Top 10 Books for Testers

First published 30/04/2013

Huib Schoots asked me to name my top 10 books for testers. Initially, I was reluctant because I'm no fan of beauty parades and if an overall 'Top 10 Books' were derived from voting:

 

  1. The same old same old books would probably top the chart again, and
  2. Any obscure books I nominated would be lost in the overall popularity contest.

 

So what's the point?

 

Nassim Taleb tweeted, just the other day: "You should never allow knowledge to turn into a spectator sport, by condoning rankings, awards, "hotness" &"incentives"" (3rd ethical rule)

— Nassim N. Taleb (@nntaleb) April 28, 2013

Having said that, and with reservations, I sent Huib a list. What books would I recommend to testers? I’m still reluctant to recommend books because it is a personal choice. I can’t say whether anyone else would find these useful or not. But, scanning the bookshelf in my study, I have chosen books that I like and think are *not* likely to be on a tester’s shelf. These are not in any order. My comments are subjective and personal.

  1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M Pirsig – Quality is for philosophers, not systems professionals. I try not to use the Q word.
  2. Software Testing Techniques, Boris Beizer - for the stories and thinking, more than the techniques stuff (although that’s not bad).
  3. The Complete Plain Words, Sir Ernest Gower – Use this or your language/locale equivalent to improve your writing skills.
  4. Test-Driven Development, Kent Beck – is TDD about test or design? Does it matter? Testing is about *much* more than finding bugs.
  5. The Tester’s Pocketbook, Paul Gerrard – I wrote this as an antidote to the ‘everything is heuristic’ idea, which I believe is limiting and unambitious.
  6. Systems Thinking, Systems Practice, Peter Checkland – an antidote to the “General Systems Theory” nonsense.
  7. The Tyranny of Numbers, Why Counting Can’t Make Us Happy, David Boyle – The title says it all. Entertaining discussion of targets, metrics and misuse.
  8. Straight and Crooked thinking, Robert H Thouless – Title says it all again. Thouless wrote another book 'Straight and Crooked Thinking in Wartime' 70-odd years ago - a classic.
  9. Logic: an introduction to elementary logic, Wilfred Hodges – Buy this (or a similar) book on predicate logic: few understand what it is, but it’s a cornerstone of critical thinking.
  10. Lectures on Physics, Richard P Feynman – It doesn’t matter whether you understand the Physics, it’s the thought processes he exposes that matters. RPF doesn't do bullsh*t.

11. Game Theory and Economic Behaviour, John von Neuman, Oskar Morgenstern – OK it’s no 11. Don’t read this. Be aware of it. We have the mathematics for when we finally collect data that people can *actually* use to make decisions.

There are many non-testing books that didn't make my list. Near misses include at least one scripting/programming language book, all of Edward Tufte's books, Gause & Weinberg's "Exploring Requirements", DeMarco and Lister's "Peopleware", DeMarco's "Controlling Software Projects" and "Structured Analysis", Nancy Leveson's "Safeware", Constantine and Lockwood's "Software for Use" and lots more. Ten books isn't enough. Perhaps one hundred isn't enough either.

Huib asked me to explain my "General Systems Theory" nonsense comment. OK, nonsense may be too strong. Maybe I should say non-science?

The Systems movement has existed for 70-80+ years. Dissatisfaction with General Systems Theory in 60s/70s caused a split between the theorists and those who wanted to evolve System Thinking into a problem solving approach. Maybe you could call them two ‘schools’? GST was attacked very publicly by the problem-solving movement (the Thinkers) who went down a different path. GST never delivered a ‘grand theory’ and appeared to exist only to publish a journal. The thinker movement proceeded to work in areas covering hard- and soft-systems and decision making support. It's clear that the schism between the two streams caused (or was caused by) antagonism. It is reminiscent of the testing schools 'debate'. A typical criticism in the 1970s was one expert (Naughton) chided another expert (Lilienfield (who attacked GST)) by saying “there was nothing approaching a coherent body of tested knowledge to attack, rather a melange of insights, theorems, tautologies and hunches…”. The problem that the 'Thinkers' had with GST is that most of the insights and theorems are unsubstantiated and not used for anything. GST drifts into the mystical sometimes - it’s almost like astrology. Checkland says: “The problem with GST is it pays for its generality with lack of content” and "... the fact that GST has failed in its application does not mean that systems thinking has failed". The Systems Thinking movement, being focused on problem solving inspired most of the useful (and used) approaches and methods. It’s less ‘pure’ but by being grounded in problem solving, it has more value. Google "General Systems Theory" and you get few hits of relevance and only one or two books written in the last 25 years. Try "Systems Thinking" and you get lots (although there's a certain amount of bandwagon jumping perhaps). Seems to me that GST has been left behind. I don't like GST because it is so vague. It is impossible to prove or disprove the theories, so being a sceptical sort, mostly it says nothing useful that I can trust.

When I say systems Thinking I mean Systems Thinking and Soft Systems Methodology and not General Systems Research and Systems Inquiry

— Paul Gerrard (@paul_gerrard) December 22, 2012

 



Tags: #Top10Books

Paul Gerrard My linkedin profile is here My Mastodon Account