How to get good testing out of SME's (Subject Matter Experts)
OK, I have been in testing for 16 years and I have never been able to successfully get SME's to perform "quality" user testing.
I have tried giving them Test Scenarios, Test Charters, and even detailed Test Cases but I never seem to be able to get as much value out of them as I would have if I just hired a decent QA contractor.
I have a large project coming up and once again I am being asked to cut costs by using SME's to "help" with the test effort. Of course I have convinced management that we need several senior level QA engineers to oversee the SME's efforts.
I would like your ideas on how I can maximize SME's in my testing effort and how I can motivate these SME's to spend the effort to look for the tough issues.
Thanks
Erik
[812 byte] By [
Erik-CO] at [2008-2-15]
The good news is that you already recognize the problems you will face.
Checklists may help keep the SMEs on track. I have found that checklists can help SMEs do their "user testing" with a bit of "guidance" involved. This will at least keep you from missing some of the obvious stuff.
Beyond that, you have to give them a bit of education. Depending on how long they will be doing this, you could give them a weekly 30 minute coffee or lunch overvew of some testing concept that either will help, or will help them find a class of bug they may have been missing. You could also show examples of bugs found so that they can learn from the past or each other. Some will find all of this very motivating, while others may find it boring.
Good luck.
As Alan pointed out - there are two issues here - one is skill and other is motivation. Skill part can be addressed to some extent by giving the required education, making them to read testing literature, mentoring them on testing skills.
Second part - motivation is hard to crack. If your SME's are not willing to invest time in being good at testing - you have little to control other than explaining them - why they learning about testing is important. Most of SME's feel that testing is too low to their level of expertise and knowledge. We need to fight this perception taking the examples of greats in testing field who made it to the top of the list - names like Cem Kaner, James Bach, Michael Bolton and Michael Hunter (Braidy Tester).
I would recommend you to check out James Bach's google video on "becoming software Testing expert" -- Jame's site www.satisfice.com and his blog are good ways to introduce testing to those who think - tesitng is a "low" level job
all the best ...
Shrini Kulkarni
http://shrinik.blogspot.com
