I’m a big fan of collaboration within software development groups. I like to work closely with developers and other team members (particularly documentation writers and customers who can be great bug finders), because we get great results by working closely together.

Here are some concerns I hear from people who aren’t used to this:

• How do testers (and other critical thinkers) express critical ideas?
• How can testers integrated into development teams still be independent thinkers?
• How can testers provide critiques of product development?

Here’s how I do it:

1) I try very hard to be congruent.

Read Virginia Satir’s work, or Weinberg’s Quality Software Management series for more on congruence. I work on being congruent by asking myself these questions:

• “Am I trying to manipulate someone (or the rest of the team) by what I’m saying?”
• “Am I not communicating what I really think?”
• “Am I putting the process above people?”

Sounds simple, but it goes a long way.

We can be manipulative on agile teams as well. If I want a certain bug to be fixed that isn’t being addressed, I can subtly alter my status at a daily standup to give it more attention (which will eventually backfire), or I can be congruent, and just say: “I really want us to focus on this bug.”

Whenever I vocalize a small concern even when the rest of the team is going another direction, it is worthwhile. Whenever I don’t, we end up with problems. It helps me retain my independence as an individual working in a team. If everyone does it, we get diverse opinions, and hopefully diverse views on potential risks instead of getting wrapped up in groupthink. Read Brenner’s Appreciate Differences for more on this.

Sometimes, we ignore our intuition and doubts when we are following the process. For example, we may get annoyed when we feel someone else is violating one of the 12 practices of XP. We may harp on them about not following the process instead of finding out what the problem is. I have seen this happen frequently, and I’ve been on teams that were disasters because we had complete faith in the process (even with Scrum, XP), and forgot about the people. How did we put the process over people? Agile methods are not immune to this problem. On one project, we ran around saying “that isn’t XP” when we saw someone doing something that didn’t fit the process. In most cases it was good work, but it turned out to be a manipulative way of dealing with something we saw as a problem. In the end, some of them were good practices that should have been retained in that context, on that team. They weren’t “textbook” XP, but the people with the ideas knew what they were doing, not the inanimate “white book”.

2) I make sure I’m accountable for what I’m doing.

Anyone on the team should be able to come up and ask me what I’m doing as a tester, and I should be able to clearly explain it. Skilled testing does a lot to build credibility, and an accountable tester will be given freedom to try new ideas. If I’m accountable for what I’m doing, I can’t hide behind a process or what the developers are doing. I need to step up and apply my skills where they will add value. When you add value, you are respected and given more of a free reign on testing activities that might have been discouraged previously.

Note: By accountability, I do not mean lots of meaningless “metrics”, charts, graphs and other visible measurement attempts that I might use to justify my existence. Skilled testing and coherent feedback will build real credibility, while meaningless numbers will not. Test reports that are meaningful, kept in check by qualitative measures, are developed with the audience in mind, and are actually useful will do more to build credibility than generating numbers for numbers sake.

3) I don’t try to humiliate the programmers, or police the process.

(I now see QA people making a career out of process policing on Agile teams). If you are working together, technical skills should be rubbing off on each other. In some cases, I’ve seen testing become “cool” on a project, and on one project not only testers were working on it, but developers, the BA and the PM were also testing. Each were using their unique skills to help generate testing ideas, and engage in testing. This in-turn gave the testers more credibility when they wanted to try out different techniques that could reveal potential problems. Now that all the team members had a sense for what the testers were going through, more effort was made to enhance testability. Furthermore, the discovery of potential problems was encouraged at this point, it was no longer feared. The whole team really bought into testing.

4) I collaborate even more, with different team members.

When I find I’m getting stale with testing ideas, or I’m afraid I’m getting sucked into groupthink, I pair with someone else. Lately, a customer representative has really been a catalyst for me for testing. Whenever we work together, I get a new perspective on project risks that are due to what is going on in the business, and they find problems I’ve missed. This helps me generate new ideas for testing in areas I hadn’t thought of.

Sometimes working with a technical writer, or even a different developer, instead of the developer(s) you usually work with helps you get a new perspective. This ties into the accountability thought as well. I’m accountable for what I’m testing, but so is the rest of the team. Sometimes fun little pretend rivalries will occur: “Bet I can find more bugs than you.” Or “Bet you can’t find a bug in my code in the next five minutes.” (In this case the developer beat me to the punch by finding a bug in his own code through exploratory testing beside me on another computer, and then gave me some good-natured ribbing about him being the first one to find a bug.)

Independent thinkers need not be in a separate independent department that is an arm’s length away. This need for an independent testing department is not something I unquestionably support. In fact, I have found more success through collaboration than isolation. Your mileage will vary.