Comments on PRACTICAL QA: THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST

I had to put up with an indignant James Bach at ST...

2009-05-11T12:32:00.000-04:00

I had to put up with an indignant James Bach at STAR last week over this. Calling something a 'tour' and using the metaphor to the fullest are two different things.

I didn't invent the idea and I don't care to claim it. Neither did Bach but he does. It doesn't matter.

The term has been in use since the 80s. The closest I can tell is that the Cleanroom community owns the first use with their statistical usage tours. They don't seem intent on claiming it either. Kudos to them.

Your blog is fantastic. I hope we get to meet sometime.

I don't know, Rob, we've pretty much been compared...

2009-05-07T09:48:00.000-04:00

I don't know, Rob, we've pretty much been compared to fishing, music, surgery, first kisses, driving a car, travel, and cooking. Maybe we're trying too hard on those new analogies...

The problem is that testing pretty much attracts a colorful, interesting group of people, and I don't think they like BUSINESS analogies or terminology. They're too boring.

The problem is that those "boring" business concepts are the types of ideas that get buy-in and recognition from
executive management. They are easier to justify from a business perspective. I think that if we want to be taken seriously, we need to ratchet down our natural tendencies to inject humor into everything we do and Get With the Program.

My staff and I will start working with the "tours" ideas and see what we can come up with here that would be of benefit (for our environment and others), but for the time being, my status reports are just going to say we're looking into some promising new agile test techniques, which has the benefit of being true. I REALLY don't want to have to name them something different than what everyone else does, but if they're valuable to my team and my company, I'll do whatever I have to do to get them accepted. That's how I ride...LOL...

Thanks for the comments, Rob; it was good to hear from someone using the tours concepts and it encourages me that you've found them valuable...

Linda, Good posting. I saw James at the SIGIST ev...

2009-05-07T03:49:00.000-04:00

Linda,

Good posting. I saw James at the SIGIST event in London in March and it was the first time I truly understood the concept of tours. Not entirely sure James created the concept - there is some arguments over who created the idea. However, I was struck with how useful they are to explain to non-testers what it was you were doing.

I'd completely agree that selling this to management is hard with names like Supermodel tour etc, but the concept is sound for most of the tours.

I would agree that there is scope to make the tours something of a standard learning and testing process within our community and it would be interesting to see how this develops.

I'm using the concept of tours in what I'm doing and each day am finding new ways to work with the concept. I think through practical use of the tours concept a new way of maturing the idea will develop. Saying that though, how long will it be before a new analogy for what we do is presented?

Rob..