What does senior management think about the testing group?

Answering the title question, I recollect all my memories and list down the views that I have heard from ZAT management - Zero Aware Testing management. I already covered on one of my blog about ZAT management in the past.

· Bottleneck
· What is the point?
· Necessary evil
· Ad hoc
· Why so much time?
· Wastages of time
· No value addition in the product
· Too slow
· Overstaffed
· Too many excuses
· Testing should find everything
· Quality gatekeeper
· Find bugs too late
· Testing less value than other disciplines

In my professional experience of around 9 years till date, I understood that the senior management (ZAT management) doesn’t understand what to expect from the testing effort.

I worked in an organization in the past where many users and senior managers expect the testers to find all of the bugs. This is probably not possible and surely is not practical. If too many bugs are ultimately making their way in to production, then one way to reduce the number might be through additional testing and subsequent correction. But, a better solution might be through better understanding the user’s needs, creating better requirements, or producing better code from the onset.

I got a line from one of a senior manager in an organization saying that testing people have nothing to do except to find out the mistakes of the coders. And believe me, that manager has a work experience of 15 years in the IT industry. GOD, SAVE THE IT INDUSTRY OR AT LEAST SAVE THE TESTING. One of a great coder, with whom I worked, said that it is all because of the coders that the testers are getting the job. It means that the coders are 100% sure that whatever they will code, it will be a buggy product.

One of a manager in an organization was always raising the concerns about the testing cycle estimation provided by me for any component testing. He always bargains me with the effort days. We bargain the same like two fools and come up with a solution. The solution was simple. Just reduce the testing cycle effort to 50%. And later, that manager was giving the testing cycle effort estimation by his own, without even discussing with the testing team. WHAT AN IDEA ......

Testing is not the quality gatekeeper. The purpose of testing is not to ensure the quality of the software, but rather to measure its quality. It is true, that the testers may find bugs that, if fixed, will ultimately result in a better product, but this is due not only to the testers but also to the programmers who fix the bugs found by the testers. Testing is just one facet of the quality solution. Responsibility for the quality of the product must reside in the entire team: users, requirements analysts, developers, and, yes, the testers.

-- Sanat Sharma