@lbarkanova has written about the challenges of lay offs and how they are connected to the perception of what testers do and their value.
It’s a great read and an important topic. Sometimes selling the value of testing to others can be really difficult. Especially when others have strong misconceptions of what we do.
So here’s my question: How do you promote your value as a tester or QA? How do you go about educating team members on what you do in your testing and why it’s essential?
Personally, I’ve always been an advocate for showing rather than telling. Communicating what I’ve done and why it’s valuable through Exploratory testing debriefs, bug triages and stand ups.
Understand that you are a service. Never ever say what the people using the service should and should not do. I.e. this bug has to be fixed. The value you bring is information so other people can take better decisions. Typically should we do something about it or move forward anyway.
Regarding bugs, treat them as feedback. If the product have an error in it because someone made a mistake (we will ignore sabotage for now) understand it is a mistake. Do not gloat, do not rub it in their face. Do not joke with other testers on how stupid this bug is. Unless you are very familiar with the persons I would suggest to play the stupid card a lot. “I did this and the product did this, don’t know if I did something wrong…”. Always allow the person that made the mistake to save face.
Focus on both good and bad. I.e. maybe you tested something that was very solid, but you found one minor concern. Make sure to provide that information too. It was very, solid, the only thing I could find was this thing. Instead of “It has this issue”.
A little side note, different people have different basic agendas. A product owner or anyone who is responsible for paying for software to be made typically want to give value in the hands of the customer., i.e. they want to ship it. A developer wants to solve the problem. Make the code do what it should. And a tester wants to understand. A lot of communication can be better if you understand these agendas. And as a tester being sensitive to this will help you make others perceiving your value.
As soon as you are across the table at the interview, the important question is ‘how can I as QA, add value to the person across from me, to the team that I will manage, to other teams and to the organisation as a whole?’
It is in the spirit of collaboration with others that lets us shine - This means that although the core of what we do remains constant, the message and delivery of that outcome will vary depending on the recipient (whether that be software development, BA ,Product owner or Support).
I find the demonstration of issues within Triage sessions truly valuable as the audience there represent all different functions with the premise being to gather understanding of the issues raised, but more importantly to allow decisions to be collectively made as to the contingency/mitigation of them
Record, celebrate and communicate your successes.
I have a success list I update regularly which as well as helping me evidence my goals, it also reminds me of the good work I do. In the right situations I can share updates with my manager, a project or group to highlight my contributions. I feel it works well.