ISTQB did not manage to ruin me
I’m certainly glad to hear that. I also know other people with ISTQB certifications that I’d consider good, self-improving, community-partaking testers.
My point was that the ISTQB teaches a certain, specific way of doing things. En-masse they have influence over how testing gets done. If we filter for ISTQB-holders we will tend to get ISTQB-practitioners.
I understand that some people hold it for all sort of reasons, but many people who don’t feel that it’s very useful will exclude it from their achievements, or may want to work for a company that does not insist on it because they fear that it’ll affect their agency and freedom to make changes and improvements.
Being aware of a bad foundation is a decent foundation to build a better one.
Before I talk about this, I think that referring to the ISTQB as a bad foundation is a good example of criticism in context that works. Not something we would do to help someone out of a hole that the ISTQB provided the shovel for, but something we can talk about here in reference to how best go about helping new testers. I don’t consider that “bashing” of any sort, but a way to frame the flaws in a way that helps.
As to the point - I think someone has to realise that a foundation is bad, and what’s bad about it, to make a decent one. Pointing out the flaws in the bad foundation, to me, is part of that process. Raising awareness that there are flaws to be found. I think that’s a great case for criticising the ISTQB, to show that there is a better foundation to be had, and why.
I also don’t think that the best way to make great testers is to start them off with an ISTQB course. I think that absolutely can happen, but it’s not the best approach. Nor will everyone question what they’re taught more deeply - not all testers discuss testing or go to forums where they might be exposed to the alternatives.
I keep wondering if the time used on ISQTB bashing (that I have invested my fair share) was ever a good approach
Firstly I think “bashing” is a bit of charged word and I’d prefer to use “criticism”, if that’s okay. To me “bashing” has the affordance of someone levelling accusations without deeper thought and without listening to feedback. I have thought about it and come to conclusions, and I’ll usually talk about the reasoning in a deeper way if someone wants me to. We can even talk about the benefits of premature formalisation and bad control metrics if you like - it might give us some insights we can use elsewhere.
As for a good approach - A good approach to what?
I think it’s a good approach in my reply, because it’s a thread about the ISTQB, and my reply was my thinking on the risks of filtering candidates by ISTQB certifications. That has to include the problems that having an ISTQB-focused pool of testers will give you. It also has pragmatic advantages, which I hope to have covered elsewhere.
It’s a bad approach to someone with a question like “I have too many test cases and I can’t cope”. There I sell the benefits of offloading the work the process is doing onto statements of purpose. The time savings, the lower maintenance and storage costs, the increase in engagement. I spend a lot of my time doing that sort of thing. Or at least trying. Also, I feel like accusing the ISTQB of promoting a not-great idea and accusing someone using it are two very different things. The ISTQB is a public authority claiming control of the industry language, it’s not remotely unusual that someone would do exactly what they’re taught to do.
A good approach to taking down the mighty ISTQB once and for all so we can live in our new utopia? There’s two reasons that combine into why I don’t think that will happen. The first is they have better reach, more money, better advertising, better SEO, and an established industry demand for their certifications that self-perpetuates. The second is that if they all decided they had enough money and disbanded overnight there’d be a power vacuum and something similar would take its place. Maybe not, but I don’t see my forum replies changing the world.
A good approach to helping testers? I think it can, used properly, for reasons I’ve mentioned. My forum activity doesn’t change the world, but I hope it can improve a few testers worlds, like others have done for mine.
I don’t think that “criticise the ISTQB” is anyone’s mission statement for improving the state of testing. But if it comes up in a direction question or is relevant to a reply, then I feel safe to express the criticisms because that’s what we’re talking about. If I take the opposite approach: “never criticise the ISTQB” then I’m failing in a different way. Then I can’t explain why I think one way of doing something is better. I can’t even learn from others who disagree. If we use them more heuristically, I think we’re on to something.
We’ve definitely been at it as a community for a few decades now.
Have we?
I rarely talk about the ISTQB. I have, for sure, and I don’t usually have nice things to say, but as a proportion of what I do it’s very little indeed. More importantly I think that the concept of essentially having a go at the ISTQB is collapsing the reasoning behind why that happens.
If people would like to hear some of the problems I have with other groups, we can also talk about that. I think one issue is that the ISTQB are so prevalent, and their ideas so pervasive, and their glossary so “de-facto language for the industry”, that it just gets referenced more.
If we are already discussing the ISTQB, then I think that raising awareness of the flaws is a good thing. For one thing people can be informed that there is a world outside of certification, and that their glossary is not the de-facto language for the industry, but also we might find a reply that gives us more insight into the value it has or challenge our thinking.
I can imagine that some people will reject anything I say when it comes to criticism of some ideas (like ISTQB or some things it teaches) because they take criticisms of ideas personally, no matter what I try or how I try to word it (which could be a failure to try something else or my ability to word things), and for those people I do not know what to do. If we can’t have a discussion about something because criticism offends or upsets them, then while that is very upsetting to me (because I see myself as someone trying to help, and I base my value on my abilities as a support character - which I probably should not but therapy is expensive), I don’t know how we can talk that out. That’s the way I work, in a sciency anti-fragile way, and me trying hard to make that palatable is all I have. If people are willing to meet me where I am I’ll try to meet them where they are. I hope to do vastly more good than harm. I try to remember that the world is full of things with a small harm but a worthwhile good. Scolding a child. Birthing a child. Vaccinations. Issac Newton. Olympic training. Boxes of chocolates with coconut ones in them.
I have some ideas around conversational consent I’d like to share which might provide some value when it comes to constructive criticism.
Criticism has different effects in different contexts. So if I present my findings as a scientist the peer review process is all about other people attacking my ideas. Not because they want to see me fail, or offend my choices, but because that’s how we see which ideas survive and which we can dispose of. The basics of falsificationism. That doesn’t work in a casual chat, where some reach towards objective truth, or even heuristic value, isn’t always the goal. If I nitpick someone’s wording on one testing forum that can be seen as inappropriate and mean. On another I’ll be thanked for the effort for the clarity it lends to the discussion.
So what’s the difference? I think it’s tacit consent. You don’t expect to see naked people on the street. You do expect to see them in a changing room. We tacitly consent to the possibility of nudity in a changing room. We do not at Starbucks. So if we can create a space of understanding where people can go to either hack out ideas and have them shredded to see what survives, and others that are more “civil” but still permit back-and-forth discussions and criticisms (I think of MoT Club as this), and others where we can feel safe to express ideas without having to come up with the energy to defend them deeper then we will reduce the times that we have disconnects over a failure of expectation when it comes to rules and tone and whatnot. I think there’s better ways to test than put everything into explicit narrative test procedures, but if someone insists and wants to exclude solutions that do not include that plan then I shall step away, or even give solutions that help that person. I think astrology is nonsense, but in this case I think taking way someone’s joy about it is most often worse than challenging their worldview, because while it matters it doesn’t matter enough.
As Ben Goldacre said of Q&As after postdocs present data, “It’s like a kind of consenting intellectual S&M activity”.
BDSM can lend us its safety tools. Safewords, and safe signals. Some way to indicate that we do not feel like discussing the finer points of test case management, we just want something to put the damn test cases into right now, even if that’s not the best idea in general. A way to back out of a conversation for emotional reasons without feeling like we abandoned our intellectual duty. Limits - An emotionally honest discussion about what people want or do not want in their replies. Every sane person will respect someone’s limits when they’re made explicit - then we judge not the question asker, but those that violate the limits. Adaptable safety as part of the culture of discussion, can you imagine it?
These have their own problems to work out, but a few things to think about, anyway, to try to build a more open community for not just the hardcore discussers, but the casual question muller and the timid solution seeker.
If we wanted things to change, we would need to be for something.
I’m for a lot of things. I think most people are. In fact I think you assume that of me.
I am for improving testing, and for improving the lives of testers and their test clients. Including their perceived value in software. That sometimes involves challenging existing ideas, or explaining the flaws so that the improvements make sense.
I feel like the evolution of alternatives like BBST, AST, CDT and RST, is born out of being against existing practices, otherwise there’d be little difference between them and ISTQB, or they wouldn’t exist at all. They also challenge themselves all the time, and that’s how they evolve. One of the things I love about some of these groups is that they provide a safe space to question ideas, where there is implied consent to talk about ideas and separate that from the idea-haver. A welcoming of constructive argument.
I don’t feel like excluding criticism is a good way to be for something. For one thing it shuts down the mechanisms of scientific inquiry and progress. But I would be happy to explore ways to criticise better, and more appropriately in context.
