The Big Step

time to piss people off again with practical advice

Delayed this week - I thought I posted…

Long time readers (thank you all!) know that I mostly write about leadership topics here, with some occasional forays into general software development and hiking stories. You all also know that sometimes I write about why I don’t think most software teams need dedicated testers.

But - I realized that I have never really written about how to make that transition. We’ve all heard of companies who have removed testers, had zero plans on how to make the transition work, and failed completely. This doesn’t necessarily mean that their team didn’t need testers, they most likely failed to recognize how much testing they needed.

Step One - Don’t

It’s been ~10 years since I delivered a talk called “Testing without Testers” In that talk I mentioned this article about Yahoo.

…which reminds me of the Brent Jensen quote, “Don’t rip off the band-aid, because sometimes it’s a tourniquet”

A lot of companies saw the improved cycle time and quality from teams without t…