I’ve got certification. That makes me a Tester! :|

Since the mid 90’s I have managed to survive and thrive as a Software Tester despite having no piece of paper with the word “certification” written on it to give my prospective Employers comfort in the knowledge that I must in fact be a Tester. That was until the seventeenth of my eighteen years as a Tester when it suddenly dawned on me that most hiring agencies were expecting certification as a mandatory requirement.

My awakening to this fact now meant I could no longer take the moral high ground. In other words, I could no longer pick the jobs I wanted based solely on my own beliefs and principles, that I could no longer present myself as a suitable candidate on the basis of my work experience and skills alone, and that I could no longer stand out from the crowd. I needed to conform.

Sure, part of my refusal to gain certification was driven by the fact that my previous Employers had no money for training and no time to spare. However underlying this was my lack of engagement to pursue this path. In my view back then I couldn’t get past my self-centred opinion that I would not become a better Tester with the certification.

Some of this was certainly driven by fear – Fear that I might fail the exam, fear that I might not be as good as I think I am, fear that the profession has evolved in a direction that I was not aware of, and fear that I might actually learn something. Imagine that!

I don’t hold these views today and perhaps this is why I am ultimately writing this blog. I have realised that experience and certification do not need to be competing characteristics and that they actually complement each other in helping to validate the knowledge I have and continue to gain. It is also wrong of me to assume that I am no longer taking a moral high ground because my values in my profession have not changed. I still root for high quality, best practice, and process improvements. I still collaborate with my peers about how to best approach testing, how to resolve issues, how to manage risk, and how to meet deadlines to the satisfaction of my stakeholders. Perhaps the final nail in the coffin towards this train of thought was when I considered other professions. Would I for example hire a plumber to do some major repairs in my bathroom if he/she was not formally certified by the relevant industry authorities? Would I allow a stranger to teach my child piano lessons on a gut feel alone rather than to sight a Police Clearance? No I would not.

Despite the above there were however, other motivations which contributed to this view, many of which still exist. For example, I struggle having to accept wording interpretations like the difference between a Test Approach and a Test Strategy or between a Test Case and a Test Script. I struggle to accept that many folk in the industry really do believe that certification is all that is required for a Senior Manager to suddenly own the portfolio of QA/Test, or for a random job applicant to be suitably employed as a Tester despite no prior employment history. I dislike the fact that governing bodies of Testing Certification have little (or no) influence over IT, SDLC, Project Management, or the Business Stakeholders for whose requirements we are delivering. There is no better way of witnessing this than by attending a yearly Testing Index Seminar which demonstrates how the dataset for gathering QA/Testing metrics has very little input by other professions. In other words it is the very QA/Testing professionals attending these Seminars who are rating their own performance and taking an active interest in fostering better awareness for the challenges faced in QA/Test. In a perfect world this would not be the case. Rather, it would be those with whom we collaborate in delivering requirements who conduct the appraising and who provide feedback about how we are really doing. This also reflects in our resultant processes in that we in QA/Test ultimately determine how we should operate (for example in what format we accept requirements, the change control processes we adhere to for managing deviations to requirements documentation, management of defects, and so on). This is also why I believe conflict occurs during Project delivery because all we’ve done is missed the problem until a point in time when it becomes exposed (ie when doing the actual analysis, coding, testing, and QA).

Another example as to why I have been previously motivated against certification is due to the personalities I have come across over the years. Unlike most other disciplines in IT, Testers come from very diverse walks of lives. Some of us are degree qualified, scientifically driven Engineers. Some of us are technical coding Computer Systems Analysts. Some of us worked in Support or Help Desk for a year on a specific Product and jumped across when the offer was made to test an upgrade. Some of us come from the non-technical, Business side. Some of us went from school or some other educational institution straight to a Junior Tester. Some of us got certification before knowing what Testing was.

I can also recall how in the mid 90’s when I was employed as a Test Engineer in the telecommunications industry that it was considered very privileged to have Cisco Certification. Taking the path of becoming a certified expert in IP Routing and Data Multiplexing (amongst other functions) was very tempting to me, and it was a natural path to take given I was testing these very functions in complex embedded systems. I am relieved that I did not pursue this direction. Besides the fact that our forever changing technical world is high layer, software driven with less emphasis towards data and networking layers of the past, it is also quite evident that certification in Cisco is no longer held in the prestige that it once was. I realised this when at the turn of the century it was quite common for Tertiary Educators to offer certified Cisco and Networking certification to undergraduates and without the need for prior experience in the industry. This awareness certainly drove my opinions about Testing Certification.

In my blogs I am going to try and offer a balanced discussion and hopefully I have done this in presenting opinions both for and against certification. However the fact is, I really do sit on the fence with this topic and hence it is easy for me to debate with my own contradicting opinions. Sure, I have more relaxed views from my prior leftist attitude of “no certification at all cost”, but perhaps not considering credit for my eminent certification should be given to my current employer (and Manager) for their endorsement rather than for my enthusiasm or lack of. Does that make me a hypocrite or an opportunist taking whatever training I can get my hands on? Perhaps so ;) .....Twofishtoday