Taking Testing Seriously

About the Authors

James Bach is Principal Consultant at Satisfice, Inc. He is an internationally acclaimed innovator and coach in the field of software testing. A son of author Richard Bach, he got into computing as a self-taught teenage video game programmer. In 1987, he became the youngest manager in the Apple Computer R&D division when they inexplicably hired him to run a test team. He has been a tester ever since. He spent the bulk of the ’90s managing testing in Silicon Valley, but for the last twenty-five years, he has devoted himself to perfecting his craft: teaching, consulting, and occasionally serving as an expert witness on court cases involving software quality. James is an author of two books, Lessons Learned in Software Testing and Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar (a handbook for being weirdly self-educated). He is a founder of the Context-Driven school of testing and a charter member of the Association for Software Testing.

Michael Bolton is Principal Consultant at DevelopSense, based in Toronto. After a career in theatre, he became a database programmer more or less by accident. That led to an eight-year stint as a technical support person, tester, and program manager at Quarterdeck, where he managed the company's flagship products and directed project and testing teams, both in-house and around the world. In 2001, he met James Bach, and he taught Rapid Software Testing for the first time in 2004. In 2006, he became co-author of the RST methodology. Since then, ...