Paul Gerrard

First published 05/07/2018

Do you remember the 'Testing is Dead' meme that kicked off in 2011 or so? It was triggered by a presentation done by Alberto Savoiea here . It caused quite a stir, some copycat presentations and a lot of counter-arguments. But I always felt most people missed the point being made. you just had to strip out the dramatics and Doors music.

The real message was that for some organisations, the old ways wouldn't work any more, and as time has passed, that prediction has come true. With the advent of Digital, mobile, IoT, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, some organisations are changing the way they develop software, and as a consequence, testing changes too.

Shifting testing left, with testers working more collaboratively with the business and developers, test teams are being disbanded and/or distributed across teams. With no test team to manage, the role of the test manager is affected. Or eliminated.

Test management thrives; test managers come and go.

It is helpful to think of testing as less of a role and more of an activity that people undertake in their projects or organisations. Everyone tests, but some people specialise and make a career of it. In the same way, test management is an activity associated with testing. Whether you are the tester in a team or running all the testing in a 10,000 man-year programme, you have test management activities.

For better or for worse, many companies have decided that the role of test managers is no longer required. Responsibility for testing in a larger project or programme is distributed to smaller, Agile teams. There might be only one tester in the team. The developers in the team take more responsibility for testing and run their own unit tests. There’s no need for a test manager as such – there is no test team. But many of the activities of test management still need to be done. It might be as mundane as keeping good records of tests planned and/or executed. It could be taking the overall project view on test coverage (of developer v tester v user acceptance testing for example).

There might not be a dedicated test manager, but some critical test management activities need to be performed. Perhaps the team jointly fulfil the role of a virtual test manager!

Historically, the testing certification schemes have focused attention on the processes you need to follow—usually in structured or waterfall projects. There’s a lot of attention given to formality and documentation as a result (and the test management schemes follow the same pattern). The processes you follow, the test techniques you use, the content and structure of reporting vary wherever you work. I call these things logistics.

Logistics are important, but vary in every situation.

In my thinking about testing, as far as possible, I try to be context-neutral. (Except my stories, which are grounded in real experience).

As a consultant to projects and companies, I never knew what situation would underpin my next assignment. Every organisation, project, business domain, company culture, and technology stack is different. As a consequence, I avoided having fixed views on how things should be done, but over twenty-five years of strategy consulting, test management and testing, certain patterns and some guiding principles emerged. I have written about these before[1].

To the point.

Simon Knight at Gurock asked me to create a series of articles on Test Management, but with a difference. Essentially, the fourteen articles describe what I call “Logistics-Free Test Management”. To some people that's an oxymoron. But that is only because we have become accustomed in many places to treat test management as logistics management. Logistics aren't unique to testing.

Logistics are important, but they don't define test management.

I believe we need to  think about testing as a discipline where logistics choices are made in parallel with the testing thinking. Test Management follows the same pattern. Logistics are important, but they aren't testing. Test management aims to support the choices, sources of knowledge, test thinking and decision making separately from the practicalities – the logistics – of documentation, test process, environments and technologies used.

I derived the idea of a New Model for Testing – a way of visualising the thought processes of testers – in 2014 or so. Since then, I have presented to thousands of testers and developers and I get very few objections. Honestly!

However, some people do say, with commitment, “that's not new!”. And indeed it isn't.

If the New Model reflects how you think, then it should be a comfortable fit. It is definitely not new to you!

One of the first talks I gave on the New Model is here. (Skip to 43m 50s to skip the value of testing talk and long introduction).

[caption id=“attachment_1068” align=“aligncenter” width=“525”] The New Model for Testing[/caption]

Now, I might get a book out of the material (hard-copy and/or ebook formats), but more importantly, I'm looking to create an online and classroom course to share my thinking and guidance on test management.

Rather than offer you specific behaviours and templates to apply, I will try to describe the goals, motivations, thought processes, the sources of knowledge and the principles of application and use stories from my own experience to illustrate them. There will also be suggestions for further study and things to think about as exercises or homework.

You will need to adjust these lessons to your specific situation. It requires that you think for yourself – and that is no bad thing.

Here’s the deal in a nutshell: I’ll give you some interesting questions to ask. You need to get the answers from your own customers, suppliers and colleagues and decide what to do next.

I'll be exploring these ideas in my session at the next Assurance Leadership Forum on 25 July. See the programme here and book a place.

In the meantime, if you want to know more, leave a comment or do get in touch at my usual email address.

[1] The Axioms of Testing in the Tester’s Pocketbook for example, https://testaxioms.com

Tags: #testassurance #testmanager #NewModelTesting #ALF #TestManagement #post-format-gallery

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