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Principal Consultant, Gerrard Consulting
Principal Consultant, Gerrard Consulting
Paul Gerrard is a consultant, teacher, author, webmaster, programmer, tester, conference speaker, rowing coach and publisher. He has conducted consulting assignments in all aspects of software testing and quality assurance, specialising in test assurance. He has presented keynote talks and tutorials at testing conferences across Europe, the USA, Australia, South Africa and occasionally won awards for them. Educated at the universities of Oxford and Imperial College London, he is a Principal of Gerrard Consulting Limited and the host of the Technology Leadership Forum. He was the Programme Chair for the 2014 EuroSTAR conference in Dublin and for several other conferences in the last decade. In 2010 he won the EuroSTAR Testing Excellence Award and in 2013 he won the inaugural TESTA Lifetime Achievement Award. He won the ISTQB Testing Excellence Award in 2018. He’s currently working with an Irish government agency to create a future skills framework for software testers.
My Sessions
My Sessions
Wed, September 22
2:00 - 3:00 pm
State of Testing: The Future of Testing
Every few years I’m asked to predict the future of testing. It’s not that I have a magical crystal ball. I have just enough hutzpah to stand up, voice some opinions and make some predictions. I was asked to talk about Past, Present and Future of Test Automation in 1996 by Bill Hetzel. When I said I was nervous of predicting the future, Bill said, “If you’re correct, you’ll be a prophet; if you’re wrong, no one will remember – so don’t worry”.
In this talk I’m not going to make many predictions; rather, I’m going to discuss whether Software Development can be called Software “Engineering”. I studied engineering and was a graduate engineer for a couple of years before I got into software. I want to suggest we can’t really call ourselves engineers – yet. But I make some suggestions surrounding process, tools and skills that may help us on that journey.
Key Points:
Is Software Development really “Engineering”?
What engineers really do
To become engineers, we need to rethink process, better tools and new skills.
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