Five Questions With Rex Black

Rex Black consults on software, hardware, and systems testing around the world, helping major companies do everything from train their testers to offshore their testing. Organizations like Dell, and Bank One, and the US Department of Defense. His clients seem to think Rex knows what he's talking about, as do the hordes of people who attend his keynotes and presentations at multitudes of international conferences and workshops. As do the thirty-five thousand people who have purchased his books Managing The Testing Process, Critical Testing Processes, Foundations Of Software Testing, and Pragmatic Software Testing.

Rex is also President of the International Software Testing Qualifications Board and of the American Software Testing Qualifications Board. Which will either increase or decrease your opinion of him, depending whether you are for or against certifying testers. <g/> Here is what Rex has to say:

DDJ: What was your first introduction to testing? What did that leave you thinking about the act and/or concept of testing?
RB: I first got paid to work as a tester when an independent test lab hired me to create automated Unix test scripts and programs in 1987, but I had been doing automated unit testing of my own code as a programmer for years. At first, my thinking about testing was mostly tactical and superficial. It took me a while to realize the complexity of the problem that testing is dealing with. It was about the mid-1990s, when I was developing concepts that would eventually become risk analysis and risk-based testing as described in my book *Managing the Testing Process*, that my understanding of testing both technically and from a business perspective matured.

DDJ: What has most surprised you as you have learned about testing/in your experiences with testing?
RB: How many people expect testing to be a shield rather than a filter.

DDJ: How would you describe your testing philosophy?
RB: I don't know about philosophy, but my preferred test strategy is an analytical risk-based one. Analytical in that it involves up-front analysis, during the early stages of the project, when it's still possible to prevent bugs. Risk-based in that we identify risk items, assess the level of risk, and then allocate testing priority and effort based on the level of risk. In addition, I'll mention that, to me, risk-based testing addresses both business and technical considerations.

DDJ: Is there something which is typically emphasized as important regarding testing that you think can be ignored, is unimportant?
RB: I don't like to think in dualistic, black and white terms like is/is not important; I prefer to think about gradations. I would say that, like the rest of software engineering, we tend to rely too much on silver bullets, and those are over-emphasized. An example would be GUI-based test automation to the exclusion of other good automation techniques.

DDJ: What do you see as the biggest challenge for testers/the test discipline for the next five years?
RB: For individual testers, it will be outsourcing and globalization. The commodity tester--one who can't distinguish their skills from those of others--will be driven out of the field by cheaper people in industrializing nations. For the testing discipline itself, I see bringing common testing practices in line with best practices as the biggest challenge. Best testing practices lead common testing practices by about 30 years, which is a gap far worse than what we see in programming.

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