Trends in Testing Terminology

There are lots of things to consider when trying to recruit or develop software testers especially industry trends, both within the testing community and in the larger software engineering community. In a small community like ours those trends might include development practices, tools, techniques and terminology (among others). As I was contemplating these trends on my own I came across this fun graphic by the Ministry of Testing called “Words That Make Testers Feel Good” and thought it was worth sharing:

Aside from the obvious “feel good” connotation (and the corresponding icky words), one could look at this list as a set of positive trends moving through the industry. If I was looking to hire or train software testers (or a recruiter) I’d look at both lists for the terminology we use and debate the trade-offs of adopting these trends.

Not all of the feel good words are useful (“analysis”) but some might be. I’ve written about a few of them often enough to tag them: Exploratory Testing, Test Techniques, and Automated Testing (or checking).