James Bach

James Bach is founder and principal consultant of Satisfice, Inc., a software testing and quality assurance company. Mr. Bach began his career as a programmer, tester, and SQA manager in Silicon Valley, focusing on market-driven software development. He has worked at Apple Computer, Borland, and several startup and consulting companies. Mr. Bach was chief scientist at STLabs, an independent software testing laboratory, and, in 1999, he designed a formalized intuitive testing process, the General Functionality and Stability Test Procedure, for the Microsoft Windows 2000 Application Certification program. Mr. Bach is an ardent opponent of standards like the CMM and an advocate of the context-driven, also "good enough," approach to software practice. He currently runs the context-driven testing discussion forum at eGroups.com. Through his work in the areas of exploratory and heuristic processes, Mr. Bach focuses on helping individuals involved with software answer the questions "What am I doing here?" and "What should I do now?"