Before UKSTAR this February we’re giving you a chance to ‘meet’ the speakers. We’ve asked everyone on the UKSTAR programme to answer some questions for us so that you can get to know them better. You’ve already had the opporunity to read more about our commity member Declan O’Riordan. Now learn more about our fourth Workshop AND Closing Keynote James Whittaker.

How did you get started in software testing?

Funny you should ask this. It is one of the stories I am going to tell in full detail in my workshop. I got into testing as a punishment for living in sin. That’s right, sin took me to the dark side of software development. Kinda fitting right? My sinful ways toppled me from the living the nerd dream as a developer to working solo as a software tester. If you want to hear the full story and why this ended up being such an amazing career starter for me, then you’ll have to come to the workshop.

Who inspires you?

I choose my inspirations based on what I am trying to accomplish. I have writing inspirations (Richard Adams, Sam Harris Dona Sarkar), public speaking inspirations (MLK, Churchill, Michelle Dickinson, Amanda Palmer) and creativity inspirations (Darwin, Einstein, Zaha Hadid). Note women in every category. This is important. The only growth is through diversity and old white guys who surround themselves with only old white guys are never going to challenge themselves to grow.

What do you see for the future of software testing?

Testing, as a separate role, is largely a dying discipline. The future of test is as an activity, not as a role. You aren’t a tester. You are an engineer who does many things and one of them happens to be test. So learn engineering first and treat testing as the subfield it actually is. Stop elevating it past its actual importance. It is the creation and construction of products and services that we should celebrate and testing is part of that creation and construction, not something to be celebrated apart from the whole.