A little more on WHOSE and year end

So here is a link to a nice summary about the WHOSE conference. http://www.mostly-testing.co.uk/2013/12/whose-workshop-on-self-education-in.html

It is also the end of year. So what is new and what is old?

Well, to many of us, much of the thinking on testing is not really all that new. We still have many of the same “old” problems and situations on software projects. The names (Agile, cloud, big data, etc) may be different. The amounts and natures of the code/software may be different, but to some of us “old timers” many of the basic issues are rooted in human factors that have not changed in over 30 years.

So maybe next year I’ll consider writing about these human factors and what, if anything, can be done.

There are some new things. I think we are seeing a refinement in “old ideas” that are worth the time for a tester to note. I might list new things such as: certifications vs skill; Verification, testing, validation, checking concepts; test standards for the world have been released, e.g. ISO/IEEE29119 and IEEE1012; security, security, and lack of security; and words on nightly news of “there was not much testing done” as an issue for major new projects (left unnamed).

So I wish anyone reading, a happy new year and much interest in testing.

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Context Skills

A few weeks ago I attended a meeting where we started work on defining the skills of a context driven tester. There will be some interesting tester skills listed next year when the skills list is made available via AST (hopefully).
But I got wondering, given ISTQB, IEEE, and other list of skill and knowledge in software and testing, how much are they different or the same?
If they are 90% the same, should a tester focus on the common parts or should we focus on differences?

Also, is it the 10%  that makes a person a context driven tester with skill or some other percentage?
I don’t know.

It might be the view point that make a school of testing and not the 10%. I bounce in an out of various conferences and “schools” of testing. Each has a view point which at times I like (or not). I guess that makes me a context school person.
So look forward to the context tester skill list next year. It will be interesting to compare and advance the field of software testing.