Object Mentor Blog: Sapient Testing: The "Professionalism" meme.

Sapient Testing: The "Professionalism" meme.

2010-04-15T06:18:00-05:00

James Bach gave a stirring keynote today at ACCU 2010. He described a vision of testing that our industry sorely needs. Towit: Testing requires sapience.

Testing, according to Bach, is not about assuring conformance to requirements; rather it is about understanding the requirements. Even that’s not quite right. It is not sufficient to simply understand and verify the requirements. A good tester uses the behavior of the system and the descriptions in the requirements, (and face-to-face interaction with the authors of both) to understand the motivation behind the system. Ultimately it is the tester’s job to divine the system that the customer imagined; and then to illuminate those parts of the system that are not consistent with that imagination.

It seems to me that James is attempting to define “professionalism” as it applies to testing. A professional tester does not blindly follow a test plan. A professional tester does not simply write test plans that reflect the stated requirements. Rather a professional tester takes responsibility for interpreting the requirements with intelligence. He tests, not only the system, but also (and more importantly) the assumptions of the programmers, and specifiers.

I like this view. I like it a lot. I like the fact that testers are seeking professionalism in the same way that developer are. I like the fact that testing is becoming a craft, and that people like James are passionate about that craft. There may yet be hope for our industry!

There has been a long standing frission between James’ view of testing and the Agile emphasis on TDD and automated tests. Agilists have been very focussed on creating suites of automated tests, and exposing the insanity (and inanity) of huge manual testing suites. This focus can be (and has been) misinterpreted as an anti-tester bias.

It seems to me that professional testers are completely compatible with agile development. No, that’s wrong. I think professional testers are utterly essential to agile development. I don’t want testers who rotely execute brain-dead manual test plans. I want testers using their brains! I want testers to be partners in the effort to create world-class, high-quality software. As a professional developer I want – I need – professional testers helping me find my blind spots, illuminating the naivete of my assumptions, and partnering with me to satisfy the needs of our customers.

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