The document discusses how testers provide services to stakeholders and proposes standardizing attributes of testing services to facilitate comparisons. It provides examples of testing services like requirements breakdown and API tests. It suggests attributes like cost, lead time, code coverage, and defects found to catalog services. Standardizing comparable attributes can help stakeholders select appropriate testing services while avoiding misleading attributes.

1. Confidential
The Service Minded Tester
Test Service Attributes
Rev PA1 2011-12-07 1

2. Introduction
 A tester provides a service to stakeholders [1][2]
 This goes for outsourced testers, in-house testers, testers who are
integrated with the development teams, and testers who are
separated from developers
 So what services does a tester provide?
 This is something that each tester should reflect on, and try to
document for their stakeholders

3. What services does a tester provide?
This is of course highly context dependant, but some examples could be:
Requirements KPI & Benchmark
Breakdown Test
Code Testability
E2E Test
Input
Developer Test
System Test
Tool Support
API Tests Functional Test

4. How are these services comparable?
 When a service catalogue is defined, the next question is how the
different services can be described in a way that makes them
comparable
 A stakeholder must understand the cost and benefit of a specific
service
 A standardized set of attributes for each service could be one way
to catalogue the different services

5. Standardized Service Attributes
 The attributes are dependant on what information the stakeholders
need to make educated decisions on which services they need
 It is difficult to make all attributes applicable to all activities, but the
more comparable the better
 The risk is always that the attributes are misleading to the
stakeholders
 Code Coverage
 Test Cases Executed
 Defects Found

6. Standardized Service Attributes Example
Investment in new
Cost tools and test
environment
Average number of
Lead Time
bugs found
Covered Quality
Code Coverage
Characteristics
Number of Test
Confidence in
Cases or Test
Results
Sessions Executed
Test Layer Test Quadrant

7. Conclusion
 Since testing is a service it can be very valuable to provide
stakeholders with a catalogue of the services a tester
provides – this should be done by all testers regardless of
their location or integration in the development process
 Standardized test service attributes is one way to facilitate
service selection for the stakeholder
 It is important to select the right attributes so that the
stakeholders are not mislead in their selection

8. Reference
[1] A Tester’s Commitments
http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/652
[2] 10 Things About Testing That Should Die
http://scott-barber.blogspot.com/2011/11/10-things-about-testing-that-should-die.html