The Importance of Taking Part in Discussions as a Tester
Participating in meetings and discussions is about more than adding value.
For me, knowledge and information is the key to doing a good and professional job as a software tester. However, I often meet people who do not understand why testers should attend meetings and discussions led by business owners, developers, operations and other non-testing roles.
Sometimes these statements come even from the software testers themselves.
This article looks at how testers can benefit from participating in these discussions, and suggests approaches to some of the challenges.
About Adding Value
Some people believe that only people who add value and contribute should attend a meeting. I see this very often and it discourages testers from attending.
I think this belief is wrong for most environments.
Here are some very good reasons to attend meetings and discussions without the intention of adding value.
Participate to Learn
As I said at the beginning, knowledge is an important resource for software testers. So is the opportunity to learn. Meetings are an excellent opportunity to learn (more quickly) about topics about which you know little or nothing.
Whether the topics are business-related or more on the technical side.
Some testers may be afraid to attend technical meetings. They worry that they will not understand enough to benefit.
When I started working on a project that developed a flexible, highly configurable and feature-rich Identity and Access Management (IAM) I knew nothing about security, authentication, and other related topics. The more opportunities I had to listen to the conversations and ask questions, the better I understood the things the developers were talking about. This approach helped me to learn faster and more deeply about the system under test.
Try to be brave and participate anyway, even if you lack knowledge and are worried. Try to be curious and ask questions. Look things up on the internet.
Give yourself time to learn and gain the knowledge you need.
Participate to Gather Information
Based on what you have learned and understood, you can use meetings to gather information relevant to your testing.
Depending on your environment, it may be difficult to access decisions and plans that have been made that affect your testing. If this information is not coming to you and is not easy to find, it may be more efficient to get it from where it originates: the meetings and discussions.
As you listen, you can take notes of information and questions that are relevant to your testing. You can look for risks, pitfalls and the potential impact of a change. This helps you to think through your testing approach and increases the chance of finding problems that matter.
You attend to add value to your own work as a tester. And I think that is just as important as adding value to the meeting itself.
Participate to Support
Testers work with the system under test - a lot. This means they have a lot of knowledge about its capabilities and behaviour.
When you attend meetings and discussions, you can bring this knowledge of the software to the table. Any change may have an impact or a dependency on what already exists, and this should be taken into account. Pointing out these dependencies and impacts helps to find problems early, before development and testing has even begun.
You can also play devil's advocate. Everyone around you is focused on solving problems and building things. As a tester, you can try to stay out of it and think about the risks and downsides. This allows the solution to be improved at an early stage.
But be aware of the context of the meeting. Giving too much pushback while others are trying to find a solution is not always helpful. You need to learn when is the right time and how much evil thinking is helpful. Otherwise, you give people a good reason to keep you out.
Participate to Collaborate
I believe we can be more efficient and build better products and services by working together across roles. The development process should enable all roles to work as efficiently as possible and bring different perspectives to the table. Not only when we work on solutions, but also when we work on plans that guide our development process.
As a tester, you are part of it. Use meetings and discussions to point out problems that hinder your testing - and work with the people involved to find a solution that works best for everyone.
How can the work be divided and planned to allow early testing and feedback? What about testability, test data and test setup? These questions help to create a better and more efficient plan. They allow for parallel work and early preparation.
Help improve the process.
Use your knowledge to create your own solutions or suggest changes to the solution being discussed.
Help improve the product.
So if anyone questions why you are attending a particular meeting or discussion, I hope these points will help you to make your case and show them the benefits.
Happy learning, information gathering, supporting and collaborating,
Florian