James Marcus Bach

James Marcus Bach is a software tester, author, trainer and consultant. He is a proponent of exploratory testing and the context-driven school of software testing and is credited with developing session-based testing. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Association for Software Testing.

Lessons Learned in Software Testing, a book he co-authored, has been cited over 130 times according to Google Scholar, and several of his articles have been cited dozens of times including his work on heuristics for testing and on the Capability Maturity Model. He has written numerous articles for IEEE Computer.

In his autobiography, he reports that he worked as a software testing manager for Apple and Borland after dropping out of high school. He also programmed Apple II and Commodore 64 ports of various titles for Spinnaker Software. He is the son of the author Richard Bach, and is the brother of Jonathan Bach who is also renowned software tester.
Since 1999, he has worked as independent consultant out of Eastsound, Washington. On this basis, he was one of the expert witnesses in the Microsoft antitrust case: he determined that Microsoft could indeed unbundle Internet Explorer from the Windows operating system.
He is an advisor to the Lifeboat Foundation as a computing expert. They credit him with developing the General Functionality and Stability Test Procedure for Microsoft, part of the Designed for Windows program.