Luckily, my foot seems to be feeling and looking better. I think they’ll have to give my toe a trim to take away calluses and the like, but there doesn’t seem to be any weeping and there is no roughness or pain. But, I’m still on ampicillin and methotrexate, the second of which precludes me from drinking alcohol until two or three days after I finish taking it. The other main side effect is intestinal, and I won’t describe it but it’s quite unpleasant though manageable. I feel bad since I drink a bottle of bioactive yogurt drink every morning and I am sending all those little beneficial bacilli to a quick death in the depths of my gut. Pity.
The next step there is to get special shoes made, although I suspect I’ll be wearing a lot of Crocs for a while, as they can take my entire foot without squeezing it and causing the wound that got infected. The NHS does shoes for free, but there is quite a waiting period.
The main story this week is the ISEB Intermediate Course in Software Testing. When I turned up at the training site, I was startled to discover that our trainer was someone with whom I worked at ImagoQA from 1998 until 2001. She now has her own training company, and does various ISEB courses, as well as being on the boards that write and review the syllabi and tests. Unfortunately, she is Anglo-Indian and has a medium-thick accent, which was sometimes hard to follow, especially when she spoke quickly. I also feel that taking such a course from someone you know and have worked with is, in some cases, inadvisable. I might have asked to postpone if I had known she was conducting it.
The ISEB is part of the British Computer Society, and is responsible for training across a broad range of disciplines. Originally, there was the Foundation course (which I took in 2003 and passed with flying colours), and then they added a Practitioner’s course, which was pitched on a higher level, required almost two weeks of training, cost a mint, and was examined by essay rather than multiple choice. Few people were taking it, and even fewer passed it. In addition, it was expensive to mark (actual human beings had to do it, and humans cost money). So, ISEB had to do something.
First, they merged the Foundation course with the ISTQB (a German outfit that does the same kind of things as ISEB) about two years ago. This was quite successful. However, when they came to discuss merging the Practitioner levels, there was a split, and it seems that ISEB and ISTQB are going their separate ways on the higher levels.
ISEB has split the Practitioner level into three different certificates. There is an Intermediate Certificate, examined by multiple choice exam. Then there are two Practitioner’s courses, one for Test Management, and another for Test Analysis. These are both examined by essay, and while they are not mutually exclusive, you do not have to take both. The Foundation Certificate is a prerequisite for the Intermediate course, and the Intermediate Certificate is a prerequisite for either Practitioner course.
The Intermediate course, which I took, is aimed to measure how well you apply the information you have learned through the Foundation course and your own experience to scenarios in software testing. There are several difficulties with all this.
First, trying to measure judgment calls through a multiple-choice exam is very difficult indeed. Getting a good score on the exam comes from taking the prescriptive rules fed you on the course and using them in different scenarios. It is hard to write a multiple-choice exam that will measure this effectively without lots of tricky language. In addition, language must be precise and clear, in order that the examinees do not think that ISEB is tricking them or using language to hide the true answer. I expect that this course will not be popular in countries where English is not the first language. It’s even very difficult in countries where it is the first language.
Second, what are we measuring here? We are meant to measure the amount of testing knowledge you have acquired over your career as well as any additions that the course has given you. I think that the test really measures how well you read and absorb written material and apply it to the answers given on the paper. My 20 years’ experience in software testing are as nothing, really. The course presupposes that we all work in very by-the-book software houses or consultancies, where everyone uses either the V-Model or iterative models of software development, and apply them consistently and prescriptively to the projects on which we are working.
Rubbish! No one does that. I won’t go into the war stories that I have by the dozens (take a Foundation course from me to hear them), but consider your own professions. In most cases (medicine I hope excepted) people often apply rules only in the breach, they use workarounds and shortcuts that experience has taught them work well, and they ask forgiveness, not permission. The Intermediate course does not allow for this and those who have experience struggle to forget it for that hour of examination.
I was constantly “arguing”, or perhaps “discussing” situations with the course presenter, and this was probably distracting to the other people on the course, so in the end I tried to do as little of that during the course as I could.
The others on the course were mostly mid-level test managers at packaged software companies, and I was the oldest person in the room (now becoming a very familiar theme in my life).
I passed the mock exam with 17 out of 25 questions right (15 is passing). I hope that I passed the real exam, but have no sense of whether I did well or not.
If I do pass, I will be able to conduct the Intermediate course, and this will give me another kick to leave TCS and go out into the wide world and present courses full-time.
Which brings me to TCS. My personnel review was pretty poor, mainly because there has been little or nothing for me to do during my time there. I got a call on Thursday, before the exam, and my new boss (testing has been moved to another department) wants to see me to discuss this. I’m going to discuss the piss-poor management, the lack of suitable positions for me to take, and the silly way in which personnel reviews are conducted. This should be enough for a start. I hope that I will know the result of the exam by Wednesday so that I will have something else to fall back on. I’m not concerned about losing my job; in fact, I would be happier if I got some work as a trainer rather than working for TCS where their business plan for software testing was and probably is crap.
HWMBO went to have another tooth pulled today. He left at 3:55 and was back by 4:15. It took the dentist a minute to extract it, and he’s much relieved now. Soft food for a while, and salt-water washes.
The weekend is likely to be sedate, I hope.
