A salesman from G2 Test Labs just called me. He said he was from India. He wanted to know if my testing company needed to partner with an offshore lab like his. I’m writing this now, while the memory of the conversation is fresh.
After he made his brief brief opening monologue I asked him “I’m a testing company. Why are you calling me?”
“Maybe you want to have an offshore arm.” He said.
“Well that depends on the skills of your testers. How do you train your testers?” I asked.
“Oh… we don’t do any training. But our testers are certified by other organizations.”
“Which organizations certify your testers?”
“Uh… I will have to check on that and get back to you.”
“Yes, that’s important information. Are ALL your testers certified?”
“Probably… most of them are.”
“Sounds like you don’t know.”
“…”
“Hey, this will make a funny post. Check my blog in about an hour. Goodbye!”
Now, in fairness, the salesman sounded like he was about 22 years old. Perhaps they sent him to call me as part of some hazing ritual.
[Oh, I just remembered, in his opening statement, he mentioned that his company was ISO-9001 certified, too. Wow. That takes me back to 1992, when I was fighting ISO-9001 certification. That certification program turned out not to amount to anything, either.]
“Oh… we don’t do any training. But our testers are certified by other organizations.”
“Yes, that’s important information. Are ALL your testers certified?”
“Probably… most of them are.”
I’m putting money they are certified by members of the American Psychiatric Association.
And we’re trying to fight THAT for establishing testing as a profession?! Then all hail ISTQB and even if it is only for telling those blokes when to say ‘aye’.
Doesn’t ISTQB stand for Indian Standards….
Ok. now that was bad of me…..sorry. Next time I’ll try and pick up my jokes a notch. 😉
[James’ Reply: Perhaps Pradeep or Shrini will want to comment on that.]
But James,
According to their site, “We ensure that there are no Show stopper Bugs after 3 cycles of testing.”
How can you go wrong?
[James’ Reply: Their words are so powerful! How can I not give in to the sweet nectar of hope!? I’m sure they aren’t just saying that, either. I’m sure they really mean it.]
James : What would you consider to be a Certified Tester?
[James’ Reply: I don’t recognize any formal certification programs, so in that sense, there’s no such thing as a certified tester (to me).
However, there are people who claim to have been certified as a tester by some or other certifying institution as having some kind of knowledge of testing. In this case, G2 was telling me that somebody had certified at least some of their testers. As I’ve said in other posts. I think it’s all a big scam. G2 has both fallen for the scam and are promoting the scam.]
Every time I’m in Bangalore we pass a company that has a big sign outside it that reads “Zero bug software Guaranteed”! I’ll get their number if anyone wants it!
[James’ Reply: Of course it has zero bugs. There is no quality standard!]
How sad.
– They don’t train their testers.
– Some of their testers are certified, but even the people most interested in selling their services don’t know the certifying organizations.
– On their Testing Services page, they claim expertise in “Mercury Tes Director”
I feel bad for their employees.
Their site says:
“Software testing services that enable our customers to Deliver Error Free Software Products/Solutions to their users.”
But then:
“We adopt a well defined and structured Process to ensure that the number of bugs that slip through the Tests are minimal.”
Is it no errors or minimal errors? Can I trust them if their web site isn’t even error free?
James,
Too funny, guess the guy didn’t realize he was pulling on the Tiger’s tail. SCHEWACK!
And nowadays I agree with you about the Certification mills and sham. As I’ve said before like in Scuba Diving “Certified doesn’t always mean Qualified!” (I am a retired Scuba Instructor).
And this is coming from a person who did the CSTE twice. Once when it first started and was petitioned based, which actually meant something at that time. And a second time years later with the exam, which only proved I could regurgitate the CBOK the way QAI wanted it.
I’ve since let my CSTE lapse due to disgust with the ‘mill’ effect they now promote, and because in order to keep it I had to keep forking money over to QAI for their “classes” in order to get enough CEU.
This is getting as bad as the paper MCSE’s, with all the alphabet soup after their names, who can’t even setup a new user account under Windows.
And this is what all the C-level people love to hear “certified and cheap, let’s do it!” I feel for the customers and end-users of those companies that use these guys.
Who needs skills when you have processes, contracts, and empty promises? 😉
RE: “We ensure that there are no Show stopper Bugs after 3 cycles of testing.”
Of course there will be no show stopper bugs after 3 test cycles. This isn’t so hard when “show stopper” refers to a status in a database and not the real world. There are a number of ways to ensure there are no show stopper bugs. Some of the common ones I’ve encountered are:
1) Don’t do effective testing. Don’t find the bugs that should stop the show. Of course, when our clients’ customers aren’t happy, we’ll just tell our testing services clients that they need to pay for more testing.
2) Don’t report what we find. As a testing services provider, we don’t want to disrupt the reports showing our customers how wonderful our testing is by reporting bugs. And, of course, there’s no sense in reporting what can’t be fixed in a schedule-driven project. I’ve learned that you can even retroactively not report what you find. Dozens of bugs I once reported disappeared while I was out of the office. I bet I can make others’ bugs disappear too.
3) Reclassify bugs as something other than a show-stopper. It is easy to go into the bug database and change the severity and priority values of any bug. We could even write a script to automate changing of severity and priority values.
😉
I fear that those using certification to create an illusion of competence are also those likely to create an illusion of testing.
I learned to save a soldiers life in battle by treating wounded soldiers who were practicing at the Marine Corps gun range. No book can give you that kind of knowledge. No book can fill you with that kind of experience.
When I got out of the navy, I still yearned for the adrenaline rush of working with a team to save someone’s life. So I got a job working in the operating room, where lots of that exists. They said to me, “Are You certified? Cause you can’t work here unless you are Nationally certified.”
“ I told them no problem, I’ll be right back.” Well, I paid 300 bucks and sat for a 3 hour test and bolla bing bolla boom, I was certified. Did that enhance my ability to quickly react when I saw a patient bleeding out and reach for a C clamp? ( a clamp used to stop BIG bleeding vessels) or better yet , Did it help the guy who was watching a huge bleeder squirt blood into the wall of the Operating Room, be able to know to grab a C clamp? NO, it did not.
It was the guy on my team who told me , “hey, man, you might want to keep your hand REAL close to that C clamp. Cause this fucker looks like its about to blow!”
I think it is up to us as individuals and as a TEAM to keep each other informed on the industry changes.
Making us better critical thinkers.
Actually, in my opinion ISO audit or CMMI audit should happen over a period of time watching how individuals work and their practices. However, what I have witnessed so far is – lets cook documents that the auditor needs to see to give us the ISO/CMM certification.
The auditor comes in on the D-Day and is welcomed like the investor of the organization and led to a conference room where a group of managers who have rehearsed their script for a play are seated.
The auditor quizzes the manager and sometimes the lead to know what processes are being followed and there are rehearsed answers and freshly cooked documents available as an evidence to the script. After a good act, ISO/CMM is awarded. I think Golden Globe would be a better award for this category.
When anyone questions about the integrity during rehearsals, they are dropped out from the list of to-be-actors-in-the-conference-room. That’s why there are at least 3 rounds of rehearsals. Works good – both for practice of scripts and to identify who cant lie.
I think it is those few honest people who end up adding value to clients and are not exposed to the client.
Hi James,
Just picked up the dig about ISO9001 certification. Have you ever tried to get your company ISO9001 certified? I have, and I find a lot useful in it — they way it encourages me to set objectives and periodically reflect on how I’m going about achieving them; the way it encourages me to request and act on client feedback. I could do all this without certification, of course, but I find the ISO9001 framework to be useful nonetheless: it helps me think of stuff I might have overlooked myself, to tap into the expertise of other people (e.g. my auditors, who are pretty knowledgeable people), to give myself a kick in the pants when I need it, etc.
There are bogus auditors out there. There are organisations which treat certification (whether of testers, ISO9001, or anything else) as a game to try to beat the auditors with minimal effort. Charlatans will always exist and anyone buying any sort of service needs to protect themselves from them. But there’s also some baby in there with the bathwater.
Cheers
Graham
[James’ Reply: Graham, you know I respect you. But I think you– subtle thinker that you are– may be ignoring the subtext of the ISO 9001. I have a similar concern about Judah Mogilensky’s use of the CMM (a man we both have great affection for). A huge assumption built into ISO 9001 is that skills, insight, motivation, leadership, intention, experience, are not particularly important factors in producing reliably high quality outcomes. These icky human factors are pushed down into the shadows with a wink. (People like Judah secretly raise them up again, of course.) Instead the blockheads who created ISO 9001 considered procedures and policies– determined, as a rule, by bored amateur methodologists who lost a bet or drew the short straw– to be the great lever of quality. This assumption leads to mass dysfunctional behavior. And of course, it’s marketed as if it’s a guarantee of high quality regardless of the faint protestations to the contrary on the part of the people who created it!
Meanwhile, I have taught at several ISO-9001 shops, and strangely enough, I have not yet heard a peep about it from them. It’s as if it made no impact on their day to day experience or decisions. I’ve never heard anyone eagerly say “We’d like to try that method, James, but first we must update our ISO-9001 mandated process documentation!”
If you’re saying that ISO-9001 has heuristic value, well, that may be. But it seems to me that there is a great deal more heuristic value in a homegrown, earnestly held culture of excellence.
Dumbo’s Magic Feather had heuristic value, too. But it was still a lie, and an unnecessary one at that.]
I know I’m pretty late with this comment, but I just had to say: this is FUNNY. Talk about a red flag: the guy representing the co. can’t tell you what qualifications or skills their testers have…