Over the last few weeks twitter has been on ablaze with controversy, seemingly out of nowhere bombs started dropping all over the Context Driven Testing Community.
It all feels a little like being swept up in a tornado and transported to Oz...
Lawsuits, Bullying, and Taking Sides, Oh My!
It Hurts to See
When I started engaging with the testing community online one of the biggest things I struggled with is reconciling where the things I was reading or hearing about fit into the industry as a whole. Is this what people are doing? Is it still relevant? I wanted to get better as a tester, but I also wanted to be marketable. What I was really looking for were answers. I assumed there was some set of standard practices that companies generally followed.
As I read more and gained more experience, I saw that there really isn't a one size fits all answer, but along the way though I came to admire many of the authors and community members from whom I was learning. I knew there was history between people in the community, but seeing things boil to the surface as they have lately is tough to watch in real-time. It's not like it effects my day-to-day life but I do wonder how this all looks to the fresh testers seeking answers the way I did...
Dropping Out
All I have really taken from all this is a stronger belief that these schools are not for me. I can't see any additional value to explicitly declaring yourself as hailing from a specific school of thought. I have struggled with that because I saw people who's work or writings etc. I respect or have derived value from affiliated with varying schools. It seemed complicated though because it seemed that not everyone I respected seemed to get along even though many of the ideas weren't dramatically different. It gets taxing because you can get caught up in trying to keep the dogma straight. Will someone balk if I talk positively about testers coding? Liking automation? Saying test when they might prefer I say check.
I want to be judged by my skills, I don't want to place myself in someone elses thought box.
I'm no fanboi, I'm not about being 1337. I'm a professional if it helps me do my job better, make my bosses, my customers, or my own life better I'll use it.
It's all just too confining...
There's no magic formula, software varies, teams vary, people vary. I don't want to be context driven, agile or any other group or school tester. I don't care about the label, I care about what makes me better. I learn as much as I can and decide for myself what works. There are smart, passionate and helpful people in all these communities, but none of them are prophets or above reproach.
I don't pledge to always be a tester, I don't pledge to only subscribe to one school of thought. Frankly, I'm not sure how or why a tester or anyone working in the software industry would or could. We're supposed to investigate, to use our minds, to make judgements based on all different types of input.