QA or Test? Does it Matter? You Bet it Does! Some of us are called QA. Some of us are called test. Whether we are managers, analysts, engineers, whatever, does it really matter what our first “name” is? Yes. It matters, because it sets expectations in the rest of the organization. When we call ourselves “quality assurance,” we set ourselves up for assuring product quality. When we call ourselves testers, we set ourselves up for testing. How can we live up to those expectations—whatever they are? What happens if we don’t? These are the slides from Johanna Rothman's keynote from Belgium Testing Days 2012.

1. QA or Test? Does it Matter?
You Bet it Does!
Johanna Rothman
New: Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects
@johannarothman
www.jrothman.com
jr@jrothman.com
781-641-4046

2. What’s in a name?
That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
2 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

3. 3 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

4. Gather Some Data
How many of you have How many of you have
“Quality” in your job titles? “Test” in your job titles?
How many of you measure How many of you measure
for process improvement? for process improvement?
How many of you do How many of you do
process improvement? process improvement?
4 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

5. Feedback is What Matters
Does your work provide feedback to the project team
and the business people for release decisions?
Does the project team obtain sufficient feedback about
their work to be able to improve it?
5 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

6. Things That Don’t “Matter”
Anyone in the project team making the release decision
Business decision
Anyone in the project team owning defect data
Because it’s a lagging indicator
Multi-dimensional project data matters
6 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

7. What is Software?
Design activity
Test and development need to partner
7 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

8. Is It Possible to Assure Software
Product Quality?
8 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

9. Test and Dev Form a Partnership
“We are all developers; some of our code ships, some
stays”
9 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

10. Real Quality Assurance
More like Internal Affairs
Audit the process
Don’t do the work
Separate from Test
10 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

11. Heresy
Process improvement needs to be owned by the people
doing the work, not by an outside group
11 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

12. Our Names Set Other People’s
Expectations of Us
12 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

13. Expectations All the Way Up/Down the
Organization:
Who owns product quality if the
testers are called “QA”?
13 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

14. Look at the Project Pyramid
14 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

15. Everything About a Project is a
Business Decision
Time to Release is a business decision
Feature set is a business decision
Defect levels are a business decision
...
15 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

16. Product Quality is a Business Decision
16 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

17. Quality Depends on Market Position
17 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

18. Product Complexity Leads to Different
Product Quality Decisions
18 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

19. Who is Responsible for Quality?
Senior management
19 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

20. What Do You Think You Should Be
Called, Now?
What does the organization expect of you?
What do you expect of yourself?
How congruent are those expectations?
20 © 2012 Johanna Rothman

21. References and More Reading
Tons more on jrothman.com
If you’d like me to stay in touch with you, give me your
card, sign up for my email newsletter or email me to sign
you up.
I’ll be putting these slides up on slideshare.
21 © 2012 Johanna Rothman