expected Results for letting me take part in his “5 Questions” series today…enjoy!

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. – Voltaire

Maybe it’s due to an extension of my tendency towards skepticism to myself, but I get really uncomfortable telling anyone that something is certain. That is especially true when it comes to software and interpreting the results of testing. There are just too many variables that impact the control and validity of the output, and that’s just limited to Continue reading …

My fellow AST board member and resident “software anthropologist & software tester”, Pete Walen, recently posted about what he felt it took to make a difference or change the world. He rather pointedly asked the question, “When was the last time you were proud of the work you did?” Excellent question! One of the values I talk about with my Continue reading …