At the STAR East conference, produced by Software Quality Engineering in Orlando, FL, I gave a keynote address on Testing and Noticing. I also gave a half-day experiential workshop on Difficult Testing Questions and How to Answer Them, and a track session called Insource or Outsource Testing: Understanding Your Context. A number of people have asked about the source for the video that I showed. It can now be revealed … Read more

For almost as long as I’ve been a tester, with occasional lapses into process enthusiasm, I’ve been questioning the value of test automation as a presumed good, especially when the automation is deployed against the highest levels of the application. Automation is a tool, and there is great value in tools. But with that value comes risk. The Agile Manifesto, properly in my view, emphasizes individuals and interactions over processes … Read more

I’ll be in London (the U.K., not London Ontario), June 17 2009, to present a keynote, “Two Futures of Software Testing” to the British Computer Society (BCS) Specialist Group in Software Testing (SIGIST; they must have bought a vowel). In the talk, I project a dark future for testing, in which the goal is Making Sure That Tests Pass, and in which processes and tools rule the roost—chillingly reminiscent of … Read more

I don’t know how this slipped in under my radar, but it did until a couple of days ago. Sharath Byregowda is a software tester in Bangalore, and he provides a marvelous experience report here. As I read the report, I’m delighted on a number of levels. First, it’s India! India tends to be a very conservative place when it comes to testing, with many test organizations preferring scripted, document-heavy, … Read more

I was at STAR East this past week, giving a tutorial, a track session, and a keynote. I dropped in on a few of the other sessions, but at breaks I kept finding myself engaged in conversation with individuals and small groups, such that I often didn’t make it to the next session. At STAR, like many conferences, the track presentations tend to be focused on someone’s proposed solution to … Read more

I’ll be at STAR East Monday, May 4 through May 7 2009. Lots of other colleagues will be there too, including James Bach, Jonathan Kohl, Rob Sabourin, Karen Johnson, and James Lyndsay. I’ll be presenting a keynote talk, “What Haven’t You Noticed Lately: Building Awareness in Testers” (the title there was cheerfully lifted by me from Mark Federman, who cheerfully lifted it from Terence Gordon, who either lifted or channeled … Read more

“Nice.. so Michael want us to buy his book .. maybe that why he have his web adress in his comments 🙂 Michael we did talk to the Ladies, and if you did the same you would know it’s fixed. Yes there was a mistake, but it’s fixed. If you want adverts for you book pls go to the papers or google adwords. There will come names, faces ect. We … Read more

A few blog posts back, I tried to emphasize the relative importance of skilled people over documentation by remarking that commercial airlines “tend to have a captain and a first officer in the cockpit, rather than a pilot and a book on how to fly an aircraft”. “Tend to” was intended to understate the case; as Rob remarks below, you’ll see single pilots only on very small planes (like the … Read more