Monday, August 29, 2011

On Doug Hoffman's blogging

I’ve been testing a broad spectrum of software and systems for a very long time. I've been consulting in SQA for over 20 years after having a similar amount of industry experience. I've studied and taught about a bunch of subjects like CS, EE, QA, business, management, and testing. I've been a software developer, support engineer, teacher, manager, and at heart I'm mostly a quality engineer/tester. I've earned a string of degrees and awards. I've written and published papers and presented at conferences for a long time (see my papers and presentations).

OK. So what?

I’ve still got a lot to learn, but I think I've got a lot to share. I've decided that it's way past time for me to share more online in a blog.

What I want to share are generally new ideas. Things that I've learned from others or figured out through the school of hard knocks. I don't want to rehash topics I agree with that others have already presented. I want to go after things that I don't see generally published or may be contrary to the accepted norms in software testing and quality assurance. For example, things that help explain why software has bugs after we thoroughly test, how software metrics may get us into trouble, that tests don't really pass or fail, how to approach test automation in far more powerful ways, that there are different types of test oracles, that there are different approaches to results comparison, issues in managing of quality assurance and test groups, and on and on.

I've acquired a lot of ideas from a lot of sources, many from the school of hard knocks. I heard that we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. I agree and I've done my share of learning that way. I'm hoping that my posts are thought provoking. I welcome challenges to the ideas I present, especially those coming from contrary experiences. Therein lies a rich opportunity for our learning more.

- Doug

It's a shame to make the same old mistakes when there are still plenty of new ones to discover. - Doug Hoffman

No comments:

Post a Comment