I usually go with QA = Quality Assessment:

Assess: Verb – To evaluate or estimate the nature of.

What is testing if not assessment?

If you think of testing as quality assessment, I’d be inclined to agree. It’s the quality assurance moniker that doesn’t go down so well for us.

Michael replies: I’m not sure if it’s the earliest citation, but here’s a certain one: The Ongoing Revolution in Software Testing.

I like the premise of providing cost-effective testing but how do you make that argument? RST is the least-expensive testing when compared to the way most companies test?

Probably not. The least expensive testing is no testing at all.

Chapter 16 (“Testing without Machinery”) from Jerry Weinberg’s Perfect Software and Other Illusions About Testing is another wonderful example of the kind of approach we believe in.

Chris

This is one of the best definitions of what a tester role is about, this is for keeps. Thank you.

Looking forward to the publication of these. It will join other valuable documents of yours and JB’s as I journey through various clients.

I do want to question the use of the word control in point 8 “Only programmers and their management control that.” (QA)

I don’t want to free programmers of the responsibility they have for the work they produce. But they may not always control the quality of it as this would lie with management again. Point 8 should read as well “Progammers accept responsibility for the quality of their work, although they cannot control the quality of the product”.

Michael replies: I accept that programmers can’t control everything about that product, but they certainly have have some level control over the code and the design. Their work is in the product. In a funny kind of way, our best work as testers is invisible in the product—we helped to get the bad stuff found and taken out.

Having said that, I’ve seen that where control really lies is often uncertain. Some Managers don’t understand software engineering well enough to take on this control so it /does/ sit with Programmers. My point is that it sits in context of the company that produces software. Where the control of quality actually sits with and if there is actually control at all is questionable. In my book Control is a gliding slide, same as quality and is a relationship between people, processes and ideas.

Those things may be true, but that’s not the point of our statement. The point is that as testers, we don’t have control; we are faithful extensions of the senses of people who do.