My Testing Manifesto 2014

It’s my first day in permanent employment for, oh, about 20 years. I feel a little giddy, like someone’s first day of school – nervous but excited.
Unlike my first day of school, I have some clear goals and ideas I want to implement. I thought I might outline them here to help remind me of what I want to achieve and also to see how different it turns out.

Testing Philosophies

• Testing is an skilled activity(not a phase) that all, to some degree can acquire.
• Testers need autonomy to make decisions, to develop and perform excellent testing.
• Quality is something we all care about, though it means different things to different people.
• Every test has a cost (design, building, maintaining, reporting)

Goals for Testing

To develop a company wide reputation for excellent testing
To develop a test team that is able to handle testing problems with courage, skill and humility.
To coach and help develop the skill of testing with whoever may need it
To identify where testing is occurring and help augment that
To develop and the grow the test team in size, skill and expertise.
To engage with and support the testing community

Personal Goals

To acquire knowledge in testing within a continuous deployment, delivery environment
To learn more about functional programming
To be able to identify how to repair code
To work with integrity and within the bounds of what I consider ethical