The Abolition of Test?Test is dead! Long live testing!

A beginning and an End

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be

done at all.” -Peter Drucker

Requirements Architecture Design Build

Test

Abdication of quality responsibility to “Test” leads to the accumulation of quality debt that cannot be remediated in test.

Development Sprint

Test Sprint

Development Sprint

Development Sprint

Development Sprint

Test Sprint Test Sprint Test Sprint

Regression Sprint

All this does is move from a large waterfall to a large cascade

Test Director

Test Manager

Senior Tester

Senior Tester

Test Analyst

Test Analyst

Etc

Test Manager

Senior Tester

Senior Tester

Test Analyst

Test Analyst

Etc

Programme Manager

Test Manager

Testers

Lead BA

BA’s

Etc…

Test

Gov

erna

nce

Test Consultant

Test Consultant

Test Consultant

BA Dev Test

Product Owner

Structural Problems

All this leads to thisAcceptance

System

Integration

Unit

Acceptance

System

The challenge

Current conceptions of testing and their attendant

structures lead to the abdication of quality responsibility to test.

We did it to ourselves

What to do?

The Solution?

“Be the change you want to see in the

world”-Mahatma Gandhi

The client said that this works because the developers know that they have 100% responsibility for the application. If it doesn't work, the developers can't say that "QA didn't catch the problem." There is no QA team to blame. The buck stops with the application development team. They better get it right, or heads will roll.

As British author Samuel Johnson famously put it, "The prospect of being hanged focuses the mind wonderfully.“

http://blogs.forrester.com/mike_gualtieri/11-02-17-want_better_quality_fire_your_qa_team

If we don’t do it to ourselves, someone else will do it to us

“Investing in testing, means simply this - investing in building a flawed product and then spending more money to "fix it" to make it beautiful.

Instead why can't we just invest in a product that is beautiful from day one?”

- Satish Satyam

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140817172649-73355280-let-s-get-rid-of-software-testing-or-not

Where would you spend your money?

Splitting the proverbial hair

Test

Is a separate function in an organisation

Is ‘responsible for testing’

Is often seen as an (un)necessary expense

Must estimate and get involved according to strict scope

TestingIs embedded throughout the

lifecycle

Is everyone’s responsibility

Is seen as vital

Is included in everyone’s estimates as a part of what they do

Together vs separate

“There is a difference between editing and proof reading. Author and editor co-create. A proof reader just highlights mistakes.”

-Matt Mansell

Adapt or die

How do we adapt?

Organisational Test Leadership not Management

Quality becoming everyone’s responsibility

Adaptive culture among testers; constantly learn new things

Better use of available capabilities and tools

Leadership vs Management

“Management is doing things right; leadership

is doing the right things”-Peter Drucker

Quality it everyone’s responsibility

None of this Lots of this

Adaptive Culture

“I’m still learning”

- Da Vinci age 87

“The more that you read the more that you’ll know.

The more that you learn the more places you’ll go”

- Dr Seuss

Better use of available capabilities and tools

Continuous Integration, Testing and Delivery• Get technical; learn SOA testing, learn to automate (not GUI automation)• Learn about it and advocate for it, but realise it changes everything about your job

Lean Transformation• This is far bigger than test, ultimately everyone from the Board/Minister down need to

change

Environments on Demand• Learn about how stubbing and environment management products can remedy the

environment problems it seems like most testers complain about

Get off the beaten track• Learn to do something specialised like Usability Testing

Turn this into ThatAcceptance

System

Integration

Unit

Acceptanc

e

System

Integration

Unit

100% automation

70 to 80% automation

Automate as much as possible

10% or less manual

functional testing

A long road ahead

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you,

then they fight you, then you win.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

“Ones destination is never a place, but a new

way of seeing things.”-Henry Miller

Acknowledgements• Self fulfilling prophecy cartoon:

https://ingmarschumacher.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/do-sovereign-ratings-lead-to-a-self-fulfilling-prophecy/