Sirius Ruminations

For the last four years, I have been working with a very large government organization on a variety of testing projects.  This experience has changed much of the way I look at and think about testing.

This morning, I am sitting here writing a blog about tool blindness.

I am writing this blog, because I have the time to do it.

I have the time to do it, because my test environment is down.

It’s that time of year again for me – conferences. I love this time of year, because I think conferences can be very valuable. The tough part is deciding which ones to go to, since I can only take so much time away from my real work to indulge in my ongoing professional development. But this year, that decision is a little easier.

I recently went to a conference, my favorite, StarEast.  For many reasons, I have been laying low this year, so for the first time in many years, we did not participate in the vendor expo, and I did not submit a presentation.  I was simply an attendee.  However, since we have been so heavily involved for so many years, when I checked in I was pleasantly surprised to receive a small gift for being an alumnus, an insulated coffee mug with this years conference logo on it.

I have taken a long break from blogging, and that ends now.

And as is common, the catalyst for my newfound energy and enthusiasm is a conference — StarEast, to be specific.

As months go, this has been a tough one.

As weeks go, this has been a good one.

I have, for quite some time now, been involved with a very large client who is creating a massive SOA system.  Concurrently, the organization is moving from being very decentralized, to being much more centralized.  The two are not unrelated – this kind of project requires massive amounts of coordination that the organization previously did not support.  Growing pains abound.

Last week, I went to the Better Software Conference in Vegas.  I hate Vegas;  but that’s not what this is about, the title notwithstanding.

Last week, I was driving around, and my 7 year old daughter was in the back seat with me.  We were chatting as we drove along (her mind tends to wander and bounce around) when she suddenly made some comment about something she had observed.  I was immediately struck with the depth of insight her comment carried with it, and thought to myself, “Oh, I must write a blog about that – that is so relevant to what we do!”

A few weeks ago, at StarEast, I was talking with Antony Marcano and Rob Sabourin about agile processes, and asked a question that has become a perrennial favorite; Can you be agile if you are not creating and executing loads of automated unit tests?

Few things in life are certain, and in software testing, even fewer.  Like our modern political system, the community of software testers is fractured and splintered.  And while we may draw bold lines around big camps such as Context Driven or Factory, Manual or Automated, Exploratory or Scripted, within any of those major camps there is fierce competition.  This can leave us poor individual testers wondering if there is in fact nothing solid for us to hold onto.  But there is…