1. © 2009, Confidential WMHL Ltd Perception is Reality! TMF October 2009

2. © 2009, Confidential WMHL Ltd Testers Perception Testing is considered a major area for improvement in many organisations And yet, we still feel undervalued? –We ‘battle’ to get our message across –We continue to improve communications skills –We obtain certification for greater credibility –We strive for earlier exposure to stakeholders and management

3. © 2009, Confidential WMHL Ltd Others Perception ‘Testing’ slows my project down, costs too much money and we still have faults in production! Still testers ask for more funding, education, people, and so on….. Testers give me lots of data, but can’t tell me if it’s OK to go live or even if they’ve finished testing!

4. © 2009, Confidential WMHL Ltd So What? OK, so I paraphrase and polarise to make a point I hear this all the time though How much of this sounds familiar to you? So, how did we get here? –If we can understand this question maybe we can find another way

5. © 2009, Confidential WMHL Ltd Firstly….. Most people go to work to do a good job, not to make life difficult for testers Most people have a focus on making progress, moving forward, and enhancing the business to the best of their ability If others disagree with us, maybe they have a point!

6. © 2009, Confidential WMHL Ltd My Perception of Testing History When life was simple! Mainframes ruled Developers tested their code thoroughly –Or they’d lose days out of their schedule Test environments were realistic Project budgets included test activity Many of today’s senior managers ‘grew up’ in this environment

7. © 2009, Confidential WMHL Ltd My Perception of Testing History Then things got harder! Distributed architecture Integration with multiple systems Distributed teams Test environments not representative Etc, etc, etc….. Quality suffered: –Creation of dedicated tester roles –Independent testing –Testing suppliers, test centres, a whole industry! –Developers given ‘permission’ to abdicate responsibility for testing Testing budgets created but project budgets not reduced!

8. © 2009, Confidential WMHL Ltd My Perception of Testing History Original view of test maturity Multi-disciplined team Independent Testers Specialist testers within the team New Multi-disciplined team ?

9. © 2009, Confidential WMHL Ltd And Today! Did we create a monster? Is the perception of others our fault? Are we following the original test maturity model? –Agile has multi-disciplined teams –Most organisations I talk to are keen to integrate testers within teams rather than have them independent now –Are we resisting the inevitable?

10. © 2009, Confidential WMHL Ltd Where to Next?