Bye Bye 2007 – One more Testing year passed

Wishing all my readers a Very Happy New Year 2008

One more year passed. Or rather I would say one more Testing year passed. As usual, I was calculating (or rather re-calculating) my achieved milestones for the year 2007 in the Quality and Testing area. And I believe the achievements are countless. But hold down. There are countless achievements in Quality and Testing area but that are not related to me. May be I will take some more time to add some achievements in my working area that will be identified as global achievements.

When I look back, I notice that I have covered a long journey (not so long) full of Testing, Quality , challenges, hot arguments, achievements, and lots more. I am going to complete seven years in Quality and Testing domain. Started as a GTE (Graduate Trainee Engineer) and now a Testing Manager.

Like other years, last year was also full of workitement (Work + Excitement). I met with some wonderful people in this industry. One of the most common aspect that I had faced and still facing are the encounters that I have done (or still doing) with the other part of the Software Development. I mean the encounters with the development team. Some are really interesting, some are really good and some are really really bad. An encounter means the discussions where there is a disagreement between the development and Tesitng. Those disagreements are due to bugs, processes, deadlines and lot of other stuff. But the primary reason is the word called "Process".

Actually if someone is gladly not accepting the processes that are good for the project’s health, I think no one can do anything to make them convinced. Solo efforts are OK, but the process is much richer when other members of the project community are involved. Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. This statement truly captures the mentality of those software persons who doesn’t even want to discuss the word “Processes”.

Here is the list of comments that are really noteworthy that I received from my fellow development team till now in my Testing carrier.

1. Making things too knotty – Initially, when I started my carrier as a real and raw hardcore tester, this was one of the most common statements that I heard from the development engineers and their managers. Actually, I was the person, who has created numerous scenarios in the software while testing that is easy to explain for me but difficult to understand by the development team. But definitely, at the end of the software cycle, it was the customer that really appreciated my knotty things and software were become more or less OK.

2. Being difficult to handle – Well, one more common comment for me (or rather for all the genuine Testers) by the development side. Actually, if I found any bugs, it was really next to impossible to convince me that it was a bug. Most of the time, development was trying their best to convince me for their so called implemented (or I would say missed) feature. After having discussions with the customer, I was right most of the time and then the development team has to fix those bugs. I always emphasize on clarifying the problem because clarifying the problem can take you long way towards solving it.

3. Being philosopher – This is not a so old comment for me. In fact, this is one comment that every Testing Lead will get, if he is trying to implement some processes in an organization where existing processes are only as decorative as Chinese lamps and no one is ready to accept the new processes.

4. Not being a team player – This is the latest one that I got from a team who was far away from all the processes and working as they were working in a fish market. Here I have seen a lot of examples where reverse software engineering is being followed and if someone tries to do some process work (like me), a similar type of comment will be passed.

5. Creating unnecessary problems for the team – Not a new one from the development team but the dilemma is that I got this comment at that stage of my carrier when I was not expecting this from the other side. Ironically, I got this comment from a development manager who was a very senior guy.

Finally, I would like to say that be open for anything that works. Communication plays a major role in any project to make it a success. If the team is far behind an average communication channel, it is quite impossible to deliver a successful release to the customer. I learnt a lot from my rejections and I am still learning. But the good thing is that I am fine tuning myself and have done it till some extent. I firmly believe that improvement is a never ending process and everyone should drive his/her car on improvemement highway.

-- Sanat Sharma