There's been some great discussion on software-testing yahoo group lately.
Here's the latest post, by Jeff Fry, quoting myself and Ben Simo:
Ben Simo wrote:
I view the all-too-common resume claims like "full understanding of the SDLC" to be a sign of a lack of experience.
Matt Heusser Replies:
(huge, error-prone heuristic warning here) I find that people who talk in terms like "The Software Development Life Cycle" (SDLC) are talking in models and abstractions they use to make things seem easier.
...
When someone is all "SDLC this, SDLC that", my warning flags go up.
I much prefer people who talk about what actually happens on real software projects with concrete examples.
Much like Ben says, but I'd go futher: There is a difference between the abstraction and reality. A lot of my work is exposing that difference and helping people deal with it. If someone doesn't seem to grok that difference ...
And Jeff Finally Closes:
This reminds me of one of my favorite Dietrich Dorner quotes (Logic of
Failure, p 55):
By labeling a bundle of problems with a single conceptual label, we make dealing with that problem easier - provided we're not interested in solving it. Phrases like "urgently needed measures for combating unemployment" roll easily off the tongue if we don't have to /do /anything about unemployment. A simple label can't make the complex nature of a problem go away, but it can so obscure complexity that we lose sight of it. And that, of course, we find a great relief.