Test as it stands in many organisations is increasingly unfit for purpose. It is often seen as a cost centre not a value add service. Why? Because having separate Test groups leads to the abdication of quality responsibility by everyone else in the lifecycle. With changes in processes, increase maturity and availability of tools to optimise delivery Test is in danger of becoming obsolete. And so it should! Test is dying but we need more testing than ever before.

1. The Abolition of
Test?
Test is dead! Long live testing!

2. A beginning and an End
“There is nothing so
useless as doing efficiently
that which should not be
done at all.”
-Peter Drucker

3. Requirements Architecture Design Build
Test
Abdication of quality
responsibility to
“Test” leads to the
accumulation of
quality debt that
cannot be
remediated in test.

4. Development
Sprint
Test Sprint
Development
Sprint
Development
Sprint
Development
Sprint
Test Sprint Test Sprint Test Sprint
Regression Sprint
All this does is move from a large waterfall to a large
cascade

6. Test Director
Test Manager
Senior Tester
Senior Tester
Test Analyst
Test Analyst
Etc
Test Manager
Senior Tester
Senior Tester
Test Analyst
Test Analyst
Etc
Programme
Manager
Test Manager
Testers
Lead BA
BA’s
Etc…
TestGovernance
Test Consultant
Test Consultant
Test Consultant
BA Dev Test
Product Owner
Structural Problems

7. All this leads to this
Acceptance
System
Integration
Unit
Acceptance
System

8. The challenge
Current conceptions of
testing and their attendant
structures lead to the
abdication of quality
responsibility to test.

9. We did it to ourselves

10. What to do?

11. The Solution?
“Be the change you
want to see in the
world”
-Mahatma Gandhi

12. The client said that this works because the developers know that they have
100% responsibility for the application. If it doesn't work, the
developers can't say that "QA didn't catch the problem." There is no QA
team to blame. The buck stops with the application development team.
They better get it right, or heads will roll.
As British author Samuel Johnson famously put it, "The prospect of being
hanged focuses the mind wonderfully.“
http://blogs.forrester.com/mike_gualtieri/11-02-17-want_better_quality_fire_your_qa_team
If we don’t do it to
ourselves, someone else will
do it to us

13. “Investing in testing, means simply this - investing in building a flawed
product and then spending more money to "fix it" to make it beautiful.
Instead why can't we just invest in a product that is beautiful from day one?”
- Satish Satyam
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140817172649-73355280-let-s-get-rid-of-software-testing-or-not
Where would you spend your
money?

14. Splitting the proverbial hair
Test
Is a separate function in an organisation
Is ‘responsible for testing’
Is often seen as an (un)necessary expense
Must estimate and get involved according to
strict scope
Testing
Is embedded throughout the
lifecycle
Is everyone’s responsibility
Is seen as vital
Is included in everyone’s estimates
as a part of what they do

15. Together vs separate
“There is a difference
between editing and proof
reading. Author and editor
co-create. A proof reader
just highlights mistakes.”
-Matt Mansell

16. Adapt or die

17. How do we adapt?
Organisational Test Leadership not Management
Quality becoming everyone’s responsibility
Adaptive culture among testers; constantly learn new things
Better use of available capabilities and tools

18. Leadership vs Management
“Management is doing
things right; leadership
is doing the right things”
-Peter Drucker

19. Quality it everyone’s
responsibility
None of this Lots of this

20. Adaptive Culture
“I’m still
learning”
- Da Vinci age 87
“The more that you read
the more that you’ll know.
The more that you learn
the more places you’ll go”
- Dr Seuss

21. Better use of available
capabilities and tools
Continuous Integration, Testing and Delivery
• Get technical; learn SOA testing, learn to automate (not GUI automation)
• Learn about it and advocate for it, but realise it changes everything about your job
Lean Transformation
• This is far bigger than test, ultimately everyone from the Board/Minister down need to
change
Environments on Demand
• Learn about how stubbing and environment management products can remedy the
environment problems it seems like most testers complain about
Get off the beaten track
• Learn to do something specialised like Usability Testing

22. Turn this into That
Acceptance
System
Integration
Unit
Acceptance
System
Integration
Unit
100%
automation
70 to 80%
automation
Automate as
much as
possible
10% or less
manual
functional
testing

23. A long road ahead
“First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
then you win.”
-Mahatma Gandhi
“Ones destination is
never a place, but a new
way of seeing things.”
-Henry Miller

24. Acknowledgements
• Self fulfilling prophecy cartoon:
https://ingmarschumacher.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/
do-sovereign-ratings-lead-to-a-self-fulfilling-prophecy/