You call that testing - how can that add value

It’s important that all testing people start considering how they add value for their salary. If they don’t their job is on the line in the next offshoring or staff redux. If you are not adding value* to the customers, company and yourself – in that order – every day. What are you doing there anyways? (*: oddly enough, sometimes just listening in on a meeting can add direct value.)

[ You Call That Testing? Really? What is the value in THAT? | THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 2012| Pete Walen ]

Part of the problem is many (most) businesses look at testing and testers as expenses.  Plain and simple.  It does not seem to matter if the testers are exercising software to be used internally or commercial software to be used by paying customers.  We are an expense in their minds.

If we do stuff they do not see as “needed” then testing “takes too long” and “costs too much.”  What is the cost of testing?  What is the cost of NOT testing?

I don’t know.  I need to think on that.  One of the companies I worked for, once upon a time, it was bankruptcy.  Other were less dramatic, but avoiding the national nightly news was adequate incentive for one organization I worked for.

One of the participants in the meeting compared testing to some form of insurance – you buy it, don’t like paying the bill, but when something happens you are usually glad you did.  Of course, if nothing bad happens, then people wonder why they “spent so much” on something they “did not need.”

I don’t have an answer to that one.  I need to think on that, too. 

See also Testing can add business value to any project state, Cutting costs will not get you value,

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