In the Bloggers Club, it was mentioned that there is a lot of discussion in the community about why testers and quality professionals still need to justify their value.
How do you define value? Value can be determined in many ways. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, value has many definitions but one of them indicates that value is defined as “relative worth, utility, or importance”. So where does value fit in with being a software tester? Let’s look at the four questions and their answers below.
Question 1
How come it’s not so obvious what we do? How can we help a team/customer and the value we bring?
Answer
I think it is mainly that most people do not see what we do. As a team/customer, we can help by bringing value by continuing to inform others who were and what we do, and how we can help others. This includes voicing our concerns as a team by catching issues before the feature(s) are implemented.
Question 2
What things have you done that made a huge difference in changing the perception of the value you and your role bring to a team?
Answer
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- Writing documentation
- Asking questions
- Helping or mentoring others
- Teaching what we know
- Cross-collaborating with other teams
Question 3
How can we help each other to demonstrate our value?
Answer
- Try to make everyone feel part of the wins. This could be posting or sending a message of congratulations on the feature that the person worked on via Slack, Teams, or email
- It is acknowledging others that have helped you along the way.
- If time permits, volunteer your time to help team members. If you notice a colleague needs help or has a large workload, offer to help them complete some tasks
Question 4
What real examples and stories can we share with each other?
Answer
We can share with others the mistakes we made and use them as a learning opportunity for ourselves and for others especially when new hires join the team. This includes documenting mistakes, providing a solution, and sharing this with the team.