Mike Kelly gave a talk in the morning on Specialists and other Myths. The main thesis is that as a tester, you can likely do any type of testing be it usability, performance or security with some proficiency even though you might not be a ‘specialist’. Here are my notes.

  • Modeling is not a technique, it’s a skill
  • You do know how to do X, you just don’t know how to do it this way
  • In his slides he had ‘patter’ instead of ‘pattern’ which someone pointed out as a bug. I would think that the oracle to confirm this was how red he turned. Further showcasing that oracles do not have to be software based
  • What makes a specialist a specialist? Advanced understanding of methods and toools of the type of testing in which they specialize
  • So if you are doing a type os testing in which you are not a specialist, you can still add value to the project, perhaps just not as the technical lead
  • There is a distinction between specialist and expert
  • There are different degrees of specialization and of effectiveness
  • specialization could often be replaces with ‘level of skill’ with the same effect
  • There is not a minimum level of skill to do X, but there is a minimum level to this part of X; where X is a type of testing