El futuro del testing

Hoy encontré un interesante post de Paul Gerrard llamado On the Redistribution of Testing en el que arriesga algunos pronósticos sobre el futuro de los testers.

Por un lado me gustó particularmente encontrar en su repaso histórico de la actividad de testing algunas ideas muy parecidas a las que expuse en la charla que día el año pasado en la UADE.

Por otro encontré 4 puntos para destacar y transcribir:

1. La idea simplista de algunos que creen que saber de testing sólo requiere hacer un curso de 3 días y una certificación.

“If a 3 day certification is all you need to be a professional tester, no wonder employers think testing is a commodity, so will outsource it when they can.”

2. La tendencia hacia la tercerización de este tipo de actividades por considerárselas un commodity.

“Manual scripted system test execution will be outsourced (in the cloud). The cloud is here. Testers are everywhere. At some point, customers will lose their inhibition and take advantage of the cloud+crowd. So, plain old scripted functional testers are under threat. What about those folk who focus more on exploratory testing? Well, I think they are under threat too. If most exploration is done in the cloud, then why not give some testing to the crowd too?”

3. La idea de que el testing no está muerto, sino que requiere que sus principales actores se transformen.

“Businesses like Amazon and Google and the like have operated a continuous delivery model for years. The ‘Testing is Dead’ meme can be traced to an Alberto Savoia talk at Google’s GTAC conference (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1jWe5rOu3g). Developers who test (with tools) ship code to thousands of internal users who ‘test’ and then the software goes live (as a Beta, often). Some products take off; some, like Wave, don’t. The focus of Alberto’s talk is that software development and testing is often about testing ideas in the market.

Google may have a unique approach, I don’t know. But most organisations will have to come to terms with the new architectures and a more streamlined approach to development. The push and pull of these forces are forcing a rethink of how software available through the internet is created, delivered and managed. The impacts on testing are significant. Perhaps testing and the role of testers can at last can mature to what they should be?”

4. Las 5 alternativas de carrera posibles para los testers:

(1) Providing testing and assurance skills to business, (2) Managing Requirements knowledge, (3) Testmaster, (4) Managing the information flow to/from the CI process and (5) Managing outsourced/offshore teams.

Seguimos pensando..