As per the plan of posts that I made at the beginning of this series, I was supposed to put overall conclusions of this series “The Big Fight – Schools of Testing”. I carefully thought and found that it will not be apt to conclude an ongoing debate. Then I thought that I will summarize all the views and put in a single post as overall conclusions, so that the readers can read the summary of everything at one place, and then refer corresponding posts for further details. I started with this exercise and realized very soon, that the views were already a summarized version of what corresponding practitioners had originally expressed (barring a few exceptions) and most of the points were subjective in nature and centered around some common points in favour or against.
Keeping the above points in mind, I have decided to not to conclude this series. Let this be open for further discussions. You can use this blog as a platform for this or you can publish it in a way you like. In such a case, I would request you to drop me an email, so that I can edit this post to leave a corresponding description and provide a link to what you have published. One such post has been made by Bj Rollision as Schools of Testing Revisited.
This series of posts on the Schools of testing is not a one-man-job. Throughout the series, I have compiled thoughts of many people on this topic, and they knowingly or unknowingly are directly quoted in my posts. I picked a lot of views which were available on the web and others through emails or brainstorming sessions. There are still other views which I found on the web but were not published because they were similar to what I had already shortlisted. I want to thank each one of these guys. Following is the list of people, whose views I have quoted or referred or got as comments and those who participated in brainstorming sessions:
Cem Kaner, James Bach, Bret Pettichord, Shrini Kulkarni, Ainars Galvans, Jonathan Kohl, Bj Rollison, Boris Beizer, Corey Goldberg, Linda Wilkinson, Jake Brake, Walen, Alan A. Jorgensen, Rikard, John McConda, Doug Hoffman, Jim Hazen, Srinivasan Desikan, Pradeep Soundararajan, Dr Sukanta Bhatt, Debasis Pradhan, Ben Simo, Karthik Kuttuva, Bineet Bohidar, Ramanjaneyulu Narra, Kiran Shridhar, Senthilvel Chidambaram, Dattatraya Bhat, Aravind Kanakatte, Deepak Basavaraj, Rajesh Raman, Shamala Subramanyam, the testing practitioners whose views I consulted on SQA Forums and the Software-Testing yahoo group and last but not the least, the Anonymous.
This is the twelfth and final post in the series “The Big Fight – Schools of Testing”. For my previous posts on Schools of Testing, check the Schools of Testing Category.
Rahul Verma
On several occasions, I have tried to write up a definitive description of the schools of testing. I’ve eventually learned why I wasn’t able to do this — the schools of testing succeed more as a way for us to talk about our differences, than to provide a closed set of categories. This doesn’t mean the schools don’t exist.
The schools concept was also introduced as a way of elevating the debate on some topics, in particular the topic of certification. Specifically, are the existing testing certifications based on particular schools of testing? If so, is it disingenuous for them not to disclose this? Does this also indicate that a certification from one school should disqualify a applicant for a job in an organization that follows another school?
>>>the schools of testing succeed more as a way for us to talk about our differences, than to provide a closed set of categories.
Good point Bret — But what do you say to the people who fail to recognize the very concept schools saying “I dont want to get “boxed” into a closed idea called school.?
What are your thoughts about people saying “Idea of schools is exclusionary, divides people, encourages us vs them fight, school concept is for some financial gain etc”?
(many of these notions have been expressed in the chains of posts on this blog)?
And finally – what are your thoughts about non-popularity of other 3/4 schools – why we dont see some one standing up and say “I am proud to belong to say “Factory” school? Why do we have such a less representation (or rather one sided) representation or recognition of school membership ….?
Shrini
http://shrinik.blogspot.com