I read this update 3 or 4 times just to make sure I was reading it correctly. It did not make sense every time I read it. So it is over to you for interpretation.
I wanted to ask this person what he actually meant by all that. I also left a message at his LinkedIn post asking for his definition of Zero Defect. Probably he meant that he was looking for someone who can drive Zero Defect as in literally driving? Like, “Hello, I have got this Zero Defect here in my office; can you please drive him around London? I have also got a Testing Strategy who will accompany this Zero Defect. Anyone? Anyone?” lol! Well, he will surely find some people who are ready to do that. I did warn him to be aware of snake oil sellers though.
Even if he is not looking for literal ‘zero defects’ and he is genuinely interested in reducing defects or improving quality of his products, he should not focus at testing. What he should look for is at other areas that may be causing defects. Testing experts can sure help him improve that.
Let’s give him benefit of doubt and assume that he was talking about Microsoft’s Zero Defect methodology. I am not sure if many would remember that Joel Spolsky wrote a blog post long time ago explaining this. Joel wrote:
“..”zero defects” meant that at any given time, the highest priority is to eliminate bugs before writing any new code.”
He added, “Another great thing about keeping the bug count at zero is that you can respond much faster to competition. Some programmers think of this as keeping the product ready to ship at all times. Then if your competitor introduces a killer new feature that is stealing your customers, you can implement just that feature and ship on the spot, without having to fix a large number of accumulated bugs.”
Actually there are more questions that baffled me. Why would you need someone to drive an Automation testing Strategy through using suppliers (and what does that mean)? And even before that, what do you mean by Automation Testing Strategy? If you are able to explain the definition, the question will move to the next one; what is the objective of having one? What do you want to achieve from it?
It was a confusing LinkedIn post. I guess not worth wasting much time. I just wish that this CIO is not misguided about testing and I hope there are people who can educate him.
Merry Christmas!
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