A live talk for the Toronto chapter of The Test Tribe, titled Quality Engineering? Quality Assurance? Testing? Let’s Get Back to Basics.
Here’s the abstract:
Why do we test software? One easy answer is that we test because we’re paid to test, but that begs the question. Why would anyone pay us to test?
Some might say that we test to show that the product works, but that’s not too hard; a demonstration can do that, and a demonstration only shows that the product can work. Others might be more specific, and say that we test to show that the product produces correct output — but a product can produce correct output and still have terrible problems.
Some people prefer the titles “Quality Assurance” or “Quality Engineering”. Despite the phenomenon of title inflation, testers don’t assure quality, and we don’t engineer quality either. Testing might include output checking (and creating programs to do it), but excellent testing needs far more than that. Testing requires a complex set of skills, investigative activities, and social judgements that complement — not reproduce — the work of programmers. Testing work can be challenging, engaging, fun, and tremendously valuable.
In this talk, Michael Bolton presents this fundamental idea: we test to discover the true status of the product. We do that with a special focus on finding problems and risks about the product that threaten its value to people who matter. That fulfils a unique and valuable business role on the project: finding trouble before it’s too late.
You can sign up for the meetup here. All thanks to The Test Tribe for setting this up, and honoring me with the opportunity to present.
If you’re in Toronto, you may also want to know about the BrowerStack meetup the following night.