Testing is Knowledge Work

It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter, LinkedIn, Slack, and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory.

I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be.

Perhaps you'd like to join me?

--00--

"We need some productivity metrics from testers"

OK. I'd like to help you meet your need if I can but to do that I'll need to ask a few questions. Let's start with these:

Who needs the metrics?
Is there a particular problem they're trying to solve?
Are there metrics for other roles that we can take as a model?
Do you have thoughts on what a productive tester looks like?
Do you have some concerns about existing tester productivity?
Are you seeking to make a behavioural change?
Would you be concerned that using a metric to incentivise particular activities can backfire?

After talking around them, I would hope we can get a shared understanding of what's being requested and can suggest some ways to approach it.

I'll tell you up front, though, that I view testers as knowledge workers and I recommend you take a look at Peter Drucker's essay, Knowledge Worker Productivity: The Biggest Challenge.

The paper is relatively short and consumable, and it contrasts knowledge work with manual work to show how traditional, simple, measures of productivity such as the number of identical widgets produced per hour can not apply directly to knowledge work:

In judging the performance of a teacher, we do not ask how many students there can be in his or her class. We ask how many students learn anything — and that’s a quality question ... Productivity of knowledge work therefore has to aim first at obtaining quality — and not minimum quality but optimum if not maximum quality [and so] we will have to learn to define quality.

This isn't to attempt to dodge your question, but if we're going to judge performance it's only fair that we have some understanding of what we're judging it against and how.

If we don't do that, people will have reason to think they're being taken for a ride.
Image: https://flic.kr/p/3Ezv76

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