Report - Security Technical Meeting, At Sogeti, Netherlands

At the Security Technical Meeting of Sogeti in the Netherlands, I presented a topic: "The Main Challenges of Testing Today", and discussed 6 main challenges that needs to be addressed:

Technical Perspective:

1) Adding Value to the Business - we need to measure the right things, and aim with those measurements to fit business and management needs. We need also to speak the language of risk for the risk-takers to understand us, and to get clients and business involved with the testing group earlier in the life cycle.

2) Test Automation Huge systems and systems of systems pose a situation where we cannot cover a lot in our manual testing anymore. Will test automation need a boost? I believe so. What shall be the future of TA - will Model Based Testing catch up? Is TA going to be only a design issue?- Those questions were discussed.

3) Requirements Oriented Testing The testing world of today is moving into being more 'engineering' like profession. In order to do that, we shall be forced into becoming more proficient in requirements creating and analysis. How would that change our: skills? Tools? Estimation and budget? ROI? Systems quality? and maybe... lifestyle?

Profession Perspective:

1) Lack of unity and standard We should be more professional, reading more literature, learning more techniques and methods, adopting methods that have worked well in the field. We should certify and educate out test engineers, and invest in their knowledge.

2) Testing: is it a Profession Yet?We do not agree yet on the testing career path, or on the testing promotion levels both as a manager and as a professional. We should promote the TBOK, We should develop ourselves in: application domain, technical aspects, testing skills, and communication skills. Plus, as multidisciplinary test engineer is the tester of tomorrow, we must learn more domains in the engineering life cycle like: project management, product management, system architecture, etc'.

3) People as the Dominant factor of successful testing projects People have always been the dominant factor for our projects success. Since tomorrow's testers are going to be with much higher skills and knowledge (that is the demand of the market/business/clients), we should invest more in people: moral, education, certification, management - all these have to change in order to keep the knowledge (people...) in our companies. Outsourcing will also have a big weight and a factor in this investment.

Alon Linetzki
Best-Testing