Taking Testing Seriously

CHAPTER 1Why Another Book About Testing?

—By James Bach and Michael Bolton

Many Cultures of Testing

We have a cultural problem in testing: too many of them. Too many testing cultures, that is. (National or ethnic cultures are not a problem for testing but rather a benefit.)

We could start this book like everyone else does—writing as if all the testing experts in the world agree on what good testing is. They don't agree, so let's not do that.

This is a book written by two guys, James and Michael, plus some close colleagues who have some different takes, yet still share a testing culture. We are full of opinions about the best ways to think about testing. But we are not authorities on software testing, because no one is an authority on software testing. It's just a bunch of people and their beliefs.

By “culture,” we mean “the distinctive ideas, customs, social behavior, products, or way of life of a particular nation, society, people, or period,” after our favorite dictionary, the Oxford English. There are different cultures of software testing in the English-speaking world, all using mostly the same words to describe the testing craft—but not meaning the same things by those words!

It can be a bit maddening because the various cultures rarely label themselves—or even admit that others exist. Instead, we talk past each other. In 1999, Cem Kaner, James Bach, and a few other friends declared ourselves a distinct “school” of testing thought. We named it Context-Driven. By establishing ...