To quote Doctor Tolian Soran, the villain in Star Trek: Generations, “time is the fire in which we burn.” In a little less fictional of a context, the historian Robert Bloch has said of time that “it is the very plasma in which events are immersed, and the field within which they become intelligible.” Beyond those sentiments, time is also what provides us with a keen notion of polarity, by providing two aspects around the project singularity I talked about. So let’s talk about polarities and time and see if we can’t make this relevant to testing as a discipline. Continue reading Testing and the Nature of Time →

I was going to title this post “Testing is Like Archaeology.” Then I was thinking of “Testing is Like Geology.” But then I realized, as my argument took shape, that I could have said testing was like paleontology, or geomorphology, or even biography. I realized then that what I really wanted to focus on was how testing was, oftentimes, about studying the past. But to drive that argument home, let’s consider why we study the past. And let’s also consider why such study informs the future. Continue reading Testing Is Like Studying the Past →

Geometry is about getting from one place to another. It’s about looking at where we are and where we want to be. Or, perhaps, it can look at where we are now and help us backtrack to where we came from. However you use it, geometry takes place over a certain region of space and time. Space and time — whether looked at in the context of cosmology or just on our projects — is all about dimensions. So let’s talk about this a bit. Continue reading The Dimensionality of Testing →

In mathematics, a singularity refers to a point that is basically undefined because it is infinite or what is known as degenerate. In physics, a singularity is a “region” that has infinite density with an infinitesimal volume. So what does this extreme concept have to do with testing? Well, let’s talk about that. Continue reading Testing and the Project Singularity →

What do maps do? Well, let’s think about how they great created. They get created by humans. So maps essentially distill the experience of others for the purpose of helping you understand a particular terrain. Maps help you get from where you are to where you want to go. Maps thus serve as a way to package up a vicarious experience by providing a representation.

Cartographers are people who create maps and it is very much a discipline. Further, it’s a discipline that shares a lot with testing. So let’s talk about that. Continue reading Testing Is Like Cartography →

Everything we rely on is in the past. Even the very moment of “now” became the past just as you read this. As the future gets here, it becomes the “now” and — you guessed it — moves into the past. So while we may build services and applications for the future, our work immediately becomes part of the load-bearing struts of the past.

This reality, while simplistic sounding, has important ramifications because it means we have to move between polarities. Continue reading The Shifting Polarities of Testing →

I was going to title this “The Irrelevance of Agile” but that struck me as an unfair title and not entirely indicative of what I wanted to focus on. Testers will periodically be involved in the “Is Agile Dead?” debate. Or even the “Agile is (Once Again) Dead” debate.

I’ve found these discussions to be an emotive area to wade into so I want to approach this from a different angle. This is me experimenting with thoughts rather than claiming to have any answers, so expect a bit of this to be somewhat muddy as I feel my way forward. Continue reading The Character of Projects →

What an awful blog title, huh? Testing and history? What am I even talking about? And the “human” element of history? As opposed to what? Have you ever seen a blog post that starts with such short sentences ending with question marks? Utterly awful. It’s like splitting infinitives. Or running sentences on and on (and on). Still with me? If so, let’s talk about history. And science. And the human aspect of both. Continue reading Testing and the Human Element of History →

The more I talk with testers, the more interesting it becomes to consider how the industry has evolved — and often how testers failed to evolve with it. We still see testers talking about concepts in testing as if this was the early 1980s. Is this a bad thing? I think so but let’s talk about it. Continue reading A Logic of Testing Thought →

I want testers to stop trying to “solve” the problems they’ve allegedly been trying to solve for decades now. I want testers to start looking at testing as a discipline that has a broad-focus, wide-angle lens. I want testing to start solving the real problems, including the ones that it has painted itself into. I want testing to get out of the reductionist and into the ecological. Let’s talk about this a bit. Continue reading Testing Is Like … →