“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself.” – Groucho Marx

A mistake I see a lot of new (and not so new) managers make is worrying about their team members looking for new work or actively/passively interviewing. IME people leave organisations mostly because of bad management (lack of integrity, abuse, no transparency, low trust), but it’s also really hard to know exactly why they are leaving.

Obviously someone actively looking for a new job is a pretty good heuristic that it’s time to review your operation, but it’s not always a bad thing for either you or the person considering leaving.

I have never been threatened by people testing the market or actively looking for new work, in fact I encourage it – here’s why:

This is exactly the type of abuse of untested technology that is virtually impossible to unwind once it’s been deployed.

The knock on effect will be felt in communities and systems far beyond its intended use, because if you think this won’t target the most vulnerable and be expanded well beyond this initial brief, you haven’t been paying attention.

From the article: “The effort — which includes AI-assisted reviews of tens of thousands of student visa holders’ social media accounts — marks a dramatic escalation in the U.S. government’s policing of foreign nationals’ conduct and speech.”

Special thanks to all the AI in testing fanboy enablers who equate critical thinking and valid concerns about safety or harm with being a luddite. This is about to get a lot worse…

A couple of weeks ago on my podcast, I was talking to James Bach and we were discussing the language of testing and what I refer to as “word policing”. Well, I think I might have caused some confusion based on the feedback and comments I’ve been getting, so I wanted to state my view.

To be clear, I think imprecision in the language we use to talk about testing is a BIG problem in our industry, and I am completely aligned on this with James (and the CDT/RST community). Where we might have a potential difference in opinion is WHEN to tackle this problem with clients.

As part of my effort to publish my back catalogue of recordings on the software testing business, I’ve added to the QR Podcast some old stuff including roundtables, conference talks, and guest spots on the odd testing show. It’s been pretty interesting listening to them and hearing how much some of my opinions/approaches have changed and what’s stayed the same. Enjoy!

Note: The quality of the audio on some of these was pretty sketchy, and I’ve tried to fix the sound and limit the background noise as much as possible as the content and participants are extremely good and worth a listen…

As a regular consumer of everything “testing industry”, I’m always sceptical when something new comes out, but I’m really enjoying the Engineering Quality Podcast . I’ve known Alessandra Moreira for years and she’s an expert at this (Royalee Martin and Veronika Pliusnina co-host), so would recommend checking them out.

James Bach and I have had too many conversations about testing to remember in our over 20 years of working together, but we finally found some time to sit down and record one. If you’ve got the time (to listen or watch), in the 2+ hours we reminisce and discuss Rapid Software Testing, the testing industry, AI, context-driven testing, ethics, and training horses! Below are links to some of the different people and stuff we mentioned…enjoy!

Satisfice Rapid Software Testing Never Forgive Them Michael Bolton James Christie Pradeep Soundararajan Association for Software Testing BCS SIGiST Venkatesh Rao Agile Manifesto Enshittification AI Manic Syndrome EU Liability for Defective Products UK and US Refuse to Sign International AI Declaration SIBOS GDPR Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Amish Tech Support Voltaire Paul Holland ISTQB Jerry Weinberg The Secrets of Consulting QR Podcast – Jerry Weinberg SNL Barber Skit Impact of GenAI on Critical Thinking

As Accenture joins the growing list of tech companies (Meta, Google, Amazon) ditching their #DEI programs, we can see clearly (as the numbers have told us for YEARS) the grift it was the whole time.

As the gutless fold under the slightest provocation, the curtains draw back from the show they were putting on and reveal they never really cared in the first place.

Frankly, those programs never moved the needle in a meaningful way and remind me of something I wrote 10 years ago when they started kicking them off:

“I’ve sat on multiple senior executive boards discussing the progression towards our targets in a room comprised entirely of middle aged, white men. Worse than that, two and three layers deep into the org charts the demographics looked exactly the same – and no amount of target setting is going to change that fact.”

The good thing is, whatever they do organizationally doesn’t affect what WE can do personally, and my commitment is to continue to endorse, sponsor, mentor, promote, and hire from as diverse a community as I can find.

Rant over, now back to work…

“To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist. And there is no decent or charted way of making a living at it. It is something you are, and not something you do.” – Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian, 2001

You’re not wrong, everything is getting worse…

Sigh…I’ve had my finger on the “publish” button for different versions of my initial thoughts on AI in testing for far too long, but this great post by Maaike Brinkhof finally pushed me to get it out there. This first one is context setting for a series I’m writing about AI, incorporating it into software testing, the dangers and opportunities, and what I see as a general failure of “duty of care” by our industry.

Love this on LinkedIn from Michael Bolton where he mentions my interview with Jerry Weinberg in response to the comment: Just because certain visible actions are a part of a process doesn’t mean that they ARE the process. Why is this misunderstanding so common?

His response is fantastic…

“Several years ago, on his Quality Remarks podcast, Keith Klain interviewed Jerry Weinberg. He asked Jerry why some people seemed eager to apply manufacturing models to software testing.

To your question, I’m going to give the reply that Jerry gave: “Because they’re not very smart.”

The people who keep making that mistake simply don’t understand the process. They haven’t even learned to observe and evaluate the visible parts of a process. They don’t consider the tacit knowledge or skills required to perform it.

The problem is compounded by the inability of many people performing the process to describe it accurately and articulately themselves. And THAT’s compounded by the fact that poor observers and evaluators often hire people who aren’t very good at performing or describing the work.

“And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald

The good news is that people can learn the skills required to comprehend processes, given motivation, time, study, training, practice, and support.”

Here’s the interview with Jerry…enjoy!

My reaction when I see the TMMi / ISO29119 / testing certification / #yourenotdoingmymodelright crowd doubling down into AI after decades of getting software testing wrong…