Friday, October 24, 2014

De-focus and Re-focus

We have probably all been there one time or another where the meeting or discussion takes a turn away from the agenda and end up somewhere else and everyone loses interest.
This is what seems to have happened with the current ISO29119 debate. It started with a petition to stop the standard but is currently a yelling battle between a few persons about the personal agendas and personal reason for either creating or stopping the standard. What happened to the discussions on the facts in the standard and how this will affect the testing trade?

Its time to get back on track and focus on the fact at hand:
  • Is there any validity for the standard?
  • Can the standard be adopted to a non-waterfall project?
  • Is it really that document heavy?
  • ….and so on.
Bring these types of questions to light and help people understand what the standard will do or not do, and take the discussion for there. hopefully this will be a discussion that the “quiet masses” will have an interest in.
Sure there is no denying that there is a monetary aspect to this as well, but show me something today that do not have this. And there is a personal aspect as well, but the main focus should still be on the standard itself.
Don't let this discussion end up being another example of Godwin’s law  


2 comments:

  1. Björn, I agree with the sentiment in your post. I also believe its time to re-focus the debate on the real issues at hand. I.e. understanding the standard and its effect (if any) on the testing community.

    In fact I think that may have been the better first step rather than trying to market an all out war (in the form of a stop petition) on the standard. This is what, IMO, caused a lot of folks to stay with the "quiet masses" and others, like me, to doubt the motives of the stop campaign folks.

    In order for this to work though I think will require a level of negotiation that I think the stop campaign folks are not willing to try. Their goal is very clear when it comes to the ISO folks > cease and desist.

    Thoughts?

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    Replies
    1. I believe the Stop campaign was a good way to start. It was placed there as an eye-opener, it will get attention, but now it has moved on to the personal agenda and not on the standard itself. And this is where I start to lose interest.
      I don't think the ISO can be stopped and I don't believe it will be changed either, therefore the information about it and how it would affect us testers is the main thing. Having read the standard I can't see how this will help in any way, but that needs to be communicated in a clear and unbiased way, so that the correct decisions can be made to or not to implement this.
      Right now its the “unstoppable force vs the immovable object” and neither side will back down.

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