The passion of the testers

Over the past few days I have been mentally jousting with Michael Bolton via the blogosphere. I hope Michael doesn’t take anything I wrote personally, I think it is OK for us to think differently and question those differences from time to time. (Who knows; we might learn something new or at least expand our own point of view.) Although Michael and I approach things from different perspectives, I think we agree on some pretty fundamental tenets of software testing practices, the need for better test training, and the need for smart, creative, and technically competent testers capable of designing and executing more effective tests. Michael and I seem to share a passion to promote creativity and innovation in the way testers think and solve problems they are faced with, and try to help testers realize their full potential. Although our approaches are different, that’s really OK because there are many ways to solve the same problem. There should be little doubt in anyone’s mind that testing is a challenging career requiring an extremely diverse set of skills and innate traits. But, it is the fervent passion for the discipline that I admire most in testers, and perhaps the trait that separates the professional testers from the amateurs.