TESTER PERCEPTION - PART 3

Its been a while since I have last blogged, its been hectic for one reason or another but I find myself with a bit more time so I can finish this series of blog posts.

In this post I will complete the set of posts on testers perception. This post will describe ways in which testers can change how they are interpreted. Testers can change how they are interpreted by showing how they add value by changing their behaviours.

Below are a few ways we can change how we are perceived as testers, 

1) Don't shout louder, improve your argument

Shouting louder than anyone else does not necessarily always work. We've all been there, you get quite heated in a discussion about a subject that you feel passionate about and someone else does the same and it all ends in disagreements and potentially damaged relationships. You need to think smarter. If you feel passionately about something on a project then do some research. Come up for valid reasons why you want something to be different.Try and find someone who agrees with you and work together to build a well formed argument around why this change would be good.

2) Use Socratic questioning

"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates

Socratic questioning is disciplined questioning that can be used to pursue thought in many directions and purposes. This includes: 

• to explore complex idea,
• get to the truth of things
• open up issues and problems
• uncover assumption........ as well as many others. 

It is linked to critical thinking and is used for teaching to probe students thinking. It can be a useful tool for a tester as by asking the right questions. We can uncover things like:

• Assumptions made by users and developers
• Why a user wants a particular feature

By using this style of questioning we change how we are perceived as we can do things like  help uncover issues before code is written as well as catch bugs early If a developer or user has made the wrong assumption. 

3) Hold Lunch for Learnings

Lunch for learnings are a great way (in an informal) setting of getting people together and doing an info share about a particular topic. You could do a session on an aspect of testing that the audience don't know about. If your development team think that testing is just a matter of writing you tests cases in Excel with detailed steps, then do a lunch for learning on Exploratory testing. These kind of sessions will educate other people in your business about testing and this in turn can help change their perceptions about what you do. Hopefully some people will want to know more and this in turn could develop into relationships that will help the testing process going forward.

If you are having trouble getting people to attend, just offer Pizza that always seems to work, :)

4) Pair up with a developer

Just because as a tester you may not be able to code does not mean you cannot be a valuable asset to a developer. To foster this a good idea is to try and pair with a developer whist they are writing the code. If possible they can talk you through what they are doing and you can question this. This questioning could be something simple like "Wouldn't that be useful to log that out put?" or something that could mitigate the risk of a bug  like "What if the users mobile phones loses signal when they enter data on that screen?"

This pairing will soon help the developer to realise that you input is vital to help develop an application with quality ingrained in it. 

Not all developer are willing to do this but you should start small by maybe just asking a quick question about the code in passing then slowly trying to get some time with them.

5) Advocate building quality into the product from the start

To do this you need to encourage certain practices into the development process. This may be more of a company culture 'thing' but that does not mean that you cannot be an advocate for it. This could include doing things such as:

• Getting involved in sprint planning
• Sitting in on code design sessions
• Helping to write user stories

the list goes on.....but by doing some of these you can demonstrate value by contributing and highlighting testing aspects that may not of been thought of. As a tester you probably have more experience than most in the UI (If there is one) and the overall functionality of the system, so you are 

full of useful knowledge that can be tapped into to help build quality in

Summary

Now the above points are just a few ways that you can add value which in turn can change how you are perceived as a person and a tester. There are more things you can do and some of these will be things that are less general and more specific to your company. 

It may be that you already feel valued and you are happy with how others perceive you, and if so keep doing what you are doing. However if you do not then you need to take some action to rectify it. We spend most of our lives with our work colleges and feeling appreciated and feeling like you are a valued contributor can make your days a lot more enjoyable.