Speakers

I have over 25 years’ experience in the IT industry and have witnessed huge changes over that time. However, I "only" started my current career in Test Management and Test Consultancy 13 years ago when I had finished executing a data migration and was told by the Program Manager "Phil, from Monday you will be the Test Manager, ok?". Since I started as a Test Manager with no previous experience or knowledge of what I should do, I know first-hand the dangers of amateurism and learned a few lessons the hard way. However, I survived and learned to love software testing. I try to continuously improve my knowledge and skills. and I strongly believe that we need to constantly challenge what we think we already know and currently do. As a Senior Test Consultant I am especially fortunate to come into contact with many projects, problems and software testing professionals from many organizations where I get to see many new ideas or different solutions to the problems we all face in our day to day work. Being part of the founding team of tesena | Smart Testing gives me the opportunity, at least in a small way, to try to improve our profession and to support the software testing community.

Is testing like electricity?

When I asked my colleagues for some ideas for the subject of a conference presentation, they came up with 'Is testing like electricity?' After 10 minutes consideration, I concluded that the answer was obviously "no" and I would soon hold the record for the shortest conference presentation of all time. Clearly, my colleagues have a cruel sense of humor. However, over the next couple of days I started to realize that there are areas where parallels between testing and electricity do exist. These include that

• the birth of the testing and electricity generation industries are remarkably similar
• both electricity and testing are dangerous
• they are both expensive
• they both make our lives comfortable and enjoyable
• our demand for them is highly variable
• they both contribute to global warming

You may find some of these similarities hard to believe, but I will do my best to convince you.

The presentation’s main message is that the stable, reliable and quality supply of software testing is becoming increasingly vital in the modern world and how, as software testers, we need understand this responsibility and respond by increasing the level of professionalism as an industry. By comparing ourselves to the electricity industry, which has long understood that it is of strategic importance, we can also find some inspiration from their approach.