Over 135 people attended a presentation given by James Bach, one of the world's leading authorities on software testing and quality assurance (QA), at the BMW Pavilion, in Cape Town. Bach was speaking as a guest of S1 and DVT, two of Cape Town's leading software development houses.
“S1 has a sizable development shop in Cape Town, building mission-critical payments software products for an international customer base that includes banks, retailers, and processors in over 75 countries,” says Craig Saks, Divisional SVP Shared Services, of Nasdaq-listed S1.
“S1 is committed to building great, high-quality software and to giving our people every opportunity to develop their skills as software engineers. As part of that commitment, we like to bring top practitioners to engage with our staff in a debate on best practice and to give them advanced training whenever possible. Bringing James Bach to Cape Town is part of this, given his reputation in this field, and we used the opportunity to put on this event so that Cape Town's wider software community could also benefit from his visit. This was done in collaboration with DVT,” adds Saks.
Prior to the event, Bach trained 25 of S1's QA staff.
James Bach comments: “What I talk about is skills. What I do is help people develop testing skills, and those skills are essentially the same skills as scientists have. Scientists question nature; testers question products. Otherwise, the fundamental thought processes are identical. To develop such skills is a struggle. There is no formula for designing excellent experiments, so testing is both a creative and a critical thinking process.” Bach adds: “I set myself apart by challenging the prevailing practices in the testing industry.”
Bach has also written a book about self-education, and takes a "liberationist" approach to teaching. He says: “My goal is to facilitate the self-development of each tester.”
“DVT is renowned for the percentage of successful projects it delivers,” says CEO Chris Wilkins. “This made it a pleasure and a privilege to be aligned with Bach and S1, which are equally committed to the notion of software quality and proper testing.”
Share