SYNOPSIS
“Steve, about every five years,” Ross Collard once told me, “you'll hear about the NGT in software testing.” “The NGT?” I questioned. “Yes, NGT – the next great thing.” Ross was one of my first ever teachers of software testing and in those early days in 1995 I learned a remarkable amount from him about how to test and what it means to deliver quality software.
Toward the end of the 1990s the NGT was RAD (Rapid Application Development) and five years later, in 2005, the NGT for me was agile testing. This was to be the savior of testing projects throughout the Western world. Nothing could stop it or stand in its path. Nonbelievers were cast aside as the NGT drove a coach and horses (or tried to) through the established numbers and acronyms of my beloved software testing world (IEEE 829, DDP, ISO 9126, TickIT, ISO 9000, RBT, Test Strategy, MTP, IEEE 1012, IEEE 1044, Test Cases).
Books and papers were written, seminars delivered, and agile manifestos created for all to worship and wonder at. It was time to cast aside the restrictive clothing of software test documentation and formal methods and enjoy the freedom of exploratory testing in a context-driven world. The Emperor's new test plan was born!
My name is Steve K. Allott and I am a chartered information technology professional (CITP), who has worked in the IT industry for over twenty-five years, after graduating with a computer science degree.