Consider these views expressed by few real people about testing - cutting across the software industry segments. You (a tester) might be surprised by few of these comments - but take it from me - these reflect true state of how stakeholders see testing as.
A manager from a Software Product Company : "We follow Agile model - every team member in the team is responsible for quality and will do a bit about testing. We believe in Agile practices like test driven development, continuous integration, automated unit testing - our code is naturally comes out with good quality. We do not employ any "plain vanilla" black box testers. That is waste of our time. We would get all our testing done by developers mostly or in some cases - testers cover the rest through automated testing. We dont have anything called "testing" phase in our process. We hire testers that are capable of writing production level code - as most of their time will be spent in writing unit tests and automation to help developers.
A manager from IT/Captive Unit : "We believe in providing agility and value to our customers. Testing is one small bit in that whole process. We don't actually worry about how testing is done as long as it aligns to our business purpose. Bulk of testing that happens is done by our partners. We constantly seek to commoditize testing and aggressively deskill so that - we can gain the cost efficiencies in testing. More than testing skills - we value business domain skills. Testers eventually either become managers (and manage customers, IT services deliver/management and other stakeholders) or become business analysts.
A manager/consultant from IT services Industry: Testing is all about assuring quality and process improvement. We constantly develop tools and frameworks to help our customers to do testing efficiently and cheaply. We provide value driven testing services based our process maturity and experience in setting up large scale test factories. Our number 1 aim is to reduce cost of quality - we do it by focussing in tools, processes and domain skills.
A consultant from Software Tools Company: Testing is an essential part of SDLC that can gain significantly from Tools - Automation tools. Usage of Automation aggressively can help reduce cost of testing. Software Testing tools help in implementing Software Test factory so that non technical and business users can use them and achieve faster cycle time and enhanced quality. Not to forget our strength in terms of Six Sigma, CMMi and other Software Quality models. We endorse software quality management through rigorous metrics and quantitative measures.
Now - dear tester - identify yourself where are you working and how are you improving skills in testing to suite the industry segment you work now or hope to work in the future. Does this sound similar to the view of testing that you read in text books or conferences ? Did you know software industry sees testing in such variety of perspectives?
Shrini
A manager from a Software Product Company : "We follow Agile model - every team member in the team is responsible for quality and will do a bit about testing. We believe in Agile practices like test driven development, continuous integration, automated unit testing - our code is naturally comes out with good quality. We do not employ any "plain vanilla" black box testers. That is waste of our time. We would get all our testing done by developers mostly or in some cases - testers cover the rest through automated testing. We dont have anything called "testing" phase in our process. We hire testers that are capable of writing production level code - as most of their time will be spent in writing unit tests and automation to help developers.
A manager from IT/Captive Unit : "We believe in providing agility and value to our customers. Testing is one small bit in that whole process. We don't actually worry about how testing is done as long as it aligns to our business purpose. Bulk of testing that happens is done by our partners. We constantly seek to commoditize testing and aggressively deskill so that - we can gain the cost efficiencies in testing. More than testing skills - we value business domain skills. Testers eventually either become managers (and manage customers, IT services deliver/management and other stakeholders) or become business analysts.
A manager/consultant from IT services Industry: Testing is all about assuring quality and process improvement. We constantly develop tools and frameworks to help our customers to do testing efficiently and cheaply. We provide value driven testing services based our process maturity and experience in setting up large scale test factories. Our number 1 aim is to reduce cost of quality - we do it by focussing in tools, processes and domain skills.
A consultant from Software Tools Company: Testing is an essential part of SDLC that can gain significantly from Tools - Automation tools. Usage of Automation aggressively can help reduce cost of testing. Software Testing tools help in implementing Software Test factory so that non technical and business users can use them and achieve faster cycle time and enhanced quality. Not to forget our strength in terms of Six Sigma, CMMi and other Software Quality models. We endorse software quality management through rigorous metrics and quantitative measures.
Now - dear tester - identify yourself where are you working and how are you improving skills in testing to suite the industry segment you work now or hope to work in the future. Does this sound similar to the view of testing that you read in text books or conferences ? Did you know software industry sees testing in such variety of perspectives?
Shrini
