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The Fantasy of Attending all Design and Feature Review Meetings
Most testers find themselves outnumbered by devs. In my case it’s about 10 to 1. (The preferred ratio is a tired discussion I’d like to avoid in this post.)
Instead, I would like to gripe about a problem I’ve noticed as I accumulate more projects to test. Assuming my ten devs are spread between five projects (or app modules), each dev must attend only the Feature Review/Design meetings for the project they are responsible for. However, the tester must attend all five. Do you see a problem here?
Let’s do the math for a 40 hour work week.
If each project’s Feature Review/Design meetings consume eight hours per week, each dev will have 32 hours left to write code. Each tester is left with ZERO hours to test code!
The above scenario is not that much of an exaggeration for my team. The tester has no choice but to skip some of these meetings just to squeeze in a little testing. The tester is expected to “stay in the know” about all projects (and how those projects integrate with each other), while the dev can often focus on a single project.
I think the above problem is an oversight of many managers. I doubt it gets noticed because the testers’ time is being nickel and dimed away. Yet most testers and managers will tell you, “It’s a no-brainer! The tester should attend all design reviews and feature walkthroughs…testing should start as early as possible”. I agree. But it is an irrational expectation if you staff your team like this.
In a future post, I’ll share my techniques for being a successful tester in the above environment. feel free to share yours.
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