I’m thinking of having badges made which say “Conscientiously Uncertified.” It’s for those of us who want to resist the dumbing down of our craft by cynical consultants promoting bogus tester certification programs.For me, when I see that someone is certified as CSTE, ISEB, ISTQB, or CSTQE, I immediately think “there goes someone who was [...]

Alan Richardson writes this commentary from inside one of the stupidest of the certification programs: the ISTQB (well, he says “ISEB”, but by all accounts, it’s being taken over by ISTQB stormtroopers).Long ago I also tried to change a certification program from the inside. I also failed. Now I do my best to cultivate the [...]

My new book is done! Sort of.I finally have a complete draft of How I Learn Stuff: Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar.All I need now is a publisher.I had the idea for a book like this 26 years ago (original title: “School Kills”).I had the idea for this specific book 18 years ago.The oldest text in [...]

Jason Gorman uses a golf analogy to talk about estimation.I like his analogy, but he didn’t take it far enough for me. He left out a key element: we may not be playing golf.A typical sin committed by people who do studies of schedule slippages is to discuss average amounts of time to do X [...]

Matt Heusser is having a peer conference. I believe it’s his first.It’s on the topic of technical debt.The idea of technical debt seems to be that there are tasks you are free to neglect when building a technical artifact such as software, but if you neglect those tasks, you will incur a sort of “debt” [...]

Paul Gerrard believes there are irrefutable testing axioms. This is not surprising, since all axioms are by definition irrefutable. To call something an axiom is to say you will cover your ears and hum whenever someone calls that principle into question. An axiom is a fundamental assumption on which the rest of your reasoning will [...]

In 1982, when I was still in high school, I read an article in Time Magazine about teenagers who worked as programmers. The article inspired me to quit school and go to work as a programmer, too. I’m writing about that as part of my book about self-education without self-discipline.Anyway, one of the kids mentioned [...]

Steve Swanson is very new to testing. I predict he has a great future. He has already noticed that the common idea of boundary testing is almost content-free. Michael Bolton and I do a whole session on how to turn boundary testing into a much more intellectual engaging activity. At the end of his post, [...]