Tester maturity

Someone asked me the other day 'What makes a mature tester'? Which set me thinking, as these things do.

Maturity in cheese or wine means age - if kept in the right conditions. A mature cheese or wire is differentiated by a certain quality of smell, taste or appearance that is hard to achieve in any other way. A deepening, a richness, a complex subtlety amalgamating into a coherent whole. This is valued. Sometimes, the dulled mess is only valued because maturity takes time to achieve, and because rareness and maturity are linked. The process of maturing can change, with maturity or inappropriate conditions, into one of spoiling.

For testers, as with cheese, I believe that length of experience is less important than the conditions in which that experience is gained. Maturity is not just experience, but, perhaps, expertise tempered by perspective. I do hope it's not a certain smell.

Maturity in testers might be characterised by a coherent vision, based on a deep and diverse set of experiences and sources. Perhaps there is a process of over-maturing, perhaps a hardening or vinegary sharpness about some testers. Unlike cheese or wine, however, testers can reverse this process.

There are plenty of ways of gaining expertise and developing perspective - the most important for me, so far, have been to do with practice and communication: working in a wide range of businesses; engaging in discussions with other testers, designers, coders and users; showing people why and how I've made a particular decision. There's a difference, of course, between what _makes_ a mature tester, and what _marks_ a mature tester. Training doesn't make a mature tester. Certification doesn't mark a mature tester. There's no vintage certification on testers, or use-by date on their ideas.

Am I a 'mature' tester? Do I want to be? I'd rather be a tester who reverses the process occasionally, and goes back to the fundamental, rapid and joyful changes of immaturity. Hence this half-baked post; I'm going to learn about blogging, and see where I get. I have a handful of other things I'm learning about this year, too - perhaps one will grow to some sort of maturity, but I hope I'll learn from them all.

Short Intro

Hi all!
As my parents always told me to introduce yourself politely to other people, I would like to use my first post to do so.
I'm Erik Boelen, working as a Test Manager/Test Consultant for the company CTG in Belgium.
This is my sixth year in the testing world, and still learning a lot every day over and over again. Therefore, I decided to subscribe to this blog, as its intention is to share experiences, knowledge, ideas and who knows, maybe even dreams about testing!!
Concerning Eurostar, I've had the honour to be a speaker once, in 2003, with the subject 'The Agile Way to Success'. This year, I sent in another proposal and really hope to be selected again.
For me, Eurostar was a learning and fun experience, to put it very simply. I met people from all over Europe who have different opinions about testing and how to deal with it. This resulted in very interesting discussions during the day and very funny outcomes during the "evening sessions".
My personal interest goes out to Agile Testing. Currently, I'm responsible for this area within my company and hope to receive and share some interesting ideas about the subject through this blog.

Cheers!
Erik

Welcome to the offical EuroSTAR blog

Hi,

Thank you for taking the time to investigate this, the new EuroSTAR blog dedicated to the European software testing community and in particular, those testers that have or intend to attend EuroSTAR in the future.

We hope that this initiative will create an online meeting point for European software testing professionals where you can share your individual EuroSTAR experiences, thoughts and importantly ideas for the future. Also, we aim to facilitate continous interaction between those of you that met at EuroSTAR so that you may continue your discussions, debates or even differences of opinion long after the curtain has fallen over the final EuroSTAR session of that year.

Our aim at EuroSTAR is to create the conference you want to attend, to have the speakers you want to hear and the companies you want to speak with. With this in mind, please feel free to let us know what we can do to improve in order to make EuroSTAR an even better experience for the entire European software testing community.

Read through some of the posts below to see what other's have to say about their own EuroSTAR experiences.

Please remember to email us at kevin@qualtechconferences.com so that We can invite you to become a member of the offical EuroSTAR blog. We look forward to hearing from you!

Happy blogging,


The EuroSTAR Team