--- In testdrivendevelopment@yahoogroups.com, "Ben Hall"
<ben2004uk@...> wrote:
>
>
> From the developers point of view, how do you find working with
> testers? Are they actively involved in any communities \ alt.net?
>
>

Testers mostly have their own communities of practice. For example -
Software Quality Engineering (www.sqe.com), Stickyminds.com, Software
Test and Performance mangazine (stpmag.com), The Software
Test&Performance Conference (stpcon.com), the Quality Assurance
Institute ( http://www.qaiworldwide.org/ ) - to name a few.

On Yahoo Groups, the best place to find a mix of dev and test is
probably the Agile-Testing List.

I was talking to an Addison-Wesley editor last week about the
different worldviews between the two -- including the shared
terminology that means different things.

Basically, if a tester joined this list, he'd get peeved that you guys
don't know what "unit test" means, or that you are using "integration
test" the wrong way -- stuff that really doesn't matter. But by
having overlapping terminology, we create barriers to real
communication. Another barrier is the Dev/Testers obsession with
automation, when many testers view the process as an exploratory and
learning one, which may use automation to help, but defies
_comprehensive_ automation.

A few of the bigger names are Cem Kaner, James Bach, Elisabeth
Hendrickson. Have you heard of the Association for Software Testing?
(www.associationforSoftwareTesting.org) ? It's pretty big. They have
an annual conference.

Oh, and my blog is one of the more popular blogs on (real) software
testers in the world - xndev.blogspot.com My blogroll lists a
half-dozen world class testers on it.

My point: The testers are out there. They are just in different swim
lanes.

Regards,

--Matt Heusser
xndev.blogspot.com