I feel kind of bad for people who aren’t Quality Engineers, Testers, or whatever name you use for testing specialists. We talk about a whole team approach to quality and everyone on the team testing, but I can understand why this idea might be confusing to some. Programmers generally don’t ask other people to write programs. Product Owners generally don’t ask other people to determine the direction of the product. So why do testers ask other people to test? What are we really asking them to do?
A Means to an End
I’ve been trying to find the right analogy for this (something about writers and editors, or directors or chefs), but nothing fit quite the way I wanted it to. I recently read a great blog about why we test, which essentially boils down to uncovering and reporting risk. As testing specialists, we uncover information about risks and report on them to the people who can directly mitigate that risk, be it by changing something in the code, design, requirements, or something else entirely.
When we ask other people on the team to test, I think what we’re really saying is:
“Before I take a look at this, can you look over it and see if you can find any risks that you can mitigate directly?”
=> “Can we make the process more efficient and free up my time for the stuff that’s harder to find?”
=> “Can you do what you can to check that your piece of the puzzle is of good quality, so that big picture issues are easier and quicker to diagnose and fix?”
To shoehorn in our imperfect analogies, it’s like asking someone to proof read their book or look over their scene or taste their own soup (or dog food). All reasonable asks, right?
It reminds me of the test automation pyramid with the Swiss cheese model – testing on the lowest, most efficient level possible. Other team members are at the base level (unit tests), testing specialists are one above that (integration tests), and hopefully once you get to the top level of end-users (end-to-end), there’s not much left to find.
Quality Parts for a Quality Whole
So when testing specialists ask other people to test, we’re not asking you to take on all the tasks and responsibilities of a tester. We’re just asking you to think about quality sooner rather than later, so you can bring quality parts which increase our chances of having a quality whole.
Some questions that might help with this include:
- What would a tester find / think if they saw this?
- How could this go wrong?
- What have I missed?
- Why are we doing it this way?
- Where / when / how is it best to test this?
- Is this fit for purpose / does it fulfil the requirements?
- Where do I need support?
- …
A Whole Team Approach
That last one is important. A good testing specialist will be more than happy to support you in checking your, or other people’s work. We can provide you with training and coaching, pair test with you, clarify the testing strategy / plan. We’d be very happy to hear you say, “I’d like to test this, but I’m not sure how to do it. Could you help me?” We’d also be grateful to receive hints from you! If you say, “I’ve already tested it and it looks good to me, but it would be great if you could look at x a little closer because of y,” that’s really useful.
Testers’ Tasks
You may be asking yourself at this point what exactly the testers will be doing while everyone else is testing. That’s a fair question. The truth is that there’s a lot of things testers do, but it can be difficult to make these things visible, since they don’t always result in physical artefacts. Here are just some of the things testers may invite you to participate in, but will ultimately lead:
- Exploratory testing
- Test strategy and planning
- Test reporting
- Questioning designs, requirements, implementations, etc.
- Organising workshops and bug bashes
- Training and coaching on quality and testing topics
- Keeping up-to-date with the latest in all things quality and testing
- …
So, the next time someone asks you to test, I hope it will be a little clearer what they’re actually asking of you, and that it feels a little less overwhelming. And don’t worry – you’re not on your own. If we all work together and support one another, we can achieve great things.
Are there any other questions you’ve always wanted to ask a tester? Ask away in the comments or visit the Ministry of Testing Club.