Well, it's been two years that Chris McMahon and I have been writing
ST&Pedia. Through that time our column has survived through a layoff, a couple of job changes, and a
sale of magazine itself to the good people at RedWood Collaborative Media.
It's been a good run, and I'm reluctant to change it. But remember, the column started out defining the terms in the issue - the "theme" of the issue. For an issue theme of, say, the Microsoft stack, we would introduce .net and C# and VB.NET and microsoft's visual test tools, so the non-Microsoft Tester (or non-performance tester, or non-whitebox tester) has a gentle introduction. After a couple years, though, you've introduced every concept twice. To stay freah, our column had to change toward being a general advice column, an issues of the day column, or ... something else.
Talking it over with the folks at ST&P, we came up with the idea of "ask the tester" - getting questions from the community about your issues in software testing and answering them.
Yet the issues in testing are wide and deep. A gentle introduction for each theme, sure we can write well, but no one person (or even two) is going to be able to give real expert advice on the full range of test issues. And Chris didn't have a lot of energy or excitement for "Ask the Tester", taking it down to one person.
So -- whoever said I had to write all the answers?
Next issue, we'll be unveiling "ask the tester", with a guest expert, available for
your questions. Our first interview will be with
Jonathan Bach, Test Manager at Quardev, co-creator of Session Based Test Management, Multiple STAR Conference (and yes, STPCon) Keynote speaker, tutorialist, trained Journalist and author of "Above the Clouds."
But I need your help. You see, to have a Q&A column from the community, we need questions from the community.
If you're struggling with issues in test management (or test excellence, that other thing Bach does), please consider leaving a comment here with a question, your full name and city/state. I'll compile them, get them to Jon, and we'll get this road on the show.
I hope to hear from you soon?