Hiccupps

This guest post is by Abby Bangser , writing on the recent MEWT 5. I enjoyed Abby's talk on the day , I enjoyed the way she spoke about testing both in debate and in conversation and I am very much enjoying her reflections now. I'm also enjoying, and admiring, the open attitude of the MEWT organisers to Abby's comments on gender diversity at the workshop, later on in email and in this piece.  In particular, I like their eagerness to share their intentions, process and feelings about it at  the event and then engage in the wider discussion in the testing community  (e.g.  1 ,  2 , 3 ). MEWT 5 was my first experience in a small peer conference, and the format provided a very interesting style of sharing and learning. A big thanks to Bill and Vernon for organizing, the Association for Software Testing for helping fund the event, and particularly Simon for identifying a common theme. The conference theme of What is a Professional Tester? was a tough one ...

I've said before on here that I enjoy ideas just for their own sake. The CEWT meetings that I run are all about that: exposure to new ideas, novel angles on existing ideas, a view of the evolution, merging, death and resurrection of ideas, and challenges to, or support of, my own ideas and perhaps even my ways of generating or thinking about ideas. So I was delighted to be invited to attend someone else's workshop, MEWT 5, on the topic What is Professional Testing? Apart from anything else, I had a blast simply coming up with what I thought was an interesting angle . The talks and discussion were wide-ranging but I'll just pick out bits from my notes on three of the threads that ran across the day that I found particularly interesting. Relativism Whether someone is acting professionally is entirely subjective. Variables in play include the person doing (the tester in this MEWT's context), the person that's having something done for them (a client; potent...

I was invited to the fifth Midlands Exploratory Workshop on Testing (MEWT) yesterday. In it, the MEWTs were asking:  What is Professional Testing? Wikipedia has this to say about what a professional is: A professional is a member of a profession or any person who earns their living from a specified activity.  Hmm. So what’s a profession then?  A profession is a vocation founded upon specialized educational training, the purpose of which is to supply disinterested objective counsel and service to others, for a direct and definite compensation, wholly apart from expectation of other business gain. (also from Wikipedia.)  In MEWT 5 we’ll be asking – what exactly does it mean to be a Professional Tester? And, since I already cited the quotes above. You won’t be allowed to. In fact, we’ll expect you to delve deep and reach far and wide into the many and varied facets of what it means to demonstrate professionalism in the face of a rapidly changing technol...