Bret Pettichord

ThoughtWorks, Inc. Test Architect Bret Pettichord, a software testing expert and an influential author and speaker, joined ThoughtWorks in July 2004. Mr. Pettichord serves ThoughtWorks, Inc. as a test architect, implementing effective technologies for automated testing and promoting responsible methodologies for agile testing and quality assurance. His software testing philosophy is context-driven, focusing on uncovering important risks, maintaining close relations with programmers, and using agile testing methods that provide rapid feedback. He has broad experience using commercial and open-source tools for automated testing. Mr. Pettichord is a founder of the Context-Driven School of software testing, which sees testing as a technical investigation of software risk that requires skill, adaptability and tact. He co-authored Lessons Learned in Software Testing (a Jolt Award finalist) to explain the thinking of the School. He has published over two dozen papers on software testing and test automation. His ideas about homebrew automation, agile testing and testability have been featured in Application Development Trends and The Rational Edge. As a member of the Agile community, he has regularly hosted workshops that have brought together leading testers and programmers to assess and develop methods for testing on agile projects. Mr. Pettichord founded the Austin Workshop on Test Automation in 2000. It’s a yearly event that brings together leading test automators. He has been regularly contributing to similar workshops since the first meeting of the Los Altos Workshop on Software Testing in 1996. He regularly speaks at conferences around the world. Independent Consultant From 2000 to 2004, Mr. Pettichord consulted to leading software companies across the United States. He assessed testing departments and automated testing frameworks, delivered automated test suites and provided training and mentoring in effective testing methods. His clients included Deloitte Consulting, Lucent Technologies, Microsoft, National Credit Union Administration, Netpliance, Rational Software, Radview, Research Systems (Kodak), Satisfice, Inc, Sterling Commerce (SBC), Sun Microsystems, Texas Department of Human Services, Texas Instruments, Tonic Software, Visa, and WhisperWire. IBM/Tivoli Test Automation Lead Mr. Pettichord supported test automation efforts in Perl and SilkTest for Tivoli’s broad line of cross-platform systems management software, developing common libraries and standards, and coordinating efforts across multiple development sites. BMC Software Test Automation Lead Mr. Pettichord assembled and lead a team that delivered automated testing frameworks in QAPartner and Perl for BMC’s line of database management tools. These used a client/server architecture to provide Windows interfaces to Unix databases. He also instituted formal usability testing for BMC’s software products, now a standard practice throughout the company. Segue Software Staff Consultant Segue Software developed QA Partner (later renamed SilkTest), a leading tool for automated GUI testing. Mr. Pettichord used this tool to develop test suites for clients’ software. Interleaf, Inc Senior QA Engineer Mr. Pettichord tested Interleaf’s internationalized document publishing software for Unix. He developed automated tests in Lisp, developed bug tracking tools in Unix shell, and wrote production code in Lisp. Arthur Andersen & Co. Programmer Mr. Pettichord programmed income tax software in Basic for DOS.

Bret Pettichord serves ThoughtWorks, Inc. as a Test Architect with over fifteen years of software testing and development experience. He is also a consulting researcher to the Center for Software Testing at the Florida Institute of Technology, and sits on the advisory board for Microsoft Visual Studio Enterprise. He is a contributor to the Web Testing for Ruby open-source testing tool. Mr. Pettichord has system administration skills for Windows and Unix/Linux systems. His technical skills include: Programming Languages: APL, Basic, Pascal, Logo, C, Awk, Unix shell, Lisp, C++, SQL, Tcl, Perl, Java, Ruby, Visual Basic, Python Testing Tools: SilkTest (QA Partner), WinRunner, Rational Visual Test, Rational Robot, TestQuest, plus many open source tools. Development Tools: Eclipse, Visual Studio,CVS, ClearCase, Cygwin Education: Bachelor of Arts, New College of Florida Major in Philosophy and Mathematics ThoughtWorks, Inc. 651 W. Washington Blvd. Chicago, IL 60661 www.thoughtworks.com