On August 26, 2014 @perftestman posted the following tweet:
“I think a lot of the CDT brigade just like the sound of they’re  own voice –
everything’s CONTEXT driven! ”

It was her reaction on my earlier tweet, that got some attention:
Dear @pt_wire I use effective, documented systematic testing processes and methods. But not generic one size fits all. #CDT vs #ISO29119

For a while both James Bach and I reacted to it but the limitation of 140 characters, twittering on a mobile phone and not the least work made me stop engaging in the twitter feed. But it wasn’t the first time that people resort to this kind of fallacy thus avoiding discussing the actual content. This made think about it and in this post I will share my little thought exercise.

Addressing the first part of her tweet an answer to what is a brigade?

• A group of people who have the same beliefs
  I wouldn’t compare CDT to a belief system but one cannot deny that the CDT community shares values, talks about it, sometimes feels strongly about them and expresses them out in the open. This part doesn’t apply specifically to CDT as e.g. the ISTQB brigade has similar behavior.
  I also do not think that the CDT community is out to convert people to be context-driven testers. To convince by pointing out alternatives and different approaches -yes, answer questions – yes, share knowledge – yes, share experiences – yes, but testers are allowed to decide for them selves how and if they want to use it.
• A group of people organized to act together
  The CDT community certainly regularly confers, meets each other (live or online) and challenges each other. They are however not organized as a single group or organization nor do I think they want to be. They are mostly independently and critical minds that have discovered that taking into account and using the context helps them to deliver more value and that building skill, acquiring and sharing knowledge and experience with others helps them to get better at doing that.
• A large group of soldiers that is part of an army
  I fear that @perftestman intended to make use of this definition. This comparison however lacks credibility. The CDT community might seem to go battle figuratively over some subject and if feeling strongly about engaging in fierce discussion. And unfortunately occasionally a few of them even lash out to individuals that oppose CDT values or cannot handle the challenging style of discussion. But even if we form a community we are not so organized that we form a specific group of sorts nor do we intend to destruct or conquer. The community, essentially is a collection of likeminded professionals who rather aim to convince with facts, ideas and experience with the intend to advance the craft.

In a follow up post I will address an earlier tweet: “Too many of these so called test guru are impostors – detached from the realities of software development and #lovethesoundofyourownvoice” and compare the contributors to ISO 29119 to the CDT brigade and thus attempt to discover who are meant to be the potential impostors in this tweet and other occasions that spawned remarks like this.