Weekly Meaningful Post...

Sorry I haven't made any meaningful posts lately, I'm a bit burried these days. My test schedule was booked through the beginning of April, and we got a "drop-in" project added to the queue. This particular project has been determined to be the number one priority right now (business-wise), so I've been juggling the schedule and available resources to minimize slippage on everything else - while developing a test plan and starting on test case design for the new project. Fortunately the other projects are on existing products - so the testing is ready to roll. I was a little flustered at first when this particular drop-in appeared, but worked through it with my team, pulled in an extra resource from another department to write some test harnesses for me, and things look like they're going to be OK.

I guess the meaningful part of this little story is twofold...
1) "Flexibility": In order for a Test Team to be successful, flexibility is mandatory. We need to test thoroughly on all of our projects, try to meet project schedules, and handle the unexpected when the business case requires. Juggling schedules and resources is often needed to meet all of these requirements. Being flexible, is the only way to keep things flowing in an ever changing landscape.
2) "Relationships": Good relationships with other departments (development in particular) is critical to your test team . Being able to pull an extra resource in from another department was a direct result of keeping relationships healthy. Sometimes a bit of animosity grows between developers and testers. " Us vs. Them" is a bad way to relate to your developers. A good tester is part psychologist. The Faults we find in a piece of code neeed to be presented in a way that makes the developers see "feedback" as opposed to "criticism". Keep it positive, let them know that you and they are working toward the same goal - good software. After all, that really is the goal for both teams.

Happy Testing!