Sometime back I was invited to a Chennai city college to
deliver a lecture on Software testing to an audience of senior students and
faculty of computer science department. During the course of the session I was
surprised to realize that not many in the group were aware of 'Software
Testing', as a concept, barring some studies on the topic as part of their curriculum.
Later few weeks back, when I again faced a similar audience at a college in deeper
Tamilnadu I learnt that they have also not heard much about it. Earlier my own
nephew who has been working in an IT major was putting up a long face and was
about to break down narrating as to how he has been 'unceremoniously' shifted to a
Testing project after having worked so long in development , which he was obviously
enjoying. The above in a nutshell summarize the awareness or the lack of it
about software testing among people who matter.
Initially it was rather shocking to realize how a potential area
such as software testing could be considered so low and how some could afford
to be even ignorant about its relevance and importance. Some reading and
searching revealed that the problem does not lie with a single entity but at a
larger level.
On joining an organization, various emerging technologies
and platforms attract the young freshers and the crowd gets sucked like a fly
to an oil sheet. Only the leftovers, which have little choice, are allocated to
testing. Thus, this part of the life cycle has somehow acquired a dubious
distinction of "last Choice". In
the 1970s anyone joining a bank branch will first be allocated to the dispatch
section and people used to feel low about it. The testing situation is akin to it though bankers later realized that dispatch is the most important point of entry and
exit where one can learn and be updated about all communications of the branch!
No job is mean and particularly if the software majors are
investing and allocating huge revenue for Testing Services as exclusive
business units, should one not think about the importance of such an
opportunity? Where are we missing the bus, how to dispel the misnomer and
attract the best of talents to this elite practice?
The Industry, Training institutes and the Academia have major roles to play here.
Taking the last first, at the academic level, testing as a
concept is yet to be recognized as its potential as job earner has not been realized and thus the whole concept sadly fail to catch the eye of the syllabus makers. Testing is just being touched upon only in a
couple of chapters at the college level. Here too, the focus seems to have been
only from the perspective of clearing the exams and getting an engineering degree
and not from the vocational perspective.
Even century old Universities have curriculum which carries
only questions worth 16 marks. Students can easily browse through these
chapters from some popular books and if they choose to , can even conveniently opt
to omit the same if they are confident of other options! This myopic approach is bound to cost our
students dear in terms of job options. Also, if this negligence is the result
of an ill conceived notion that a developer need not be aware of the nuances of testing,
then we are in for serious trouble. Certainly this is not the way to prepare the students
for an industry which as per NASSCOM is expected to earn India around $ 15
billion @ by 2020 (http://m.businesstoday.in/story/are-software-testing-firms-worth-joining/1/184788.html)
At the Industry level, IT companies, as part of Initiation &
later at induction levels, should have exclusive sessions on promoting this
practice by underlying the benefits such as multiple domain exposure in quick
time, better travel opportunities , to name a few. No doubt, some are already into it but then clearly
there seems to be more room for improvement considering the hesitation among
the entrants to the testing practice. HR could also be directed to look deeper
into the feedback through the exit interviews and provide crucial stats on attrition
due to dissatisfaction on testing assignments. Organizations must also review periodically their
policies and liberalize the awards and incentives doled out to those who
acquire certifications and exhibit additional efforts to specialize in Testing.
These initiatives are to be so humongous that they should create healthy
competition and provoke entrants to opt testing ahead of others. When such
practices erupt, the real impact and importance will be felt across the
aspirants.
The Training Institutes which provide considerable number of
trained Test engineers to the Industry always starved of testers have a good
opportunity to prove their worth and have a greater role to play. They have the
whole field before them, but only few have grabbed it so far.
Compared to the other two, the training institutes' choices
are more complex but then so are their opportunities. On the one hand they need
to sharpen their course content to attract the talent and lure them to the
testing arena. On the other hand, they also should focus on how to make their
candidates surge ahead of others and make them stand out as 'winning
candidates'.
Their course coverage no doubt includes the basic concepts
and requirements for one to start his/her testing career. But, when one competes
against lakhs, it is necessary to have some differentiators which will provide
the candidates the cutting edge to surge and dip their noses across the finish
line. In the absence of such differentiators, the list of 'also rans' will
continue to accumulate.
Training institutes should think differently and associate more
with the Industry to learn about their practices, to be aware of major expectations
from and challenges of testing and should modify their training methods accordingly.
It is no more sufficient to produce simple testers but if they could provide resources
that have an insight into such key challenges and visions to meet them - only such
institutions are likely to stand out and be sought after both by the trainees
and the industry. There is also a good
scope to design curriculum according to the trainee's line of specialization in
the college, so that freshers get more easily attracted towards it. For
this, more interactions with the industry and their key resources that create
testing opportunities is a must.
That the government is insisting on even public sector units
who develop their software in-house to subject themselves to a third party
audit and certifications is a welcome indication on awareness and acceptance.
So far even some of the IT giants were treating testing as a part of their
development team but with the client expectations of an Independent testing team
clearance, all organizations bent on quality outputs have started employing
such teams as quality gate keepers to bring in better customer satisfaction.
Such focus on testing only promises to increase the need for more testers and
the above arms should do well to equip them as otherwise, there is every
possibility of our friends across the border with enormous resource potential making their foray into this area too! It's time to shake off the slumber to remain
in the race.
