Context Driven thinking in Testing ...

I have been discussion/arguing with BJ Rollison on the issues of "Schools of testing" here ...

http://blogs.msdn.com/imtesty/archive/2006/10/20/end-segregation.aspx

BJ is suggesting to end the seggration of four schools of testing - which I strongly disagree.

James Bach blogged on this here http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/74

and look at this simple explaination (by James again ) of equating adapting to a context to "parenting" here ...

http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/60#comments

"There’s only one context that matters– the one that you are in at the moment. If that changes, then you adjust accordingly. It’s like parenting. You don’t have to figure out how to parent every child, just the ones that belong to you. The context-specific attitude says adapt to your children and then stop adapting. The context-driven attitude, taken to its logical conclusion, is like a child psychologist’s approach. Child psychologists need to know how to adapt to any given child (normal and strange) who walks in the door.


For the same reason, if you figure out how to report coverage on your project in a way that works for you, you can’t assume that the same method will work for me, nor do you need to worry about whether it would work for me. You can’t tell me “James, I have discovered the right way and you should do it my way, too.” What you say, intead, is “James, would you like me to describe some experiences I’ve had with coverage reporting? I feel good about how I do it, over here in my project.
"

Expect more on this in coming days

Shrini