Call for Speakers - Closing October 13th

Track Talk

The Story of a Tester: Shaped by Testing; Shaping Testing

Dorothy Graham

11:00-11:45 CEST Wednesday 8th June

How long have you been in software testing? What was testing like when you first encountered it? How did the discipline of software testing get to where it is today, and where is it headed in the future? In this presentation, Dorothy Graham takes a look back at software testing from a personal perspective as well as a general view. She shares what she has learned from her experiences over the years, with lessons for today.

Dot started her working life by being put into a test group, where she wrote test execution and comparison programs (they weren’t called “tools” back then). In her 50 years as a developer and then a testing specialist, she has seen many changes and has been in at the start of many initiatives to help shape the discipline of software testing (including being Programme Chair for the first EuroSTAR conference in 1993). Dot will share her experiences and insights into how testing became as it is today. Each decade has had its own “hot topics” in computing in general and in testing. These concerns had a significant impact on the testing at that time, and sometimes still influence testing today. Some things have changed dramatically over the past 50 years, but interestingly, some things have not changed. What might the future shape of software testing be like?

Software testing has shaped my life, and I believe that my life may have had some small impact on shaping testing.