101 :  Conscientious Testing: Understanding the Ethics of Being a Tester
Tuesday, 9:30am - 10:45am

 
Track: Leadership Perspectives for Testers

"Conscientiousness is the trait of being painstaking and careful, or the quality of acting according to the dictates of one's conscience." [Wikipedia] Let's face it, as testers we dig deeply into everything we test: the good, the bad, the ugly. Naturally, we will eventually find something that is unethical or illegal in our studies. What do we do then? This session will give specific examples of the ethical decisions that testers face every day - directly correlating the defects we find and the metrics we track to the ramifications and impacts we make on the customers, colleagues and corporations we serve as professionals. Attendees will learn how to formulate proper defect reporting for unethical or illegal issues, how to prepare data to support the escalation of such defects, who to reach out to for support (other testers, professionals), and how to persevere our integrity through such situations.

Mark Tomlinson

Performance Guru, West Evergreen Consulting, LLC

Mark Tomlinson has 18 years experience in the software technology industry. His introduction to application testing began with a comprehensive, 2-year test for a life-critical transportation system which thrust him into the forefront of software quality assurance and naturally test automation. In short, his job was to prevent trains from running into each other and he has metaphorically been preventing "train wrecks" for his customers for nearly 18 years since that time. He has extensive experience with real-world scenario testing of very large and complex systems. He is regarded as an expert and leader in software testing automation with specific emphasis in performance engineering.