I work as a Manual tester on a big project. My project follows Agile methodology. I test a Web-based application. I sometimes ask my self , that am i giving any value to the stakeholders?
So, the value that you are giving to stakeholders is the reduction in the amount of defects that go to production. The cost of fixing a defect drastically increases over time and severe defects found in production can even cause bankruptcy. World War 3 was almost started due to a software defect and people have died due to them. As you see, finding and fixing defects prior to production can be extremely critical and vital to any company.
What is the Real Business/Economic Value of doing Software testing in any IT project. Why do clients/product owners pay testers for finding bugs? What i mean to say is that except finding bugs which even a developer can do on spending extra time, why testers are so important!
Well, there is several reasons here. First and foremost, developers typically have a different mindset than QA. Typically a developer focuses solely on how to make it work. As QA, your focus should be how to make it (not work|do what it shouldn't do|crash and burn|spit out money). This requires a different mindset and skill set completely than development.
Developers can sometimes be extremely proud of their code, much like a father with their child. Having someone else tell you that your child has an issue that needs to be corrected is sometimes a lot easier than telling it to yourself. Plus, when you know exactly how to make everything work, you typically will go down the path of making it work.
Costs benefits. The majority of the time (not always) developers make more money than QA. Due to this, it is considered to be less expensive to have QA do extensive testing.
Developers should have already tested their code rather thoroughly. Developers are typically supposed to do unit testing to ensure that their code is relatively functional. The fact that we still find defects proves that their testing skills are no where near perfect.
I can go on and on about why testers are important so I will just list a few:
- Relationships with Business and IT
- Understanding of Projects and Systems as a whole (both functional and technical aspects)
- Ability to have multiple different mindsets working on the project
- Accountability
- Reduction of wasted time when finding issues in Requirements/Stories
Please share some thoughts/material which shows real value of testing phase in a Agile project.
The value is astronomical in my opinion and the better the QA, typically the better the value. A strong QA in an agile environment will not only reduce the amount of defects in production but also reduce the amount of defects coded. They will typically thoroughly review requirements, source code and plot out how the developer will make the changes, discuss with the developers their plans, ensuring that scenarios are covered prior to a line of code is written and make sure that the code is of the highest quality.
So to answer your question about your value to the company, you could easily be the absolutely most important person in the company who prevents them from going completely bankrupt. Your value is determined on what you provide to the company.
And for giggles, a list of well known defects. I don't think any company would want to end up on a list like that.
