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Permalink Reply by phil kirkham on May 23, 2010 at 15:20

Did you read Michael Boltons recent blog Testers: Get Out of the Quality Assurance Business ? That pretty much covers it - testers usually have no "control over the schedule, the budget, programmer staffing, product scope, the development model, customer relationships, " but there are ways to influence the people that do

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Permalink Reply by Brian Buckmaster on May 24, 2010 at 22:19

No, you do not contribute towards delivering a "quality" product. The best you can do is in some way guage how "good" the product is, and even that is debatable, given what a lot of companies practice.

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Permalink Reply by sunjeet singh khokhar on May 25, 2010 at 1:09

I agree that we(test team) do not have control over budgeting , staffing , requirements , scope etc
and as I mentioned earlier we do not "assure" quality.

But what i was alluding to was "contribution" , by providing test information ( done in the correct/needed context , exposing risks , suggesting mitigation for those risks ? etc all the stuff that test teams do...

So, if all that information ( again subject to being correctly aligned with project needs and if those needs in turn are aligned correctly with the customer needs ) is absorbed and acted upon/implemented by other stakeholders ,and a subjectively "quality" product is delivered,

I understand it as a chain , we provide "correct" information , that information gets understood correctly and implemented correctly .( correct here means from the end user's point of view )

do you still think Test team did not/ can not make any "contribution" !?

what i had in mind/practise was more of being co-contributors to "quality"/ "project's success" and not being guarantors,assurance or keepers of quality .

and similarly we contribute to failures as well i guess , prvoide incorrect/ worng contextual information or any part of the chain mis interprets / mis implements the info that we provide .

or we just tow this line that , "we just provide information" and dont kick or kiss .... ?

---------
thereluctanttester.wordpress.com

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Permalink Reply by Brian Buckmaster on May 25, 2010 at 1:21

YAWN...

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Permalink Reply by sunjeet singh khokhar on May 25, 2010 at 1:27

lol !

just because somebody has an opinion ( I could easily be wrong no worries about that ) other than what you think or have observed !

arrogance is worse and much dangerous than stupidity :)

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Permalink Reply by Brian Buckmaster on May 26, 2010 at 17:09

My previous post was not intended to be an expression of arrogance - just failed to see the point of the discussion. As we get older, our attention spans to get smaller.

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Permalink Reply by sunjeet singh khokhar on May 26, 2010 at 21:20

There was a point of discussion for me hence I wanted to continue asking/replying to people who posted their comments on the post . And thankfully I got a direction from responses other than yours in the post.

If I were you and did not see any point in the discussion, I guess I would have just walked away silently because that seems to be fairly professional and sensitive answer to a situation which disinterests you.

Anyways I'm not you and I'm not "old" :)

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Permalink Reply by Bj Rollison on May 25, 2010 at 5:52

Michael is absolutely correct when he states that the typical tester has no "control over the schedule, the budget, programmer staffing, product scope, the development model, customer relationships,...".

But, of the several true QA professionals I know at Boeing, the US Air Force, and other gov't agencies, they also have no control over the schedule, project budgets, programmer staffing, product scope, development models, or customer relationships. Their role is to monitor processes, conduct periodic audits, invesitgate failures, recommend (sometimes drive) process improvements, etc. People in QA roles I know are very senior people that have a lot of influence.

I don't know any software tester in any IT shop who actually performs a true QA role (regardless of what their job title reads). Does such a tester really exist???

To the question at hand...I don't think we necessarily reveal quality. I agree with Brian to some extent. We "in some way guage" the difference between what is desired and what is, and provide that difference as information to the decision makers. So maybe we actually reveal some perceived lack of quality, or is it some perceived exposure to risk, or maybe both.

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Permalink Reply by Robert Healy on May 27, 2010 at 12:27

Hi Sunjeet,

I'm don't agree entirely with Michael Bolton's blog post. I think it is potentially as damaging as it is constructive. I think that by telling others to walk away from Quality Assurance (systematic management of quality across a project) it could be inferred that we should steer clear from Quality Control (testing of products to uncover defects). For me he does this worst when he says ""Stop trying to “own” quality"" - I think that a dark and dangerous suggestion to make.

I think that rational humans will try to achieve their goals for reward, so developers will try to write good code, managers will try to ensure timely production of satisfactory work. In this paradigm testers must try to provide a reasonable estimation of the number of defects present in the code and the likelihood of a customer encountering one. I think it a duty of anyone who takes pride in their work to "own" quality - for the bit that they have done.

Trying to get testers to eschew quality for some sort of information providing service, as Michael suggests, is like sterilizing the process. I could say that music is a simply a series of pressure oscillations moving with certain pitch, timbre and amplitude and that music is more important to the people who make it and the managers who produce and promote it and, to a certain degree, I would be correct. Still, music matters to those who listen to it, to those who decide whether it sounds good or not and who decide whether they like it. These are the users.

So, if you like, you go reveal your defects and you be part of the quality assurance process (in the quality control function) that builds quality in. When Michael Bolton (the other one) asks "Can I touch you there?" you should answer, "Probably not".

- Rob

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Permalink Reply by sunjeet singh khokhar on May 27, 2010 at 21:17

Thanks for your views Robert .

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Permalink Reply by Curtis Stuehrenberg on May 31, 2010 at 1:35

Hi Robert,

If you tell some one their house is on fire, do you then own the house or the fire? Would the firemen who arrived later to put out the fire? Would the fire marshal who arrived to inspect the carnage in order to determine cause?

You seem to be saying you would, or at least you would own the fire if you couldn't get the fire department to arrive in time or the owner of the house to listen or if you waited too long to walk by and the fire was too far along to put out or if you just didn't think the amount of smoke was enough to justify a call to 911.

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Permalink Reply by Robert Healy on May 31, 2010 at 14:49

Hi Curtis,

If you see that a house is on fire, you are the owner of the knowledge that the house is on fire.

If you use this information properly and communicate it to the correct resources, then hopefully you become part of the process of saving someone's property and improving (or at least not worsening) the quality of their lives.

If you neglect the ownership of this knowledge (which is an unfortunately common social dilemma called the Bystander Effect) then you say "I KNOW the house is on fire but it is someone else's problem - let it burn..."

Does this explain?

- Rob

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