Empower your tester!

by | Syndicated


Empoweryour tester!

You mustbe thinking what I mean by that. Or some of you must be willing to tell me thatthey already do it by delegating tasks to their testers. Some testmanagers would add that their testers actually prepare test plans or at leastassist them in this, define scenarios and own test execution. And this isexactly where I think is the problem exists.

I willexplain what I mean, but before that I would like to share a discussion I hadwith one of the test analysts in my group. This test analyst seemed frustratedand wanted to talk to me. I assumed that he already had spoken to his testmanager, who reported into me. He mentioned that he was tired and sick of whathe was doing because it was very boring, monotonous and uninteresting work. Iasked him what he was doing and what actually he wanted to do. He said that hehelped his manager in writing the test plan, prepared test data, defined testscenarios and wrote & assisted other testers in writing test cases. Whilethere was so much of delegation, he did not feel empowered for these tasksbecame repetitive for him.

Whatdid I suggest to him? I simply suggested him to focus on the planning & strategypart, as it was an opportunity for him to learn how to run the game. I alsoasked him to automate the most boring stuff if it was possible. He smiled, seemed content andreturned to his desk.

I didspeak to his test manager, but that is another story. What I meant in thebeginning of this post is that we must empower our resourcesabout thinking what they can do better and where they can focus. I don’tsay that automation is the answer to all the problems; all I say is that asleaders we will have to look for the ways to bring in the creativity in theirtesters. In this case, a simple script and some Excel macros resolved theproblem. I was not surprised when this tester came back in couple of days witha short script that made his job simple.

Testingwas always creative. We just have to keep the spirits alive.


{Originally Published on 11 July 2010 on SQABlogs.com}