2009, confidential wmhl ltd perception is reality! tmf october 2009

© 2009, Confidential WMHL Ltd

Perception is Reality!TMF October 2009


Testers Perception• Testing is considered a major area for

improvement in many organisations• And yet, we still feel undervalued?

– We ‘battle’ to get our message across– We continue to improve communications

skills – We obtain certification for greater credibility– We strive for earlier exposure to

stakeholders and management


Others Perception• ‘Testing’ slows my project down,

costs too much money and we still have faults in production!

• Still testers ask for more funding, education, people, and so on…..

• Testers give me lots of data, but can’t tell me if it’s OK to go live or even if they’ve finished testing!


So What?• OK, so I paraphrase and polarise to

make a point• I hear this all the time though• How much of this sounds familiar to

you?• So, how did we get here?

– If we can understand this question maybe we can find another way


Firstly…..• Most people go to work to do a good

job, not to make life difficult for testers• Most people have a focus on making

progress, moving forward, and enhancing the business to the best of their ability

• If others disagree with us, maybe they have a point!


My Perception of Testing History

When life was simple!• Mainframes ruled• Developers tested their code

thoroughly– Or they’d lose days out of their schedule

• Test environments were realistic• Project budgets included test activity

Many of today’s senior managers ‘grew up’ in this environment



Then things got harder!• Distributed architecture• Integration with multiple systems• Distributed teams• Test environments not representative• Etc, etc, etc…..• Quality suffered:

– Creation of dedicated tester roles– Independent testing– Testing suppliers, test centres, a whole industry!– Developers given ‘permission’ to abdicate responsibility for

testing

Testing budgets created but project budgets not reduced!



Original view of test maturityMulti-disciplined team

Independent Testers

Specialist testers within the team

New Multi-disciplined team

?


And Today!• Did we create a monster?• Is the perception of others our fault? • Are we following the original test

maturity model?– Agile has multi-disciplined teams– Most organisations I talk to are keen to

integrate testers within teams rather than have them independent now

– Are we resisting the inevitable?


Where to Next?

2009, confidential wmhl ltd perception is reality! tmf october 2009

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