Month: November 2011

A lot of companies that are evaluating test management tools say the tool must be easy to use. A reasonable request. It’s what’s behind this request that is interesting. In many cases it is the fact that the tool needs to be used by people that are not software testers. The reason for this? Companies supplement their QA team with people from the business or their QA team is comprised completely of people that come from the business. In a few cases companies opt not to take on testers with formal QA experience but decide to use people who know the business inside out as testers. Usually in this case the team have little or no experience of using test...

The 31st Test Management forum took place in the UK last week. For those of you based in the UK who have a fascination with this area of our discipline this is well worth attending. Attended by a number of prominent test mangers and consultants it makes for some very stimulating discussions (and in some instances quite heated debate). One of the topics that struck home in this latest session was a simple question about the difference between a project manager (PM) and a test manager (TM). On the surface a simple question. Dig a little deeper though and this question is more interesting than it would at first appear. For example what stops a test manager becoming a project...