Technicians - Part I

I'm going to digress a lot in this series of posts. So please be patient.

Wikipedia describes a Technician as "a worker in a field of technology who is proficient in the relevant skills and techniques, with a relatively practical understanding of the theoretical principles."

Dictionary.com describes a Technician as

tech·ni·cian

  [tek-nish-uhn] 

noun

1. a person who is trained or skilled in the technicalities of a subject.

2. a person skilled in an art technique, such as music or painting.

Is a Software Tester a Technician? 

Based on what I understand about Technicians, they are supposed to put theoretical principles to practice and be very good at it.

Engineering follows certain principles and rules that, if not followed, would not help build a good product.

So what principles and rules does Software Engineering follow? Are there any at all?

Principles are fundamental Truths about a field of science. 

So, to find an answer to whether or not Software Engineering follows principles, I used Google with the phrase 'principles of software engineering'. More than 27 million results turned up.

The top post I found was this.

https://www.d.umn.edu/~gshute/softeng/principles.html

This article may be an old one.

Does this article tell you about Software Engineering Principles?

It seemed so to me. Those principles are as generic as possible by not including the specifics about the best methodologies. It may have indicated a few references that used specific methods, but the article did suggest that business context is essential.

If you read the article, you will see that the principles primarily show how someone would approach a computer software solution.

The article maintains that people's thoughts and opinions inevitably impact Software Engineering Principles. The report asserts that Software Engineering Principles are invariably subject to the influence of people's views and opinions. 

So when it comes to Testing an automatised solution for a business problem, it is essential how one thinks of the solution. It requires expertise in the Technology used and ground-level business knowledge. 

A Software Tester should be putting Software Engineering Principles into Practice: Effectively making a Software Tester a Technician.

The following post shows how a Software Tester should put these Principles into Practice.

Your comments on this post are most welcome, especially criticism.