Who's the REAL tool decision maker in your company? 🤔

🙋 Questions
,
1

Just curious - when it comes to new testing tools, who’s holding the magic wand in your organization?

Is it:

  • The CTO with their mystical spreadsheet?
  • That one dev who really likes shiny new things?
  • You and your testing team actually getting a say?
  • Or does everyone just wake up one day to “Surprise! New tool time!”
4 Likes
2

We decide indeed, but the head of engineering still has to approve the budget if the tool costs money. Otherwise, they trust us completely, we are mature enough :smiley:

But yea at other companies, every single decision is an option XD

4 Likes
3

Oooh, I might do a LinkedIn poll on this.

5 Likes
4

It depends on how convincing our supporting arguments are. The rest is up to our Head of Department.

3 Likes
5

I mean it’s budget primarily, especially around infrastructure type spending, which is very slow. But whenever we make a good case for it we get the tool we punt for. The way the annual budget is communicated, like many things is somewhat opaque. I mean which company is not a bit cagey with numbers. But for example when I need a new mac or a new phone for testing, I just order one or two and it arrives after 3 people have signed/reviewed it.

But all that means is the engineers who use the tool, build a good argument in Q3 to get something big to play with for Christmas or more likely in Q1 when the budget starts.

2 Likes
6

Love seeing this that your company trust their testers to make tool decisions. That’s exactly how it should be - we all know our craft best!

2 Likes
7

Oh I would love that, I’m sure a lot of us had soooo many difference experiences with that.

1 Like
8

Interesting! How do you typically build your case? Do you put together formal business cases, or is it more about presenting clear arguments in meetings?

Would love to hear what kind of supporting evidence works best in your experience!

1 Like
9

smart strategy!

Do you have any go-to points that usually make your argument stronger? Always curious about what convinces the budget-holders!

1 Like
10

I think the biggest problem with choosing a tool is always sheer amount of time to spend trying out options and doing your research. And that initial conversation to ask permission to even get a new tool. Some orgs may have vendor preferences, so tell people what you are doing. I have failed at this once as well @christinepinto because I skipped a lot of these steps.

  • Your team are going to be your evangelists for the tool, so show them all of the tool choices, with a rough cost and ask your team 4 opinions.
  • Find some tutorials for each tool, these will also inform you as to which tool might fit.
  • Join or scan the forum for the tools and ask questions, see what questions other people are asking.
  • Next part is getting all the demos to briefly try out, then I wrote up notes and screenshots on the wiki after using the demo.
  • Then share the wiki and those trainers videos with your team before going to management with a purchase request, but work on getting your team buy-in very high before you go to management.
2 Likes
11

Because we’re a consulting company with a number of projects, the tool decision tends to fall on a mix of people.

For my current project, the system testing tools were decided by me. The unit and integration testing tools were decided on by the tech lead.

For other projects, sometimes the client already has a tool requirement.

Those two tend to be the primary ways that tooling gets decided, though there’s always people with opinions in our office who are happy to give recommendations!

2 Likes
12

Usually, it’s the one who has great ideas, can and wants to actively “sell” them to others and the management, and can do it confidently, aggressively sometimes, and persistently. There might be different circumstances so sometimes you can sell crappy ideas or can’t sell a great one, some decisions are less impactful and important so no one cares and almost everyone can make such decisions

1 Like