Why Testing needs a community ?

Hi Reader,

I am Pradeep Soundararajan from Bangalore, India working as a Senior Software Engineer at Flextronics Software and Systems. I have been considered as a passionate tester by the people who have worked with me and also by those people who have gone through my Testing Blog. I am also proud to be a student of James Bach and have aimed at becoming one of the best Tester's in the near future. I am thankful to Kevin Byrne of EUROSTAR for inviting me to join this community.

Let me now start sharing something that I think/feel, as a Tester from India.

__ Why Testing needs a community ? __

When was Testing born ? Where was it born ? How was it born ? .....
Do you have answers for the above ?

Well, we realized that there is a scientific approach called "testing" especailly after doing Testing sub-consciously. Right from our child hood we have done testing but still every tester feels he is yet to learn completely about testing. Why is that ?

The answer could be : When one form of testing was born in your mind , the other form was born in mine and some other form in someone's brain and we finally end to have a count of whole population of the world giving birth to their own form of Testing.

"Now I don't believe this" by any chance if you feel/say so, I am sorry, whatsoever your native language, was formed only after borrowing a few words from other languages. Had you uttered the above sentence, its time to say "I have started to believe".

Well as many expert like Cem Kaner, James Bach, Jerry Weinberg, Jhonathon Kohl... feel, Testing even maps to epistemology which in turn refers to the study of how people think. Of course you now agree that different people think different from each other. If still you dont agree, that shows we both are thinking different from one another.

I can answer one question for you "How has testing grown and how can it grow in the future?" ,if you think I haven't answered well the questions I put up at first ( vice versa too :P )

Whatever so called definition-methodologies-documents-books-strategies-types of testing we have today, are evolved by people having a passion for testing coming together ( of course after doing some research ) discussing and framing an agreeable standard of defining an aspect of testing. Any process/protocol you take has never been framed by a single person , its people coming together , rather I should call such process/protocols have bought like minded people together.

I can be somewhat satisfied that I know something good in testing, only after mingling with ( or learning from ) Testers coming from a different community, country, relegion, caste...

Take a look at every Test Expert we currently have, they are the people who have travelled across the world, meeting up testers, presenting their ideas and also learning from their juniors.

Why do they do so ?
I think they have realized that Testing can be learnt well only through a community and the community they need to look for making themselves best testers is the ..... whole world.

So when are you going to explore the community ( the whole world, I mean) ?

__End of __Why testing needs a community ? __

"Atlast relegion/caste is useful, in bringing people together to discuss their dimension of Testing"

Thanks and Regards,

Pradeep Soundararajan

Look for more at Tester Tested! or ping me.