Ahhhh, it’s that familiar time of year when the smell of Performance Reviews and Goal Setting is in the air! I’ve managed loads of testers over the years and get asked to write a lot of feedback for folks. You’ll hear on LinkedIn the popular advice to take ownership for your career and depend on others as little as possible.

Integrity doesn’t matter until it does, and frequently testers conflate compromising on what to do with the information found during testing with a compromise on the integrity of the testing. Over the years I’ve seen this cause a LOT of burnout in testers, as particularly on high profile, politically charged projects it can feel like disagreeing with the outcome of a business decision on risk, defect resolution, etc is a personal attack on your role as a tester.

To be clear – I would never compromise on the quality or integrity of the test approach, execution, or reporting on risk, results, or advice on what to do with that information. As my good friend Michael Bolton has said, lying to my clients is not a service I provide, and there are loads of people in this industry who are more than happy to give (and read) “happy path” reports on passing tests.

As we hurdle towards AI driven testing, more than ever we need professional testers with experience in navigating complex systems and communicating risk. It may seem that there are more than enough bad actors willing to tell companies what they want to hear about software testing, but I’m confident (and IME) eventually they’ll come around to the realisation of the real fight – maintaining integrity in our test approach.

Thanks to the fantastic team at EuroSTAR for the great time and a really well run conference. I had a lot of fun catching up with old friends and meeting a lot of new, enthusiastic testers. It was great to be back in beautiful Stockholm and hope to see you all again soon!

Links to the reference material I spoke about in my keynote can be found HERE: (Rethinking Expertise; How Complex Systems Fail; The Secrets of Consulting)

* Special thanks to my friend Michael Bolton for pulling me out of my conference retirement…the trick worked pal 🙂

Very happy to finally be back at EuroStar in 2024. It looks to be a brilliant line up of workshops and talks and I’m very proud to be giving a keynote on “Testing Software in the Age of Transformation”. Here’s a preview of my talk…hope to see you in Sweden!

The Center Left: Testing Software in the Age of Transformation

Ten years ago, I gave a keynote at EuroSTAR on how to overcome organisational bias against the value of software testing. Despite all the advancement in process and technology, our business still struggles with its value proposition and sense of itself.

Through this talk I’ll discuss the principles and practices I’ve employed to successfully sell testing services and manage high performing teams. I’ll also walk through case studies of what has worked when talking about testing and what it can and cannot do for your business.

What you will learn

1. What worked & what didn’t when trying to get software testing valued at an organization, and how to fit actionable plans into enterprise transformation
2. How to help make testing relevant to people by meeting them where they are, & speaking about our business in a way that doesn’t comprise integrity, while still moving things forward
3. Principles and practices, and their relevant sources that have helped me gain trust and respect from my clients in delivering critical high risk programmes

In another failed chapter in the never ending book of “encouraging good behaviour”, the G7 have apparently agreed to a “code of conduct” for companies building #artificialintelligence systems. Per Reuters, “the voluntary code of conduct will set a landmark for how major countries govern AI, amid privacy concerns and security risks…”, now colour me cynical, but I think we’ve seen how this movie has played out before. You don’t need to expend any energy finding the billions being invested for new generative AI and other AI systems, which is only piled on the billions ALREADY spent on systems actively in use.

After a long career of reviewing the various outputs from #softwaretesting: strategies, plans, test cases, #testautomation, etc. I’ve never understood why people think conformance to internal/external standards will affect a better outcome. I realise it’s born out of a fundamental misunderstanding of what happens when you test something paired with strong wish thinking that software testing is analogous to manufacturing. But IME, content is key for #testing artefacts and frankly, I’ve been around long enough to see how all these standards usually give a false sense of security and year after year add to the “#softwarequalitymanagement” certification grift.

So I wasn’t that surprised to witness another leg of the race to the #artificialintelligence bottom in testing with talk of creating #AI to check your test strategies, etc for deviations from your internal or external standards. Apparently, all this investment in #ML and #AI is going to be used as some really, really, expensive rube goldberg machine to #automate the lowest value work in testing!

Some day we’ll get something useful for testing from artificial intelligence, but today is not that day…

(old man shouts at cloud rant over 😉)

“Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.” – George Carlin

Had a great time talking about business risk with the Ministry of Testing folks and how your approach to testing is probably introducing risk to your business. Check out the whole interview or clips on my YouTube channel…

Enjoy!

#qualityengineering #softwaretesting #riskmanagement #testautomation #testmanagement #softwarequalityassurance

Happy to be included in the 185th issue of Software Testing Weekly – thanks, Dawid Dylowicz!

Had a lot of fun ranting at my friend 🐞 Richard Bradshaw on my Ministry of Testing Ask Me Anything. Hope you enjoy it and LMK if you every want to talk software testing and risk management.

Check it out here: Keith Klain AMA on Risk Management