Testing in DarkAges!

Empower your tester

Empower your tester!

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

I will explain what I mean, but before that I would like to share a discussion I had with one of the test analysts in my group. This test analyst seemed frustrated and wanted to talk to me. I assumed that he already had spoken to his test manager, who reported into me. He mentioned that he was tired and sick of what he was doing because it was very boring, monotonous and uninteresting work. I asked him what he was doing and what actually he wanted to do. He said that he helped his manager in writing the test plan, prepared test data, defined test scenarios and wrote & assisted other testers in writing test cases. While there was so much of delegation, he did not feel empowered for these tasks became repetitive for him.

What did I suggest to him? I suggested him to focus on the planning & strategy part, as it was an opportunity for him to learn how to run the game. I also asked him to automate the most boring stuff. He smiled, seemed content and returned to his desk.

I did speak to his test manager, but that is another story. What I meant in the beginning of this post is, that we must empower our resources about thinking what they can do better and where they can focus. I don't say that automation is the answer to all the problems; all I say is that as leaders we will have to look for the ways to bring in the creativity in their testers. In  this case, a simple script and some Excel macros resolved the problem. I was not surprized when this tester came back in couple of days with a short script that made his job simple.

Testing was always creative. We just have to keep the spirits alive.