From D to Q to C with plenty of T

2006-Apr-6 - Me and my BIG mouth

"Let's get people test infected" I thought
and did

"Spread the Testing Gospel" I thought
And did

Make sure programmers know the difference between QA and QC
They do
Oh they DO

So what's the problem - Mission Accomplished, surely ?
Well, one of the programmers decided that he wanted some Load Testing doing - hurrah
( But he's a new programmer here so doesn't realise that testing is not something we do here )
He knew from all the books on my desk and the chats he's overheard that I seem to be the one that knows about testing so he was asking if I could do some - hurrah, I'm known as The Tester

But I'm already up to my eyeballs in work for the new project that's underway On this project we are trying the SCRUM methodology which calls for a lot of testing involvement all the time.
I'm helping set up a proper defect tracking system.
Learning Perl and Ruby

And no-one here has ever done any Load Testing so that's another big learning curve ahead - I was just starting to read up on it last week and I know it's no trivial matter, I don't just fire up my copy of MS LoadTest.Net and wave it over the program.

But I don't want to let the guy down, after all my talking the talk I'd like to walk the walk.

So my option is to make my manager aware and hope he starts to realise that hiring new programmers is no good unless they also start hiring some staff to test their work. Talk to the programmer so I can find out exactly what he means by 'Load testing' and why does he want it done. Find a bit of spare time so I can look at the program and see how testing of it could be done

And put some sticking plaster over my Big Mouth

2006-Apr-6 - teehee

Posted by metalbaby

Hey Phil,

I have been very careful about what type of testing to recommend. If I haven't tried to do that type of testing before then I don't bring it up. The devs don't seem to be too worried about load and performance testing as our system is already in production. If we had any worries regarding that we'd get feedback from the field.

I look forward to reading about how that goes...

chris

Permanent Link

2006-Apr-7 - Re: teehee

Posted by philk10

jack of all trades or master of none, who said a testers life was an easy one ?

If I only did the testing that devs were worried about then it would be an easy life indeed but seeing as one of them has made the effort to suggest something which is something I want to encourage...
I'm not saying I will do it but I will make sure the dev knows exactly what is involved when he just makes a casual comment about load testing

Edited by philk10 on 2006-Apr-6 at 04:24

Permanent Link

2006-Apr-7 - master of nothing

Posted by metalbaby

when i was younger my sister had a cap that said 'master of nothing'. but i think testers have to be masters of testing. we just have to be jacks of all trades to be masterful testers. a problem i am having is that i am using fairly normal testing terminology and none of the development team have any idea what i am talking about. i kind of like that in that i have software dev knowledge they don't but it is not that useful to the project.

if i only did the tests that the devs are worried about i'd be happy path testing it all over the shop. happy days indeed! i find happy path testing is good for opening up questions and forming ideas about where problems might be lurking. plus it also helps clear the simple bugs, but i might go blog about that...

Permanent Link

2006-Apr-8 - Map it out?

Posted by jpweston

Nice job transferring some of your enthusiasm for testing/quality to folks who aren't officially "testers." That's huge since it increases the chance of them having "testing" in mind while writing code or creating docs. Hopefully, they will approach their work a tad more critically, which will make the end product that much tighter.

I've been thinking about putting together a roadmap document for the test lab I want to put together at my current job. My idea is to show where I'd like to end up in terms of testing areas and tools as well as processes. Then, like any other project, set milestones and follow up on them. I can hope that it will have some far-reaching influence on the powers-that-be, which will trigger a violent storm of funding and resources, but all I really want is a way to communicate my vision and keep myself on track.

Maybe something similar could help let folks know that you are "walking the walk", just one step at a time.

Good luck!

Permanent Link

<- Last Page • Next Page ->