Testers and Testing: A Product Owner’s Perspective

Testers frequently feel that they and their contributions to delivering software are undervalued. These feelings may stem from patterns of important defects being de-prioritized, receiving lower salaries than their peers who code, being assigned seemingly pointless tasks, or being expected to “test comprehensively” with insufficient time and resources (that tend to shrink as the target release date approaches). If you’ve experienced these feelings, you’ve probably wondered “What does senior management value if not the information testers provide?!?” If so, here are some answers. After fifteen years of working primarily in and around testers and testing, Scott Barber had the opportunity to serve as a product owner for a family of products. Join Scott as he shares lessons he learned, responsibilities he was given, ways his own thinking about software testing and testers evolved, and the somewhat surprising expectations he came to have of testers and testing for his products—after he became “senior management.”