by Paul Gerrard, Gerrard Consulting, UK
1.1 Why ‘Lessons Learned’?
‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ This famous quotation by George Santayana reminds us that mistakes are not things to be filed and forgotten. If you think about it, when you get something ‘right’, what do you learn? Not much – you already knew what you were doing (unless it was a random act). But when you make a mistake, there is a discrepancy between the outcome and your intention – recognising the discrepancy requires us to make the correction and will help us to better work next time. As testers, learning from past mistakes should come naturally. If it doesn’t we are in big trouble. After all, a significant part of our job is to point out mistakes in other people’s work. If we aren’t prepared to learn, we could be accused of hypocrisy.
So learning from mistakes is a good thing – better still to learn from other people’s mistakes.
Kind regards,
The EuroSTAR 2007 mini events have taken place in both Sweden & The Netherlands with resounding success. These events coincided with the launch of this years conference programme and gave attendees a brief taste of the highlights of EuroSTAR 2007. We are grateful to Bob van de Burgt and Stuart Reid for their insightful presentations.
by Warren Daniels, Marketing Manager, Princeton Softech Northern Europe and South Africa