I have a dream..a software testing dream

I have a dream..a software testing dream

Tester Tested wrote a post on the amount of ISTQB advertising (direct and indirect) a testing magazine had. His main point was, if its a Professional Magazine for all testers why does it lean to ISTQB all the time?  Talk was made of lawyers and being sued for blogging about it.
Whilst I valued the point of his post (many thanks Pradeep), it made me sad. It made me reflect on how divided we are in the testing community. In an area that obviously needs great minds to promote the benefits and value of testing, we instead waste them on picking holes in each others ways of doing things.

Why don't we use our energy on focusing on the real bad guys, like the CEO’s and CIO’s who don’t value the benefit of testing and place software testing under development in the company structure?

Why can’t we complement each other on the positive steps that are being taken in the testing world, instead of resorting to suing each other for defamation?

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the concept of critical thinking and the need to challenge each other, but with that goes the responsibility of building people up too. My mum had a saying “for every one criticism, give ten encouragements” (or something like that!)

Criticising ISTQB testers alienates the thousands of testers out there who are certified. This us versus them mentality only further divides our community and testers inside it. Not everyone who is ISTQB certified did so because they wanted to. Not every ISTQB certified tester is unable to test in an intelligent way. Many ISTQB testers need to take the certification to get a job. Many ISTQB certified testers may be interested in exploring other testing avenues if their certification was not sneered at in blogs written by ‘experts’ who ought really to know better.

Our focus ought to be on educating and encouraging all testers to examine all testing ideas and make up their own minds on they believe.

After all, it is the tester who is central to testing, not the testing expert.

What in the world do developers, marketing and project managers think of us, squabbling between ourselves on the right and wrong of different types of testing. To these people, testing is all the same thing, they dont understand the finer points of context driven testing Vs IEE 829.

I know, I know  this is all very naive of me, but are we not mature enough now to put or differences aside, respect each others opinions and work together on promoting the importance and benefits of testing to those outside the testing industry?

I have a dream where we are building up testers to test better regardless of creed…….