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Microsoft - Our Testers go to 11!

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(thanks to my colleague, John, for the Spinal Tap match - it's perfect even if not every test team at MS is an 11)

When I first wrote the Test Test, my thought was that if you were whining about your job, you should find a new one - one where test positions were taken seriously. But - I bet there are many testers who sort of like their job because of location or people - so they don't want to find a new job - they want to "fix" the one they have.

Fixing it is easy - take the questions where the answer is "No", and make the answer "Yes".

Ok - perhaps it isn't so easy after all. Let's take a closer look.

Test #1: Are testers influential from day one of the project?
If testers are working hand in hand with developers from the beginning of the project (reviewing, asking testability questions, drawing models, identifying risk, establishing policies, etc.), there are fewer surprises late in the product cycle. If this isn't happening on your team, you can't really just say "ok - from now on testers get to do stuff early" - especially if someone in management has other plans for you. If you want to eat at the planning and design table, you're going to need to bring dessert - or at least tell everyone what dessert is. In other words, explain do your dev counterparts and management team what benefit everyone will see if you perform certain activities before code is ever written. Make a list of what you're going to do, explain the benefit you expect to provide by executing on that list and answer questions. If they don't like everything on the list you can compromise the first few times (piloting small is good). Now, once you're doing some new stuff, provide status. A big part of the role of test is to provide information - it's critical in this situation because it is showing everyone - including the skeptics - what is changing (yes - all of my older posts on metrics and smart goals apply here).

For the next release - next project - or next sprint, evaluate what you did, what can go better, and what needs to change and do it again. Soon, you will have a test team that is influential from day one of the product.

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