Leave the testing to the experts

Why is it that in a company almost everyone has an opinion and knows the best way to test? What makes so many of these people feel they know how testing ought to be performed?
Business people tell me, the tester:

“You should be writing test cases and reporting against them”

Developers & technical people tell me to:

” automate the lot using cucumber/PACT/Selenium or some other niche technical tool”

Test Managers (many who have never tested) tell me:

“You should be following a formalised signed-off testing process”

I find this quite extraordinary. I don’t tell you, oh developer how to code your program. I don’t tell you oh, sales person, how to sell your product.

So why do you think it's reasonable and perfectly acceptable to tell me how to test software?

Perhaps it's because we all test to some degree. But just because I can build a car or sell one doesn’t mean I can drive it. Just because I know how to drive a car, doesn’t mean I go and tell a rally driver how to race around a track.

The truth is, most developers, project managers and business people don’t understand testing in any deep way. Instead they often resort to shallow imitations, an emperors test suite, if you will.  That’s partly the fault of the testing profession. We’ve failed to claim our turf and instead tugged our forelock, deferring ideology to those with authority but little understanding.

It’s time tester’s to claim some turf back. I suspect (actually I know) for many places it won’t be given up without a struggle. You’re going to need courage backed by confidence in your ability if you want to claim some of the territory. But it’s worth it. With space comes freedom and the autonomy to drive your testing strategy and process in a way that you know will offer value to your organisation and your clients.

Now, please get out of my way and leave the testing to the experts!