This document outlines the agenda and objectives for a workshop on how the past can inform the future of testing. The workshop will have participants discuss testing trends from previous decades, what has changed and remained the same, and lessons learned. Groups will generate manifesto statements summarizing advice from the past that can help guide the future of testing. The agenda includes introduction, breakout group discussions on past testing experiences and predictions, and concluding with generated manifesto statements.

1. Can the Past Tell us the Future?
Prepared and presented by
Dorothy Graham
Grove Consultants
40 Ryles Park Road
Macclesfield SK11 8AH, UK
Tel +44 1625 616279
email: dorothy@grove.co.uk
www.grove.co.uk
© Grove Consultants, 2008
EuroSTAR 08

2. Workshop objectives
• Workshop delegates will work in groups to
discuss
– their experiences and memory of testing through
the decades
– what has changed and what has not changed
– what predictions were made – correct or not?
• what pendulum swings have we seen?
– what can the past tell us for the future?
– produce manifesto statements incorporating
lessons from the past for the future

3. Agenda
• Introduction
• Step 1 – in groups (25 mins)
– most significant things about testing in previous decades
• 70s and before, 80s, 90s, this decade
– what has and hasn’t changed?
• Round up and report back
• Step 2 – in groups (25 mins)
– what can we learn from the past that will help in the future
– produce manifesto statement summarising advice from the past
• Round up and report back
• Conclusions

4. Introduction
• Testing literature
• Your first testing job
• What were the “hot topics” in each decade?
– 70s and before: optimising hardware, structured
programming
– 80s: PCs, client/server, object oriented
– 90s: tools, internet
– 00s: agile, certification

5. Step 1
• Discuss in your groups:
– what were the most significant trends / hot topics in your
experience?
– how did good testing relate to these?
– what has changed?
• technology we are testing, tools, specialisms, certification, testing an
accepted career
– what hasn’t changed?
• constant change of technology, lack of knowledge of testing by
managers & graduates, silver bullet syndrome (especially for tools),
lots of people new to testing
• Report back from groups

6. Step 2
• Discuss in your groups:
– what lessons from the past apply to the future?
– what predictions can we make for the future of testing?
– produce a manifesto statement summarising a lesson from
the past to apply to the future of testing
• Report back from groups

7. Conclusion and next steps
• Summary of discussion and manifesto statements generated
in this workshop
• Final short workshop (tomorrow morning) to merge our
statements with those from Isabel’s workshop
• Manifesto statements to be presented in Bob’s closing
summary and published on the web