Developers in test.Yes, really!

I have mainly worked in high growth businesses, either in the form of start ups, or strategic projects in large corporations. My role typically involves promoting the use of sensible software engineering practices and software delivery patterns to help produce a product that works, and that can have frequent low risk change applied to it. In this type of environment, the team structure is very much organismic in nature. What this usually means is that there are very few people dedicated to, or specialising in, test activities. 

However, this does not mean that testing gets completely side stepped. We can still achieve the quality objectives of the organisation without dedicated specialists. Given the right means, I have found developers in this type of environment can become some of the best testers that you will come across.

How does that work?

There are a number of ways that we can use to bring effective testing to forefront of product engineering

Software Engineering Practices

I always ensure that developers are equipped with decision making power on how their work environments are structured, about the tools that they use, and about the delivery mechanism to push regular updates to a product. I ensure that teams use sensible practices such as CI, zero branching, infrastructure as code, contract testing, and the like. I push continuous delivery, and actively promote learnings made from many of the great people that I have worked with.

People

You need to hire engineers on the team that take a holistic and caring approach to software development. These are the people that have built successful products from the ground up, or have been pivotal players of very successful product teams. 

Test Activities

I find that coaching teams using principles from folk like James Bach and Michael Bolton to be incredible useful in up skilling developers quickly in the art of testing. These two guys have spent their careers honing a testing approach, and are so well drilled that you will always come away from any of their writings or teachings with more than a handful of powerful testing ideas. I personally think they are great guys that should be listened to a lot more. Their pragmatic, and often dogmatic approach, is contributing to the changing face of testing.

At some point organismic structures become mechanistic. This is when professional testers are hired. This is when test managers are hired, or may be a head of QA. At this point it is always really good to have facts and figures to assess just how successful the new order is compared to your pre-exising "testerless" state.