Be Protractive

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Testers
Part 1 of 7

This is the first post in a series based on Stephen R. Covey's book but focused on what you can do to be more effective as a software tester.

One of the interesting challenges of software testing is caused by the fact that testing usually happens at the very end of the release cycle. This is a problem when all the milestones before testing are pushed back while the milestones after testing are unchanged. For example, the test-handoff is three weeks late but the GA date remains the same. That's called the squeeze, and it means that testers rarely have enough time to test as thoroughly as we should.

What can be done? You could try to push on the developers so that the software is delivered to test on the scheduled date. You could also try push on the executive's for a large corner office and a company Ferrari, with about as much luck. For many reasons, legitimate and otherwise, development is going to take longer than planned - so learn to live with it.

The other option is to be to be protractive and push back the GA dates as necessary to give your test team the time it needs. This will not make you popular because nobody likes to miss the GA date. If you want to be popular, I'll suggest to you that Software Test might not be best profession to pursue. Instead, you need to be firm. As bad as it is to be late, it is much worse to be on-time and buggy

One company I worked for had a policy that there would be a day-to-day slip of the GA date for every day the software was late into test. This policy showed a commitment to quality and a strong belief in the importance of test. That is not to say that as testers we can't or shouldn't work extra hard to make up some of the slip. If we can dothat, everyone wins because the software is less late, less buggy, and the testers are the heroes.

So, be efficient but thorough and make sure you take the time you need to test the software as much as you know it needs to be tested.

Next Up - Habit 2: Begin With the Vend in Mind

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