Tester's Musings

  Quality Advocacy                      \___ 3rd tier/level --- designers,  coders                      \___ 2nd tier/level --- quality advocates                      \___ 1st   tier/level  --- grassroots testers  ================= definitions:  ================= ..Quality [ Q ] = the state of the product (high or low) at any given time (m).  ..QA [ Quality Advocacy ] = the monitoring/measuring of quality to know quality ; unless it is monitored/measured, quality [ Q ] cannot be known. Quality Advocacy extends to all 3 tiers/levels.  ..QA [ Quality Assurance ] =  working together  as a  Development Team (coders + testers + proj.mgr + designers + etc.) which will always deliver a specific level of quality. ..software tester = 1st level, grassroots interactor [someone...

A Quality Advocate isn't / shouldn't be about auditing the work of your fellow testers.  The work of a Quality Advocate should be to check the current testing procedures vis-a-vis the product/prototype under test.  When you have testers testing under you / for you, the supervisor's role is not to check if the tester tested the product properly. Because the tester has already been coached to be critical-thinking, and exploratory -- so assuming his/her evaluative report shows exactly that -- then rather the sup's job is to see if there's an expanded way to model the product under test, to give a more justified evaluation.  What if we find there is nothing more to expand? Then either (a) you, as a supervisor, have failed in your task; or (b) your test team is above par excellent.   note: 'justified' :   General Context: In a general sense, "justified" can mean that something is reasonable, logical, or well-founded. For example, "Her concerns were...

As a software tester / QA (Quality Advocate) i no longer use the word "no."  i always start every report with "i found this [issue, with details of its STR(steps to replicate), risk, and impact]" -- and then follow up with "how do we look at it? what do we do with it?" almost instantly, everyone in the meeting will take a pause and conveniently reach to a common conclusion.  mature QA is no longer about happy path vs. negative testing. It is about how our product will fare out there in the wild.  link