Fake News!

It has been a long time since my last post and I apologize, there have been many factors as to why this has been the case some to do with work load and others to do with my health.  Suffice to say I may not publish as often but I still want to get out into the public domain information that others may found useful.

The topic for this post is to do with the current wave of 'fake news' articles and how this may have influenced people and persuaded them to make decisions different from what they may have made if they had not seen such articles.

The concern is that there appears to be little critical thinking done around these stories by those who read them or watch them on the 'news' channels. These articles appeal to peoples biases either via 'confirmation bias'  (What is confirmation bias? - https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-choice/201504/what-is-confirmation-bias) or appeal to authority.  (What is appeal to authority - https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority)  Humans are easily duped or mislead and it requires conscious effort to overcome these fallacies and others.  There are many fallacies that we fall prey to and the following has a good list and description of them - http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/eng207-td/Logic%20and%20Analysis/most_common_logical_fallacies.htm.

There are many guidelines and techniques that can be used to overcome such fallacies and clarify what is truthful or not.

One easy method is to look at the source of the information.

• Is the source reliable?  
• Does it come from multiple sources?  
• Does the source have an undisclosed agenda? 
• Can the information be verified independently?

Critically analyzing the information presented can help you make better judgement on  what is being said.

The following are a couple of techniques for critical thinking that I came across and are included in my book The Psychology of Software Testing

The 5 W's and H

Another technique, often used in journalism, is the five W's and one H.  The five W's are Who, What, When, Where and Why, The H is How.

The five Ws and one H have been immortalized in the poem 'I Keep Six Honest Serving Men' by Rudyard Kipling.

I KEEP six honest serving-men

They taught me all I knew; 

Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.

I send them over land and sea,

I send them east and west;

But after they have worked for me,I give them all a rest.    

I let them rest from nine till five,

For I am busy then,As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,

For they are hungry men.

But different folk have different views; know a person small

She keeps ten million serving-men,

Who get no rest at all!  

She sends'em abroad on her own affairs,

From the second she opens her eyes

One million Hows, two million Wheres,And seven million Whys!    

Kipling, R - I Keep Six Honest Serving Men from The Elephants Child

The five W's and One H are a series of questions used to get the complete story, hence its use in journalism.  

Reporting on the 3 Little pigs story

• Who was involved? 
• The three little pigs (the first pig, the second pig and the third pig) and The Big Bad Wolf (a.k.a. Wolf).
• What happened?
•  Each pig constructed a house out of different materials (straw, sticks and bricks). Wolf (allegedly) threatened to blow over their houses and is believed to have destroyed both the straw and stick homes at this time. Pig one and two were able to flee to the brick house, where they remain at the moment. We’re still waiting to hear from local authorities, but it looks like the Wolf may have been injured while attempting to enter the brick house.
• Where did it take place?
• Outside a straw house, a stick house and a brick house.
• When did it take place? 
• At various times throughout the day.
• Why did it happen? 
• Apparently the Big Bad Wolf was trying to eat the pigs. Several eyewitnesses recall the Wolf taunting the pigs before he destroyed the straw and stick homes by chanting, “Little pigs, little pigs, let me in.” The pigs apparently scoffed at the Wolf’s idle treats, saying “Not by the hair of our chinny, chin chins.” It’s believed this angered the Wolf and led to him blowing the houses down.
• How did it happen? 
• It would appear the first two homes were not built to withstand the Wolf’s powerful breath. The incident inside the brick house is still being investigated, but early indications suggest the Wolf fell into a boiling pot of water when trying to enter the house through the chimney.

Porter Jermey, Five Ws and One H: The Secret to Complete News Stories Journalistics - Aug 2010

If you read any articles and it does not appear to follow this journalistic technique would be cause for concern as to its truthfulness.  You may want to delve deeper and see if the article is accurate and independent in its reporting.  

16 Steps to become a critical thinker

The following set of steps are based upon the article 'Intro to Logic: Techniques of Critical Thinking'.  

It is a useful critical thinking exercise to examine each of these steps and rewrite them to form your own set of steps to enable critical thinking.

• Clarify
• Ask questions to clarify what is being said.  Simplify to aid clarity.
• Be accurate.
• Facts can only be in the past.  Is anything in the statement making future predictions?  If so this is not fact.  Are the facts correct? Is there any factual evidence to back up the statement?
• Be precise.
• Make sure what is being said is accurate, try to avoid ambiguity.
• Be relevant.
• Make sure to stick to the issue under discussion, avoid falling for strawman or other fallacies.
• Know your purpose.
• Figure out what the most important thing is in the discussion.  Try to remove any related but not relevant information (see 'be relevant' above).
• Identify assumptions.
• When involved in critical thinking it is important to be aware that all thinking is based upon some level of assumption. Try to identify these assumptions.
• Check your emotions.
• Emotion can directly affect our critical thinking.  Try to keep emotions under control when discussing issues.  Ask yourself are my emotions influencing my judgement?
• Empathize.
• Look at what a person is saying from their viewpoint.  Try to put yourself in their shoes, how would you feel if someone spoke to you in the way in which you are speaking to them.
• Know your own ignorance.
• Know your level of knowledge. You do not know everything and what you do know may be wrong. Be gracious when someone proves you wrong, learn from being wrong.
• Be independent.
• Do not follow the crowd.  Verify information with dependent thought.  Do your own research to verify what is being claimed. 
• Laurent Bossavit has a wonderful book on this subject called The Leprechauns of Software Engineering
• Think through implications.
• Look at what is being claimed and see what the implications of this claim could be.  Look for alternative implications, both negative and positive.
• Know your own biases.
• Being aware of your biases is crucial when involved in critical thinking.  How are they affecting your judgement? Are they affecting your judgement of others?
• Suspend judgement.
• Do not arrive at a conclusion and then try to find reasons that support your conclusion.  Use the scientific method as discussed earlier in this chapter. Form a theory on how it should work and then attempt to find ways to disprove your theory. 
• Consider the opposition
• Look for alternative and opposite perspectives.   Do not base your conclusion from one source.  Look for sources that disagree with the first source.
• Recognize cultural assumptions.
• Be conscious of stereotyping and cultural bias.  It does not mean if someone is from a different culture or period in time that their views are any less greater than your own.
• Be fair, not selfish.
• We are naturally selfish creatures and find it hard to be wrong and admit our mistakes.  Be fair with yourself and others, look for selfish traits in yourself and others.

Some links:

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:How_To_Spot_Fake_News.jpg
• http://www.criticalthinking.org/
• https://www.skillsyouneed.com/learn/critical-thinking.html
• http://www.umich.edu/~elements/5e/probsolv/strategy/ctskills.htm
• https://globaldigitalcitizen.org/critical-thinking-skills-cheatsheet-infographic

Speaking events.

I am due to speak at a couple of events this year.

• A workshop on self learning at the Romanian Testing Conference in May 2017.
• Psychology and Testing  at the Midlands Tester Meetup - June 2017

Update and Plans for 2015

I noticed that it has been awhile since I last posted on my blog, since then I have had an article published in Stickyminds about the role of Testers in Agile Environments.

The end of 2014 was a little bit crazy, I ended up in hospital for a few days towards end of November and only really started to recover just in time for Christmas.

So my plans for this year are in the short term get the next chapter of my book, about critical thinking,  completed.  Hopefully this is the year I get the book fully completed, when I first started writing the book I thought I would have had it completed within a year.  How wrong was I! I find writing the book to be rewarding and therapeutic but at the same time I put pressure upon myself to get it completed.  Once I have finished my book writing journey I will add a longer post here about the journey.

The book "The Psychology of Software #Testing" is available here.

I have other plans for this year including a few blog articles that I intend to complete,with the following provisional titles:

• Code Coverage is Not Test Coverage
• Note Taking and Cornell Note Taking
• How We Learn (based on upcoming workshop for Lets Test 2015)
• Asking the right questions

I will also be speaking at a few events this year.

• Creative and Critical Thinking Workshop - TestBash 2015: 26th-27th March 2015 - Brighton, UK
• A day long Creative and Critical Thinking Workshop in Romania - May 2015 more details to follow
• A Journey towards Self Learning - Half Day Workshop  - Lets Test 25th-27th May 2015 - Stockholm, Sweden.

I hope to see both new and old friends at these events and if you do see me please come and say hello.

PS - I will have an article published in Testing Planet Magazine soon on an alternative coding approach for testers. 

Plans for this year

**UPDATED 24th March 2014

As some may have noticed I have not been as active with my blog as I normally would be, I do have a few articles on the back burner which I hope to flesh out over the next few months.  One of the reasons is that currently I am working away from home in our offices in Georgia, USA and this is taking a fair amount of my time.  At the same time I am still pushing ahead with writing my book, currently have the first four chapters almost complete and intend to publish these soon, give or take a month. It is proving a lot more difficult than expected but I do set myself difficult goals and targets.

I recently ran a workshop in Atlanta for the software testing club meet up which I felt went well.  Eric Jacobson did a great write up which you can read here.

I thought I would take this opportunity to give you an update on my current confirmed plans for this year.

• First of all I will be running a creative and critical thinking and testing workshop in Madrid, Spain at the ExpoQA conference from the 26th to the 29th May 2014.  I will also be presenting a talk on 'Stop doing too much automation'. 
• I have been selected to talk at the Agile Alliance Conference in Orlando, Florida, USA from the 28th July until the 1st August.  I will be talking about 'Taking Small Steps in a Big Organisation (An experience report on implementing ET)'.
• I feel very fortunate to have been selected to run my creative and critical thinking and testing workshop at this years CAST conference in New York, which is being held from the 11th until the 13th August.
• Finally Tony Bruce asked me if I would like to run the creative and critical thinking workshop for the next London Testers Gathering Workshops in London from the 16th until the 17th of October 2014, so I will be at that event as well.

Therefore you have plenty of opportunities to catch up with me at any of these events and I look forward to have some great discussions with other testers around the world.

Twitter Hashtags to follow for the events above:

• #EXPOQA
• #AGILE2014
• #CAST2014
• #LTGWorkshops
• #ltgw2014

Tis the Season for Conferencing

It will soon be the start of the main software testing conference season and there are many people who will not be able to attend for lots of reasons.  So if you cannot attend in person then why not use social media to follow what is happening at the conference.  The best way I have found to do this is to use twitter and a hash tag designated for the conference.  I personally use twitter a great deal when attending conferences even going so far to automate my tweets when presenting at Lets test.   So I have gathered together as many hash tags I can think of for upcoming testing conferences so you can be virtually there.

If there are any I have missed please add them as comments and I will add them to this article giving credit of course.

For those who are attending a testing conference can I ask that you use twitter to keep others informed about the conference and some of the key points being said it helps the whole of the testing community.

For those organising a testing conference please make sure you have a hash tag for your conference and make it widely known.  There are some conferences organisers that do not have this in place and it is shame since it is way of drawing attention to your conference and for sharing knowledge beyond the confines of a physical location. It is also good to keep it the same each year instead of adding the year on that way it can be used all the time over a year and keep conversations going.

The following is a list of hash tags for upcoming testing conferences for which I could locate a hash tag for.

• #CAST2013 - CAST –  - 26-28th August 2013 - Madison, WI, USA

• #SIGIST - SIGIST Conference - 12th September 2013 - London, UK (@Stephen_J_Hill)

• #STARWEST – STARWEST -   29 Sept – 4 Oct 2013 Anaheim, California, USA

• #STPCon – Software Testing Professional - 21-24 Oct 2013 Phoenix, Az, USA

• #UKTMF  UK Test Management Forum - 30th October 2013, London, UK (@Stephen_J_Hill)

• #agiletd – Agile Testing Days - 28-31 October 2013 – Berlin, Germany

• #esconfs – Eurostar Test Conference - 4-7 November 2013 – Gothenburg, Sweden

• #bscadc – Better Software Conference East - 10-15th Nov 2013- Boston, MA

• #testbash – Test Bash - / 28th March 2014 – Brighton, UK

• #letstest – Lets Test Conference -  May 26-29th May 2014 – Runo , Sweden

• #bscadc – Better Software Conference west - 1-6 June, Las Vegas, NV, USA

• #letstest – Lets Test OZ - 15-17th September 2014, Gold Coast Australia

• #shefftest– Sheffield Test Gathering - TBD - Sheffield, UK (@TNRidgeback)

Also there are testing events being organised that do not require you to pay.

• Software Testing Club Meet ups
• Weekend Testing

If there is not one near you, why not organise one?

For those attending a testing conference I would recommending reading the excellent guide to attending a conference written by Rob Lambert (@Rob_Lambert)

Small Steps in a Big Organisation

I recently did a talk about taking "Small Steps in A Large Organisation" at the Israel SIGIST in Tel Aviv - http://www.istqb.org/newsevents/events/istqb-conference-network/sigist-israel-conference-2013.html

I  have had an article based upon the talk published on the Eurostar blog page
https://conference.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com/2013/taking-small-steps-in-a-big-organization/ to go along with the presentation.

Once the details of the recording from the conference are made available I will update this article.

Information Overload and Bad Decisions

This blog article is based upon my conference talk  at the Lets Test conference in Sweden.

Before we start to look at why too much information  is bad it might be worth defining what Information Overload actually means.

According to  D. Allen and T. D. Wilson, “Information overload: Context and causes,” - The New Review of Information Behaviour Research Volume 4, Issue 1, 2003

Information overload occurs when the information available exceeds  the user's ability to process it 

Research has shown that as human beings we have a limited amount of capacity for storing information within our brains.

The human brain is quite remarkable.  It can store perhaps three terabytes of information.
http://www.sizes.com/people/brain.htm

And yet this is only about one millionth of the information that IBM say is now being produced in the world each day (and growing)

The signal and the Noise – Nate Silver

The problem is that too much information can have a serious affect on human beings.  The term 'Information Overload' appears to be credited to Alvin Toffler in his book 'Future Shock' In which he says the following about the problems of overloading.

It has been seen that Overloading leads to a serious breakdown of performance (sometimes with dangerous results). We are, in other words forcing them to process information at a far more rapid pace than was necessary in slowly-evolving societies. There can be little doubt that we are subjecting at least some of them to cognitive over stimulation.  What consequences this may have for mental health in the techno-societies has yet to be determined.

You may think that this is a 'new' problem, Alvin wrote the above passage of text in 1972!

Look at the image above what do you see?  Butterfly?  Tree?  Stars? It is a randomly created piece of art.

We are good at seeing patterns and really good at making patterns from things where no patterns exists.  We do the same with numbers and patterns of numbers, lucky streak.  This within testing can cause us problems and unless we use critically thinking our own ancient survival skills will let us down.

 .. your brain hates ambiguity and is willing to take shortcuts to remove it from any situation.  If there is nothing else to go on, you will use what is available.  When pattern recognition fails, you create patterns of your own 
You Are Not So Smart - David McRaney

Statistics Joke:

Did you hear about the statistician who drowned whilst crossing a river which had an average depth of 3 foot. 

We get mislead and enticed within testing by the use of numbers, especially the use of pass/fail metrics and many others without thinking that numbers need a story.  Once you have as story you can use numbers to help backup the story.  Telling the story of numbers is vital. Using only numbers to measure will ensure that you end up measuring the wrong thing!

I know Alan Page loves the Gorilla so I included it in my talk.

If you already seen the Gorilla video or know about it I still recommend you watch the following video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY

Did it still mange to fool you?  Even when people have seen it they still miss the unexpected.  We find it difficult to do two things at once.  When we try to do this we lose some valuable learning - multi-thinking is a myth.  More information on this can be found in this interesting article. http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/05/how-does-multitasking-change-the-way-kids-learn/

The next challenge I set was to ask the following question - now try to do t his quickly before moving on to the next paragraph:

How many animals did Moses take into the Ark?

Did you try and find an answer?  Or did you question the question (think critically).  If you still see nothing wrong with the question read it again.

There is a danger as testers that we can easily be primed and anchoring into thinking that we need to give an answer or solve a problem.  This leads into a discussion about what is the role of testers.  To find or solve problems? I have slightly touch on this subject previously.

The other way in which we get anchoring into thinking in one way is by an over reliance on requirement documentation. Instead of playing and using the software we try to second guess and base our testing on a set of requirements that then controls and leads our testing effort.  Rikard Edgren talks more about this in his article on the search of the potato.  Do not only rely on requirement documents we need to ask what more is there?  We need to think about what the requirement may not be saying

So how does all of the above relate to testing?

We base our testing decisions on our biases and “quick” judgement , what we think we believe, we do not take the time to think We create patterns from our tests where no patterns may exist – we are built to spot patterns and sometimes this is useful other times it can mislead and waste time and lead to wrong choices being made. We by design follow the path of least resistance with our thinking – we are lazy. We make irrational quick choices that we are unaware we are making.  Sometimes we do things without thinking, this is useful for driving etc but not when testing we need to reflect, refocus and re-frame.

When we are faced with too much information we may not be able to make decisions or even make the wrong decision. For example soldiers freezing in a conflict situation or panic on plane which has crashed and on fire.  We can become overwhelmed and cannot make a choice so we make no decision and await our fate

Information: The very thing that makes it possible to be an engineer is threatening our ability to do our work. – IEEE Spectrum

We constantly fail to apply critical thinking to our testing, we are so overwhelmed that we forget to ask questions such as:

• Why are you doing what you are doing?  
• Could you be doing something better?  
• Is this the most important thing you could be doing?

This leads on to the James Bach approach to critical thinking in testing

• Huh? – Do I really understand?
• Really? How do I know what you say is true?
• So? Is that the only solution?

You do not have to use this example be creative and create your own that is thinking!

“Rule of Three” – If you haven't thought of at least three plausible explanations, you’re not thinking critically enough - Gerald Weinberg - Quality Software Management Volume 2

So what can we do to help this overloading of information?

• Slow down and think, we are going far to fast. We need time to pause and  to reflect I have written about slowing down previously.
• We need to remember that creative thinking is just as important and we sometimes need to take a step back
• We need to learn that it is ok to make mistakes and get your assumptions wrong that is the best way to learn.  That is the important part, we must remember to learn from them.
• If you are aware you are human and can easily be fooled then that can help you improve your thinking and question your own beliefs and motives for what you are doing.
• Stop doing too much planning far far ahead. We learn a lot more by doing, tinkering and playing, Discover by accident, be creative .  To remove your fallacies and assumptions you need to play with the system and see what it does.
• Have a passion for testing  and your job (not just testing) passion drives your knowledge and thirst to learn more.

Nothing great has been and nothing great can be accomplished without passion
GWF Hegel

Lets Test Conference Talk 2013 - Resources

I recently had the good fortune to be able to be a speaker at the Lets Test conference in Sweden. - .  My topic for the conference talk was called Information Overload and Bad Decisions  - More details here

Anyone interested in viewing my presentation can use the following link for the SVG version:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8jc_cHKwbNoSE80SnRLdDVzbXM/edit?usp=sharing

I also have a traditional PowerPoint version for those more used to this kind of presentation
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8jc_cHKwbNoNzNJVXl0SnBYcVU/edit?usp=sharing

My notes:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8jc_cHKwbNoUktpSjBmcU1JZGc/edit?usp=sharing

For those interested in learning how I created the SVG presentation you can find out more by clicking on the links below.

I used two tools - Inkscape (http://inkscape.org/) and Sozi - http://sozi.baierouge.fr/wiki/en:welcome

My next blog article will be a short summary of the talk.

Lets Test Conference 2013

Well it is soon going to be time to go to the Lets Test conference 20^th -22^nd May - - http://lets-test.com/ and I  am getting very excited about this for a few reasons.

1. I am presenting – hopefully my talk on Information Overload will be well received - http://lets-test.com/?page_id=1284
2. An awesome line up of some of the most respected testers in the world will be there – check out the program - http://lets-test.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/LetsTest2013_Program.pdf
3. I will get a chance to do the most important thing at a conference which is to do some conferring. 
4. This is going to be one of the testing events of the year (IMO)
5. There is going to be a fantastic test lab to play in and hone your testing skills - http://lets-test.com/?p=1790

I am looking forward to meeting some old friends within the testing community and hopefully making and meet new ones.

For those that have not attended conferences before or are a little inexperienced may I draw your attention to some great blogs on getting the most out of conferences.

Rob lambert Quick Guide to Eurostar (But it does apply to all conferences)

http://thesocialtester.co.uk/quick-guide-to-eurostar-2012/

Making the most of the Conference Experience – Self-promotion from my Blog http://www.steveo1967.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/making-most-of-conference-experience.html

Conferencers Anonymous – Markus Gärtner- http://www.shino.de/2013/02/26/conferencers-anonymous/

WHAT do you mean you are not attending?  - Seriously I am sure Henrik and the team can ‘fit’ you in.  What are you waiting for?  

Making the most of the conference experience

FOR THOSE ABOUT TO CONFERENCE… WE WILL TALK TO YOU…..

Since it is so close to the Eurostar conference in Amsterdam I thought I would post a conference related blog. #esconfs @esconfs -

I had planned to do this blog article a few weeks ago when I posted on twitter about the point of conferences is not all about the tracks but about the conferring. Many thanks to Rob Lambert The social tester for spurring me to complete this post together with his great A quick guide to Eurostar 2012

What?  You have not read it yet!!!  Then please stop reading this and go and do so…… (There Rob plug over with I expect the cheque to be in the post tomorrow or at least buy me a drink at Eurostar!)

This article is not going to be a “you should do this or should do that” and follows some of the messages that Rob states in his article. I remember my first conference (many, many years ago) and how it can be very intimidating.  It is even worse if you are little shy or a quiet type.

The best value you can get from a conference is not from the tracks or the keynotes but from talking to other people and conferring.  You soon learn that the problems you face in your day to day job are similar to others. This may help you to feel that you are not alone and that the issues you face are normal.  It is so easy within our profession to become insular and trapped in our own bubble.  Conferences gives you a great opportunity to see that the issues you experience are common and others are facing the same problems.  This is a great part of attending conferences to discuss these issues with others and sometimes you may discover solutions which could help you resolve the problems you are facing.

There are many ‘strong’ characters in the software testing community and some can appear to be very intimidating.  Try not to be scared and approach them, maybe just listen to begin with; this is what I did at my first few conferences and I felt too nervous or inferior to even think about taking part in the conversation.   It was at one conference when, what I would consider, a high profile figure within the testing community  asked for my thoughts about a topic I was listening to with a group of people.  So I said what I thought and the person took what I said and said this was a great example of the point being made.  This made me feel good and that I had something worthwhile to say.  This one encounter at this conference changed my whole perspective of the testing community and spurred me to start writing this testing blog.  So the conference can change you and encourage you in unexpected ways.  (Thanks Michael B – your encouragement has led to all of this from your keen observations)

At the conference lookout for non-conference social meets they are sometimes advertised on twitter.  You are not on twitter?  Please do join twitter it is a great way to interact with the whole testing community worldwide. I am @steveo1967 on twitter if you want to find me.  Others are word of mouth so it is important to socialise with people at a conferences.

Do not attend every single track at the conference doing so will exhaust you and place you under a lot of pressure.  Take some time out to reflect on  what you have attended maybe even write it up on a blog or as notes to follow up at work.  Even better take some time out to visit the expo or the great sights around the venue.  A conference is not about the number of tracks you attend or making sure you fill all your time with attending lectures.  I tried to do that for the first few conferences I attended and it did not work I had no time to reflect on what had been said and forgot so much useful information.

I have met many wonderful people at conferences and some of them have gone on to be close acquaintances that I have regular contact with even inviting them to my home.  All it takes is a little courage to try and get involved; this is so difficult to do for some but very much worth it.

I would say to that who are regulars at conferences if you spot someone on their own please try to approach them and introduce yourself. At the Eurostar conference this year there is a new concept called the community hub,  which is being hosted by Peter Morgan.  I recommend that you come along and practice doing a little socialising.

ENJOY YOURSELF – it seems strange to say that but I have seen so many people come to a conference with a unhappy face – they have come because they have been told to or feel like an outsider.  Make the most of the conference by taking part and becoming a part of the community.  The testing community can be intimidating for an outsider but if you take those first wobble steps to becoming a part of the community then it welcomes you with open arms and lots of support.

You never know you may meet someone at the conference who changes your life or at least makes you think in a different way.

In memory of Ola Hylten whom I first met at a Eurostar Conference

Apprenticeship schemes at Test Conferences

A quick blog on a thought I have had.

I read an article today about how we could try and fix the IT skills gap that exists within the UK, this may also apply around the world, by getting young adults into apprenticeships. I have a view that for some people academia study is not for them and they would better suited to a vocational training course instead of a university degree. I never went to university and as such I do not have a degree. Do I feel as if I have missed out? I do not think so but I have not experienced university life so cannot be sure if I missed out something I may have liked.

I think within our profession of testing we have an opportunity to mentor and help create the next generation of testers (not discounting coders, architects) and allowing them to build their skills and knowledge up by learning from experience rather than studying non relevant subjects at university (How many universities do testing as a degree?) As Nassim Nicholas Taleb has said we as human beings are far better at learning from doing rather than from books. I have over the past year been mentoring two people in our craft of testing one is still on-going the other has managed to secure a tester role within a company, neither have been involved in testing beforehand. I feel we within our community should be trying to do this and encourage young adults by maybe taking them under our tutorage, it does not require a large amount of personal investment, a few hours per week. Or maybe within our companies we should all start looking at trying to introduce apprenticeship schemes, let’s try to tap into this vast resource who in my opinion feels they have been abandoned by the educational system.

On the other side I want to call out to those who run conferences, EuroSTAR, CAST, Lets test, UNICOM and say let’s advertise for young adults who may have an interest to come along as an apprentice for the length of the conference. They would not pay a fee but would be expected to produce a report on their thoughts and what actions they intend to take away for the future. I am have not finalized these thoughts but it would give these young adults to get engagement in a craft which I myself feel very passionate about.

Maybe the organizations that run the conferences could look at running an apprenticeship competition, vetting process. I am sure there are many vocational colleges (Both UK and around the world) who would be willing to get involved in this. It has the added effect that it will start to raise in the minds of the next generation of influential people the value of testing and put testing out there as a forwarding thinking craft that people want to get involved with.

What do others think?

I would especially love some feedback from conference organizers to see how feasible these ideas are.