If you’re one of those executives that got rid of the test role and then didn’t have any serious study or support of it by workers …
… I hope you don’t work at Crowd Strike.
Anti-virus software can hook into the kernel, the main part of the operating system, to run essentially all the time. That’s because it needs to be able to poke and peek into anything on the hard drive, as well as anything in memory. Which means you can put it into the main time-slicing loop, or other parts that will run again and again. That makes it pretty hard to dislodge by a virus.
… It also makes it just plain pretty hard to dislodge.
Your software might not have the potential to bring down 911 systems, airline systems, hospitals, hotels, emergency services, but a lot of them do.
I’ve made improving quality and reliability the focus of my professional life, focusing it in my masters degree, serving on the board of directors of the Association for Software Testing and later founding a conference. I ran a dozen or so independent workshops, was lead editor for a book and lead author on another. After the 737Max, I hoped we had learned a lesson.
I understand how creative destruction works. We don’t have any elevator operators anymore, bellhops are only in a few 5-star hotels, customer service is 85% computerized, freeway sign hangers and blacksmiths are gone. That is the way of things. I do think, however, at this moment, we have a moment to pause and rethink, to take a real look at risk, and consider how much effort, as the technocrats within society, we want to put into testing, and testing as a independent discipline.
Is anyone with me?