The Value in Testing, for Management

a.k.a. How to Convince Your Boss about Testing

Why it's hard to convince management and how you can explain the need for testing in business terms.

This presentation was given at the DevStaff Meetup @ Heraklion, Crete, Greece on December 10, 2015

Transcript

1. The Value in Testing, for Management a.k.a. how to convince your boss
2. But WHY do you even need to convince them?
3. – George Boss “Your code should be working already!! 
 
 Why do you need tests?” The Ignorant Boss Theorem
4. – John Manager “Well, Why haven’t you been doing it up till now?” The Blaming Manager Constant
5. – José Cheapita Nomoneda “So… Let me get this right… You are asking me to invest more money?” The Venture Capital-less Dilemma
6. – Antonio Bizi “We don't have time for that now” The Busy Wait Loop
8. How Much Time Is It Taking to Manually Test ? Multiply by # Releases
9. How Frequent Are Your Releases? Let’s say, in the last year?
10. Do they count customer complaints owing to bugs? Do you even use a ticketing system?
11. How many weekends have you worked extra? …and they paid you for?
12. Have they had at least one client tell them: …didn’t we fix that again a couple of weeks ago?
13. Last but not least…
14. This is really special….
15. Wait for it…
16. Ok, here goes… their competition does it.
17. For a Happily Ever After…
18. Try to explain in business terms 
 (free tips: ‘save money’, ‘retain customers’, ‘reduce time to market’… ) Don’t tell them how to run their business 
 (so they don’t tell you how to code…) Don’t expect it all at once. Change takes time => 
 Baby Steps