Stop 29119

I am a Systems Integrator and Tester with 30 years experience in various fields

While I agree with some of the arguments of the petitioners I would still NOT Stop the ISO 29119 activities for the following reasons: - As engineers we should be aware that we are "dwarfes on the shoulders of giants" (Bernard de Chartres, 12th century), i.e. we (should) profit from inventions and discoveries of our predecessors. Reinventing the wheel for every task (based on our own little understanding and experience) is usually not profitable and does often not lead to the best solution. - The advantage of ISO standards is that global teams of international experts from different industries contribute to it, so we can profit from a wealth of experience in the field. Most text books on testing also suggest some "standard" approaches, however, these represent just the experience and knowledge of the respective authorship. - I agree that software projects are usually not easily comparable but neither they are completely different. SW engineers are also using experience of the past (coding standards, wide-spread software libraries and - last but not least - standardized programming languages that are usually verified by compilers) - why should we as test engineers not use similar "tools"? - ISO standards in general are not sacrosanct (unless you are in an industry where the market expects full ISO compliance) but allow explicitly tailoring to the actual needs. So, usually, there should not be an over-administration involved. And more important: the standards don't disallow the application of common sense and your own experience. - And last but not least: the ISO 29119 standard(s) - compared to others - read very easily (try it!) and consist to a big extent of good examples for traditional as well as agile projects. They can well go as a good testing book with a very broad authorship.

halt

No consensus, it is not the right tool for software quality improvements

This is not a consensus within the industry that needs to be enforced, even if it is a valid, valuable approach

Reading 29119 made me feel like our profession was being dragged back to the dark ages.

agile...

11 years ago Featured

The success of agile software development has shown the efficiency of an empirical approach. Normalizing software thesis is anti-agile, anti-quality threat.

You want to make standards? Great! Make them...but make them useful. Where they help the user kick ass and do better work. Anywhere else, and they’re simply architecture astronaut grandstanding.

STOP 29119

No thank you

A QA

Is it worse to have no standard, or a standard that's universally ignored?

I have been aware of this debate ever since attending CAST 2014, but I've not been quick to sign. I wanted to investigate and see what other viewpoints there might be. To quote Everett Hughes, a sociologist: “In return for access to their extraordinary knowledge in matters of great human importance, society has granted them a mandate for social control in their fields of specialization, a high degree of autonomy in their practice, and a license to determine who shall assume the mantle of professional authority. But in the current climate of criticism, controversy, and dissatisfaction, the bargain is coming unstuck. When the professions’ claim to extraordinary knowledge is so much in question, why should we continue to grant them extraordinary rights and privileges?” This is a serious question, one for which I appreciate that a standard might seem like a correct method for 'proof' of our professional authority. However, even if the standard is in fact a professional guide, I don't think anyone but practitioners can judge its value. As someone who has had a keen interest in trying to understand this standard, and not wanting to judge too quickly, I have tried to get ahold of a great deal of material about it. I have engaged with some of those whom disagree with my point of view, such as http://www.professionaltester.com/news/Article.asp?id=318 . I looked into purchasing the standard. I have looked for those who are pro-standard and what they've had to say about this movement as well as what they have said in the past. That being said, I'm not convinced we actually do know what a standard should look like, much less if this is the standard we need. Maybe it is, even if I strongly doubt it. I think we are likely many years or decades away before we will even be able to claim we have true repeatable practices oriented towards different contexts. I am unable to judge at present what the standard does say, as the standard and the standard body's work is l

“People mistake their limitations for high standards.” - Jean Toomer

I just simply can't imagine restricting my work to a standard. I can't imagine restricting the way I express my thinking by following templates for test artifacts or test documents. Little by little I will restrict my way of thinking as well. I can't imagine restricting myself from using natural language in my test scenarios just because the standard says they are easier to understand, to maintain and to automate: I agree it would be easier to understand by the testers across the world who learned the standard. But what about the people working on the project, who really have a need to understand? Then, the necessity to maintain is relative. I don't seek to maintain a work I already did. Lastly, the ease to automate does not depend only on using a keyword based language. Moreover, not all the test scenarios need automation, so why bother using a keyword language for all scenarios? Then, for the ones to automate, I think that it's easier and faster to change the text to match the keywords rather than restricting ourselves to think in keywords right from the start. I doubt that the work I do will be better just because I follow a standard. I even think it may be worse. I can imagine that some people will trust me more if I follow a standard, no matter the quality of my work. But that's misleading and I don't want to imagine more. "A tester is someone who knows that things can be different" - G. Weinberg. And things are different from a standard...

Please fix the spelling of "Standardisation" in the petition.

Here's the full "standardization" statement, as I have Googled & pasted it: 1.7 consensus general agreement, characterized by the absence of sustained opposition to substantial issues by any important part of the concerned interests and by a process that involves seeking to take into account the views of all parties concerned and to reconcile any conflicting arguments NOTE Consensus need not imply unanimity.

One test process to rule them all. One test process to find them. One test process to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them. For starters, testing is not even a process. Checking might be a process. I suggest that "testing" is replaced by "checking" within these 59 pages of valueable text and then this standard can stay.

Subscribers to Professional Tester may be interested to read their view on the subject: "BOOK BURNERS THREATEN OLD (NEW) TESTING STANDARD Context-driven testers try to suppress ideas they consider heretical" http://www.professionaltester.com/news/Article.asp?id=318