What we can learn from history?

When I read books or articles related to software testing they are mostly writing about an approach how the testing process should be. Others are explaining how techniques should be used, how test processes should be improved and some how tools can be embedded/used. They are mostly approaching the profession of testing from their point of view, from the inside of testing. I can imagine this happens because testers have most influence on just their area.

What I always try to do is checking if there are other topics to combine in our profession. The purpose for this is not to deepen my knowledge, also extending my knowledge. During the last weeks I keep wondering if there is something missing and is there a reason for it.

This triggered me to see if I can find some dates and events from history until now and check if there is some relation between them.

In the topics below I will try to see whether there are patterns in history which can be linked to software testing. For this I search for dates related to sciences, computing, development methods, testing era and management.

History of our society
When I take a look at our history I found these figures at Wikipedia about some of our milestones which build our society:
History of mathematics starts at ca 1900 BC
Philosophy first noted at ca circa 585 BC
Sociology introduced the term "sociology" in 1780 AD
Psychology as an independent experimental field of study began in 1879 AD, though the use of psychological experimentation dates back to Alhazen's Book of Optics in 1021,



I think you can classify this timeline in how we human approach our environment as following:
Mathematics is a technical approach, trying to investigate how items are working and how we can improve those objects to improve our living.
Philosophy taught us that there must be value of using objects. Based on the value there must be a dependency between people as it didn't work always. The culture and social being of people has also an impact and contribution to usage of objects and its value. I want to capture this in the term Sociology. After a period the Psychology was introduced to understand how the way of thinking of human kind has its impact on using objects within a mindset of thinking by groups.

Ages of computing
You see a partially similar timeline also in inventions and usage of computers and developments. In the figure below I captured some events from Timelines of computing from Wikipedia *1: I think which are important and symbolize this process.



Perhaps I'm making a wrong assumption, when combining the periods of human skills in relation to the speed of invention in the computing area then I see a similarity. First we tend to approach computing the technical way. After a period it becomes a part of our way of thinking. Then technology becomes a part of our social being and currently we are thinking how technologies can support our way of thinking and how our way of thinking can be adapted in technologies.

Development methods
It seems that computing is quite old, the first humanoid robot was created in ca 250 BC *6.
The first programmable humanoid robot was Al-Jazari's programmable Automata (Humanoid Robot) in 1206. In those days we were not working with development methods like Waterfall, SCRUM, RUP or Agile.



It surprised me that development methods which empowers the business involvement exist already for some time and still we tending to use the more waterfall approaches and thinking.

Software testing area
When talking about software development nowadays you also think about testing that software. D. Gelperin and B. Hetzel *3 classified the phases of software testing as follows:
Until 1956 : was the debugging oriented period
From 1957-1978: the demonstration oriented period where debugging and testing was distinguished now
between 1979-1982: the destruction oriented period, where the goal was to find errors
1983-1987 : the evaluation oriented period
From 1988: prevention oriented period



Unfortunately this timeline might not represent the current status. I think the next cycle in testing could be called "Adaptation" and based on the dates from DSDM, SCRUM, Agile Manifesto I would say that this area started on ca 1995. I would make this assumption as within those methods business involvement started to grow.



If you compare this timeline with the development timeline you will see that most of the development methods are "invented" in the prevention area. Comparing this with the actual inventions made you will see that also most of the inventions done which are impacting our current test environment are also done in this period.

History of management
Visualizing the history of management you will notice that human interaction is already important since the 1930's. *8



If I'm correct you see here that in management human attention and involvement was already an topic since 1930's. In software development it started much later, I would say that from 1983: evaluation period, it became more important in software testing. This made me think if we are still working behind the facts and we should make the next step in software testing. The next step could be instead of only improving our test methods and best practices also learn how we can learn from the past, what we can learn from other processes.

In organizations there are still influences noticeable from the other management schools. As these influences will also have its effect on culture it therefore will have its effect on projects. If organizations are a mix from management schools and styles then software development is also. Therefore it will be hard to use only one testing approach. It will become important to adapt your approach to the business. This adaptation can be done focusing on value for business instead of functionality for the business.

In a previous posting I already made a link between Organizational schools and testing schools: 2008-02-24: Testing Schools and Organizational Schools *4. In this article I tried to visualize that we should not ignore that testing schools might exist and we have to evolve also. Accepting a testing school structure can help to identify your position and check if the thinking fits in the project.

I believe if value is involved we should not only measure the economic gains, it should also fit in the organizational culture.

Organizational culture
Charles Handy *2 classified 4 organizational cultures:
- Power Culture: This concentrates power among a few;
- Role Culture: People have clearly delegated authorities within a highly defined structure;
- Task Culture: Teams are formed to solve particular problems;
- Person Culture: All individuals believe themselves superior to the organization.

When defining the strategy for testing you have to consider the type of culture also. I can imagine that introducing an Agile approach in an organization with a "power culture" will have some struggle to get commitment, involvement and understanding from the business as the business is here not all users, it is just those few people with power.

System approach or contingency approach
One nice short example I found on Systems Approach *7. Here the difference is made that a systems approach deals with an organization as a black box. The organization is more a static environment. In this approach all kind of test methods might fit in well as the borders are well defined. The focus lies more on efficiency and effectiveness.

The contingency approach sees an organization more as a dynamic environment, here it depends. The dependencies are undefined and still to be explored. I like to see organizations and therefore projects more as a organic being. This believe empowers me to think that there is more we have to focus on then only improving our current way of working, we also have to explore our boundaries and keep asking what can we learn from others and how can we adapt.

The next steps
It would be wrong to start ignoring developments which can be done from out a testing perspective. What I tried to visualize in this blog is to open eyes for other approaches. Perhaps some understanding can be found in our history. Sometimes ideas seem to be wrong as they don't match the frame of reference of the tester. If adaptation to situation is expected and answers are sought in a technical area also try to consider the impact on business, management and cultural areas as well.

I believe we have still some fields to explore in software testing and not always a new test method, development method or technical solutions are the only answer. They might solve problems temporarily and might be suitable for the current project. We might still learn from our past and from our guru's.

*1. Timeline of computing 2400 BC–1949: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computing_2400_BC%E2%80%931949 Timeline of computing 1950–1979: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computing_1950%E2%80%931979
Timeline of computing 1980–1989: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computing_1980%E2%80%931989
Timeline of computing 1990–present: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computing_1990%E2%80%93present
*2. Handy, C.B. (1985) Understanding Organizations, 3rd Edn, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books
*3. D. Gelperin, B. Hetzel: The Growth of Software Testing. CACM, Vol. 31, No. 6, 1988, ISSN 0001-0782.
*4. Rosink. J (2008): Testing Schools and Organizational Schools: http://testconsultant.blogspot.com/2008/02/testing-schools-and-organizational.html
*5. Software development methodology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Development_Methodology
*6 Humanoid robot: Timeline of developments : The Lie Zi described an automaton. ca 250 BC
*7 Systems Approach: http://www.mgmtguru.com/mgt301/301_Lecture1Page14.htm
*8. History of Management theory: http://web.njit.edu/~turoff/coursenotes/IS679/679newset2/sld040.htm