For getting a testing project/job/contract we have not to forget that, to get it, the most important thing is not the testing skill.

Most of the time people interviewing you are not testers or not testers with the same ideas like you about testing.

The things that will matter  more can be:

• Reputation, this will help you getting the project without being asked too many questions related to your skills
• Ability to talk and convince, especially enthusiasm or maybe seriousness that can click your probable client’s interest.
• Being cheap, this is to consider, even if is not pleasant.  This is the main criteria this days for a lot of companies.
• Some hiring people have some … weirdness… a rule that they use in their own life. They like people that: have family, play golf, go hunting, are over-organized or whatever… This is just how they take the decisions.
• General set of skills, most companies use check-box lists and then select based on  that…
• Being non-aggressive, not causing problems and conflicts at work

And there is a huge list of items that come before the actual testing skills, and this should not be frustrating as it its an unwritten rule in every area.

Participating in EWT again made me re-think  of impossible problems. I don’t think a tester should spend too much time figuring out what a functionality should be or trying to guess the expected behavior. A tester should though recognize an impossible problem or to clarify the requirements.

First of all we need to determine the oracle, the set of references that tell us that something is a bug or not. And for this we need to clarify the requirements for things that are documented and for things that are not documented.

What is actually metrics? Is basically a form of control and monitoring. You need some results to trick the employees somehow, give the sensation of some sort of advancement.  As I stated before I don’t believe too much in this.

In a lot of companies the main objective for a tester is to become “leeead” (long “e”), because the work seems super relative to everyone. Of course this sole motivation makes an annoying environment eventually  and the lack of interest will eventually kick in.

Sometimes fake objectives are drawn to look nice, which of course are never followed.

Since automation looks cool in name the tendency is to fill 100 % with tasks related to this. Its more easier of course to measure it. No one cares if the tests are made shallow covering a small basic scenario only. Till of course major failures, complains from customers etc…

But I have to add this document as a start point to use metrics http://www.kaner.com/pdfs/metrics2004.pdf

Since this is a hot subject on the software-testing mailing list I though I put some lines about it.
First of all I myself have little clue on how a good metric for testing should be. I know this causes a lot of problems in testing.
I am not saying not using a metric at all should be the solution because its impossible in an organization. There is the need for a formal one at least.
But let’s not focus extremely too much on it because let’s face it:

• Promotions are established well in advanced without any relation to real productivity, possible even before hiring
• Raises are given to all the employees usually and is percentage of salary most of the time
• Firing people is mostly done in cases of financial troubles

And there are many other situations when using metrics for employee evaluation that are completely un- useful.

Usually the general view is the one deciding and for the most part is the best. Enforcing metrics will increase the chances for sabotage among employees or give false results.

I don’t have a valuable solution for this but it would help differentiating testing metrics to development metrics. Because:

• Testing is considered a simpler activity for a specific functionality than developing it, but testing has to deal not only with a task-done type of thing, but larger areas, interactions, thing that shouldn’t be there. Is basically an infinite process
• Testing is more closer to marketing and arts or puzzle solving than computer science
• Testing is little bit trying to break the toy than building it up-so again common metric is not relevant

Things that a tester  does in addition to testing can be measured: installing an environment, reporting, presence at work. But is not relevant to the main job itself.

Also what should not be done (!!!) is rewarding testers by completely absurd criterias like:

• Times per week going to gym
• Playing guitar lessons
• Speaking loud and much
• Sabotaging skills
• Blaming skills to pay
• More bills
• etc

Although those above have some relevance it should not be considered a major factor because this means that testing in that organization is not taken seriously and doesn’t have a real chance to improve.

Metrics are indeed hard but if you use a group of sub-metrics and a good impartial general view you can tell what tester is more productive than the rest after some period.

It’s more like evaluating a person who is a better friend: is it the one who goes with you the most of the time to beer?  Could be – but is hardly a good criteria; it could be a  sub-metric though that can influence it.

If you like this trick you can use it in your own page by placing the following code in your body section:

This is very known simple javascript usage. But it depends on imagination if you can create something nice.

Similarly we have the view testing. Its not “click click” only, because you can reduce by this principle every activity to a “manual” operation.

Note: If you accessed directly http://www.testalways.com you will not see the first part of this post so try to click on the title of the post, see if anything changes.