Is the traditional software tester role fading away? A recent blog post from Cem Kaner helped to reinforce this idea for me. You’ll find his comments inside this long post, in the “2. Oracles are heuristic” section, under the heading “A supplementary video”: Updating to BBST 4.0: What Should Change. Incidentally, the topic of the whole post is updating a course on software testing, which I think I attended a very early variation of around the turn of the millennium.

Cem’s parenthetical notes on tester careers are interesting. He suggests that traditional black-box testing (whether exploratory or scripted) will give way to piecework, where a tester will be paid by the number of completed tests. I’ve seen this model already underway in outsourcing companies like Rainforest QA and its competitors, where the manually executed test step is the basic unit that you’re paying for. It’s much easier to see this happening for scripted tests than for exploratory tests, and I argued against using this kind of service when an executive asked me to consider using it, because I see little value in scripted manual tests.

You can imagine that this kind of piece work will not pay testers very well. Cem noted that he already sees a significant pay differential between black box testers who don’t do any programming and those who have jobs that require some kind of programming. He suggests a few skills like programming that testers could add to become more marketable. I have a few items of diversification I can point to, including programming and automation skills, though I don’t often focus on automation. I’m familiar with testing web apps and mobile apps (and even mobile web apps :). My experience with embedded systems often gets the attention of recruiters.

I’ve added a few items to my resume this year that I’m happy about. I took a training course and became a Certified Scrum Master so I could understand the leadership aspect of agile processes better. Perhaps the most promising, given the current job market for security, is the Certified Ethical Hacker course I took and passed the exam for. I know that passing a certification exam doesn’t really prove anything, but these particular certifications do seems to carry some weight that might help my career. Both are subject areas I already have experience in, and I was happy to round out my knowledge in the classes.

I’ve been following Microsoft employees Alan Page and Brent Jensen on their AB Testing podcast. They both have had fairly traditional testing roles, but now are in roles that seem to be much more future-proof. Brent is now a data scientist, specifically, Principal Data Scientist Manager. Alan, Principal Software Engineer, describes himself as a helper, doing the odd (but challenging) tasks that don’t easily fit the developer roles on his team, which is something that appeals to me. Both are still involved in the testing process. The project structures they describe seem to be on the leading edge of the future of the software testing role.

In my limited view of the software industry, I don’t see many companies that are anywhere near Microsoft in their evolution. If the traditional black-box tester role is fading, I think it’s going to happen very slowly. I think it will require a very broad view of the industry to track a slow evolution like this, and I’m curious if you’ve heard from anyone who is in a good position to see it.