“If you take my candid advice, the crux of my career says, Don’t choose Testing field, your organization will treat you as a necessary evil, your developer will always think you are a foe, your manager thinks you are interested in increase his project time, what I see is hate in everyone’s eyes. Hate, Hate, Hate.”
This happened in a network meeting of tester community, and this advice was being doled out generously to some freshers from IT Engineering colleges as they were trying to understand their future prospect in Software Testing Field, and the above remark or shall I say advice was given by a veteran tester, one of the best in his field.
This remark pushed me down the memory lane, how in few organisations that I have worked, have felt the same. But this had changed with changing time, or I think I am one of the few who does not feel the same now. So, I wanted to know why all this hate and why I don’t feel the same now and what advice I can give to organisations as a Consultant and a veteran in the same field.
As I can remember correctly, I was feeling the same way as that gentleman, till I I got empowered by my Agile Training and switched to a project where the team was practicing development with Agile practices. The difference was visible in the working:
- I was in constant in communication with the development team from the start of the development and not once they have done their task.
- I was seen as a fruitful part of the team, although they still had the traditional view, but I could see the change in their attitude as we progressed ahead in the project.
- We were growing as a team and my suggestions were welcomed since I was giving them suggestions not after the mistake is made, but to avoid the mistakes.
- The overall time required to compete a project although was almost the same, as it was our first time, but overall relationship had improved and negativity was non-existent.
Now, is this because we were using agile practices, NO, the answer is a resounding NO. Agile practices had actually pushed us to consider the opportunity of putting the development team , Managerial and Testing team together and think towards the common goal of making the project successful, which If I see back now, is anyway a given thing that we shall be doing, since we are in the same organization, same project and working towards the same goal. So, what had changed?
… THE MINDSET …
Yes, you are right, we were pushed to change our mindset, and start our thinking afresh, that it’s not the enemy in the other department, when you become the same department or the team. And when you start communicating and when the development team understood that we in the testing department also feel that its our responsibility to see a great product that they are building shall actually be perceived as great when a user actually gets the feel of it.
So, coming out of my slumber of my project, this is what I had to share with you and my friend. The Organisations need to understand that they need to change the mindset of them versus me within the departments and yes, practices like agile can be helpful, but if not used with right mindset, might actually widen the gap more than before.
In conclusion, First thing to address is Mindset and then introduce the best practices to strengthen and support the team in that endeavor to make the organization a great place to work, and that will automatically lead to products which are WOW for your clients, customers and end users.