Developsense
I founded DevelopSense as an independent consultancy in 1998 in Los Angeles, California. I returned to my home town, Toronto, in 2002.
Since then, I have been providing testing consulting services and training classes to hundreds of clients in over 35 countries on six continents. Have a look at the map and my schedule to see where I have taught, consulted, or presented.
In 2004 I started following and talking about Rapid Software Testing founded by James Bach. Since then James and I have developed the RST approach and co-authored the current Rapid Software Testing classes that we teach.
RST is a human-centred approach, focusing on the mindset and the skill set of the tester. RST is designed to help people to learn quickly under conditions of uncertainty, and to perform the fastest, least expensive testing that still completely fulfills the mission.
I’ve been in the software business for over 30 years. Before that, I worked in theatre as a performer, technician, and stage manager. (You might not believe how managing kids’ theatre tours and comedy clubs prepares one for managing software development projects.) In between theatre gigs, being a computer hobbyist led me to database programming and technical training.
Along the way, I took on many other software development roles: technical and sales support, network administration, testing, program management, and consulting work. You can read more about what I’ve done here.
I play Irish traditional music for fun. When I travel, I almost always bring my mandolin with me. On occasion, I’ve used music at conferences not just for entertainment, but also to make points about testing work.
Here’s an example, as my friend Daev Clydesdale and I open the video “What’s Wrong with Manual Testing”.
What’s wrong with “manual testing” is that testing is neither manual nor automated. We don’t speak of “manual music”, “manual journalism”, “manual editing”, “manual research”, or “manual sociology”.
To shine light on that point, in this video, I interview
– Daev Clysdale (professional musician)
– Doug Saunders (International Affairs columnist for the Globe and Mail)
– Maryanne Sweat (Senior Test Engineering Manager at LendingTree)
– Djuka Selendic (at the time a Test Manager at Northwestern Mutual)
– Paul Dutton (editor, writer, and performer)
– James Bach (co-author of Rapid Software Testing); and
– Harry Collins, Professor of Sociology at Cardiff University and author of “Tacit and Explicit Knowledge“