Kid in a sweet shop

I have the dream job at the moment …. I think. I’ve been asked to create a testing methodology for a company that wants to implement a software testing processes. Fantastic! I thought to myself, just what I’ve always wanted to do.

So I busily set about talking to people and finding out what they wanted and finally 3 months later we had this lovely document with templates which sits pride of place on my desk. And thats the problem, its about the only place where you can find it.

I did a couple of things, like creating a test office(they don’t have a test team..yet) with representatives from each department. I also did some training with the test office and for each department on an individual basis. I then went away and left them to their own devices. Funnily enough, I got a call back 2 months later asking for more assistance!

So I came back and found the following problems

1) Some people just don’t get it. Not everyone, but a large enough group don’t seem to understand the point and to them its just another bit of paperwork to get through (or not as seems to be the case).

2) They don’t seem to have time to implement it.One of the things I said at the start was that it was going to take more time to test in a structured way and to prepare for it, but the reality is that despite additional budgeting they still don’t seem to have the time to perform the necessary tasks such as test preperation.

3) They feel its just too much work to introduce testing concepts such as creating a test plan, test scripts and reporting, so they don’t do it.  I haven’t had much success on the defect tracking front either (excel spread sheets)

Its getting to the point where senior management are wanting results (no big surprise there!).

So I feel a bit like a kid in a sweet shop with all these different things to work on but I’m not too sure where to start.

This is what I have come up with:

1) Go to basics. Use minimum documentation (I’m thinking one spreadsheet) to take note of test script objectives, test log, defects and test report. Get them to use that and start taking some metrics down.

This will demonstrate that a) there is some form of process working and b) the metrics may prove valuable in the future.

2) Get project managers to track actual effort against the project schedule to start tracking the test preparation, execution and reporting effort.

3) Go to the senior manager and ask him what he wants to get out of the process (what are his goals). Then work out the problems associated with the goals, work out some actions and try and benchmark against those goals.

Thats about it so far, I’d value anyones comments on this one!

my two (aussie) cents for the day….