It had been something I'd been talking with Bernice Ruhland about. How can you help someone in their first steps as a software tester?
One thing I knew - I had a lot of very authoritative books about testing, which usually came out on the epic side. They talked about requirements and waterfall methods. About verification and validation models. About terminology.
But what they didn't really cover to my satisfaction was "how do you test" / "where do you get ideas to test"? When I did James Bach's Rapid Software Testing course in 2012, I actually felt a bit annoyed when he covered oracles and heuristics. This was a scalable model which could be applied to so much - so why wasn't this being taught as day one of test school instead of multiple choice questions about the difference between a bug and a defect?
I became more passionate about the need for a short intro which focused on "real testing" as done day-to-day when I heard about "testing bootcamps" which were being offered around the world to graduates. For a few thousand dollars, they promised to train you (including ISTQB certification), and you would be guaranteed a career.
I have a son who is facing going to University next year, so I know it doesn't come cheap. And the idea of more expense after a degree to just get anyone to take you seriously quite horrifies me. [I'm that odd thing, someone from a generation of free higher education who believes this generation deserves it too]
Hence I wanted to put together a book which covers some of the core basics of testing, especially some worked examples of the application of oracles and heuristics. Enough to get people's toes into the water to see if they like the profession. This book had to be free. It had to be short, easy to work through and easy to read - it was never aiming for authoritative, but it would give advice for next steps at the end.
All told I spent 6 years at University - I never studied a single computers module. But I understood at the end that part of my education is that I'd learned to apply myself and discipline myself to learn anything. When I was unemployed after my failed PhD, I read a lot about programming, enough to get interviews and enough to write programs in interviews so people could tell I knew what I was doing. I got my first job at Thomson Marconi Sonar, and hit the ground running. What amazes me though is that I learned all this about programming in C++ - but didn't own a computer at the time.
My son Cameron recently met James Bach, and James talked to him about Cameron's aspirations. James told him about his first day as a test manager at Apple (after some success working as a programmer), and how on that day everything clicked for him. He found something he truly enjoyed and that motivated him. "If you follow your passion you will find your discipline", was James's excellent advice.
This is my introduction book to testing. If it intrigues you, I encourage you too to follow your passion ...
https://leanpub.com/howtotest
