Schools of testing are organisational, not always personal

Paul Gerrard and James Bach have recently blogged on testing schools, from two different viewpoints. I think both have relevant points though their views differ. Many testers learn their craft through osmosis, absorbing the testing culture of their organisations (or projects) and any external influences (mailing lists, conferences, user groups, training etc). In the absence of these external influences, the organisational culture can remain static and follow a certain orthodoxy (often aligning with a school of testing), sometimes with religious devotion. When I caught up with one of my initial testing mentors after 5 years, I asked her what she thought of exploratory testing and all the changes to the industry, but she had no idea of what I was talking about as she had stayed doing what she knew. So organisations can follow schools of testing, and so can the people within them if they have no interaction with external influences (or they choose to ignore them).

The refactored assertion-based test oracle worked and Barack Obama will become US President. His style is gather information from all sources, both organisational and external influences, then make a decision based on that. That is simliar to many test consultants, and they typically base their particular approach on a mix of experience, knowledge and what they can learn from the organisation and external influences. That is why it is unfair and basically wrong to try to typecast ethical test consultants to schools; they are always trying to do the best for an organisation and their software. There may also be organisational constraints, that may force otherwise unreasonable choices (like CIOs without IT backgrounds, but that is another story). I have had long discussions with both Paul and James (but not together!) and they may belong to different schools of thought in some cases, but their approach to testing is methodical and contextual. “What approach should we take?” “It depends”....