Recently I’ve started to come to the belief that we can solve a lot of our problems if we just start to think differently about testing. If instead of thinking about software testing only as a distinct discipline, we instead to start to think about it as an activity. After all, testing is just that, an activity. It’s something we do. Something we’d love others to do more. James Bach likes to define software testing as a performance, and what is a performance without some activity to perform?

Once we start to think of testing as an activity then it matter less that it’s not always testers who do it. Everyone in a team should test, it’s just that the tester role can be where the expertise lies, and where the test coaching comes from.

Think of all the problems we can solve if we think like this.