A good tester is all over the place
Over the past year, I’ve been thinking about how testing-related roles are still an unsolved problem in software development. We keep trying different permutations: shifting left and shifting right, being closer to the programmers while not too far from other testers, doing less testing ourselves so we can support others more, etc.
And still, to be effective in any of these permutations, you can’t let yourself be limited by them. You need to work both inside and outside the existing structures. You have to “be all over the place”, in a good way.
Testers do testing
Let’s start with a straightforward statement: a tester tests. Then what is testing? I still like the definition “Testing is investigating in order to evaluate a product.” The most obvious thing to investigate, to test, is the code that is being written. The best way to do this, in my opinion, is through the combination of exploratory testing and test automation, i.e. what Maaret Pyhäjärvi has named “contemporary exploratory testing“. And to be clear, while the execution part tends to be the most visible, effective testing also needs good test strategy, design, and reporting.