Blooming of the Testing Garden

*** Column published in Capgemini's CoP IT Testing Newsletter ***

Days are getting longer and some of the bulbs my husband and I planted in autumn last year are already blossoming. As I watch this coming alive in our garden, I think of all the ideas that are blossoming in the testing industry. Creativity and innovativeness are qualities that particularly seem to bloom in the spring, as do the bulbs. Spring also seems the time that many professionals choose to share their experiences on usage of new ideas in practice. Currently I’m in the position that I get to see lots of these ideas, inspiring ideas and enthusiastic stories.

So let me share some insights with you.

Two years ago ‘Agile’ was just a hype word, a bulb that was planted but many could not see what the result would be, very conceptual. Last year Agile became more ‘solid’, it showed its potential and was applied in some projects with successful or not so successful results; like the bulbs you put in the ground in autumn, some come above the ground, but some of them didn’t seem to be ‘doing’ a lot. This year, ‘Agile’ is definitely grounded, all bulbs have fully bloomed. In fact, I read so much about ‘Agile’ now, that I get a bit tired of it, a bit numb. I even see some developments on Agile, specialized process improvement, specialized tooling, specialized test management. A lot is evolving around ‘Agile’, the bulbs are not only blooming, but they are also cultured more and more.

Another bulb that will bloom strongly this year is Chain testing and testing of software integrated in the actual organization. Not only from a testers perspective this is blooming, but also from the organizations’ perspective. It seems like organizations are now, more than ever, becoming aware of the importance of testing. Organizations with a solid test program in place are willing to share their stories and organizations that don’t have them, will – I expect- definitely be willing to have testing integrated in their processes.

Organization-wise there is also a need for quality in their information processes. BI(M) and Testing thereof will also be a flourishing field. Data warehouse testing will definitely have its roots solid in the soil this year. There aren’t yet that many specialists on this area it seems, so this will be an area that will have to be developed and teached. I encourage people to gather information on the subject and help develop this underestimated field of expertise.

Some other bulbs that will be planted or will start showing their beauty this year are ‘Testing as a Service’, Cloud related testing (testing of applications in clouds or cloudofferings in testing), Weekendtesting (just Google…) , other test process improvement methods than TPI and TMMi and all kinds of Exploratory-like testing techniques.

So this year will be a very colorful garden which will certainly need it’s gardeners, but will also provide beauty and enough flowers to pick from.
Get inspired to plant your own testing bulbs or to pick from those wonderful flowers that have already bloomed! I’m certain that something beautiful will bloom in our Testing Garden.