Ability to conduct testers in a small company / team

Question

My understanding is that he recommended that testers be separated from developers, that is, obviously, developers tested their code, but then specialized testers.

How does this really work in practice in a small project, say, 5 developers or less? It seems unlikely that you could keep the tester busy full time, and although you could attract random short-term people, I would say that the tester should have a good understanding of the application — its intended use, its users, its features — exactly the same. as you do not want developers to be transient in the project.

Answer 1

Of course, you can constantly monitor the tester - they must test the product throughout the entire development process, and not just at the end. In fact, leaving the test to the end of the project is the worst thing you can do.

I worked in several companies, which usually have 1 tester for every 2 developers, and never had problems with them when they had to do something, in fact, quite the opposite.

Both of them were small companies with 10-20 developers and 5-10 testers.

Answer 2

In a small company, this is difficult because you are right: you can’t just sit idle between rounds of formal testing. Of course, they can do other things, such as writing test cases and test plans, but even then they can have some downtime. It may make sense for a small company to hire contract testers when they are needed, since you can only have one product for testing, and the time between products is long. You can also see if you can find another company that will test for you - as well as for hiring contractors, but the contract will be concluded with the parent company, not with people.

In larger companies, usually (but not always) there are enough projects at different stages of development / testing, which will contain all the staff testers, mainly engaged in some kind of work. Of course, sometimes demand exceeds resources (full-time employees), so contractors are sometimes involved in a specific project. And yes, you are right, even contractors must be trained in the system they are testing, even if they are busy there for one project.

Answer 3

You can ask developers to test each other, but overall this is not a good idea, and a separate tester would be the best way. Another option is to find a third-party company that will check the application for you. It will also make you have the best specifications in the design.

Answer 4

I work in a small team environment, and rarely only 1-2 developers on any project. We do not, and I could not really see that there is a special tester. I usually engage my clients in testing a QA application in an intermediate environment before any release is released. This is more or less successful depending on whether the customer buys during the testing process. I also rely heavily on automated unit tests using TDD and significant manual user interface testing.

Although I would like to have people with specific QA testing responsibilities, and sometimes my client will appoint someone as such, this rarely happens. When I have a special tester (almost always a customer representative) who is involved in this process, I feel that the whole development process is going better.

Answer 5

In such situations, it is important to use formalized test plans and find any non-developer resources for testing. Often, the Technical Architect or Project Manager will need to authorize acceptance criteria or completely on test plans for new features, as well as test plans for regression testing. Try to get users, project managers, any interested parties who are ready to help you test. But give them a structure to test all the necessary test cases.

An external QA engineer can be very helpful in helping you architect your test plan, even if he / she does not complete all the tests.

Good luck.