Indian Testing Renaissance

I wanted to share some good news with you – my blog readers (both silent readers and commenters) who are taking time to read my blog and even go a step ahead by commenting about my work.

Firstly, James Bach talked about me and my work in one of his recent posts' titled New Voice: Parimala Shankaraiah. My blog now sits on James Bach’s blogroll. I am thrilled! Appreciation from James is very special because I have admired James Bach , Cem Kaner, Michael Bolton , Pradeep Soundararajan and many more great testers as my Role Models. With this appreciation comes an added responsibility on my shoulders to do more for the betterment of the tester in me and for the testing community as well. Thank You James!

Secondly, I won a Honorable Mention prize in the recently announced uTest Q3 2009 Bug Battle results.

These recognitions are special to me for 2 reasons:

1. Appreciation at the global level(not just for me, but for Indian Testers in general) – a few more people might get to know not just about Parimala Shankaraiah and her work, but Indian testers in general and the challenges they are facing. I am a little thirsty for more people to know us right now because I want more and more people to check out and critique our work in addition to all the self criticism that we do for our own good. I have seen this helping a lot. Just recently, It took me about 2 hours to reply to one of my blog reader's comments. In those 2 hours, I learned so many new things and got so many questions. It was a great lesson indeed.

2. The email sent by the uTest team sharing the results of Q3 2009 bug battle read ‘Congratulations! You are a winner in our Honorable Mention category for the latest Bug Battle! Although this was not a planned prize category, we want to recognize the quality of your bug reports and feedback'. Wow! I am not sure if they sent the same email to everyone who got a similar prize! No offense Meant!

My heart bleeds to see and hear bad things about Indian testers(including me) who are loathed for doing shabby testing, for blindly following test scripts for the fear of getting fired, not innovating on how better testing can be and many more. I do understand and respect the downside to bringing any changes in Indian Testing Organizations. Right now, while I am typing this, If I have to talk to my management about Exploratory testing and ask them to let go of those dirty and obsolete test scripts, I know how strongly I am going to be opposed and I know how difficult it is going to be doing this by myself all alone. One way to overcome this is to build more and more context driven testing groups in whatever small way each of us can and spreading the network (Never mind if it is slow and quiet as long as there is perserverance and no giving up!). This network will one day prove how better testing can get. I get goosebumps while I visualize that day. Dear Testers, Spread the word in your own small way!

Happy Networking,
Parimala Shankaraiah,
http://curioustester.blogspot.com