I’ve been practising my clout as Senior QA aka QA Manager lately. I’m the only software tester in the house so it’s absurd to ask for the title. But still I found myself cracking the whip in the last two weeks.

I told off the dev manager, indirectly, to lay-off changing the specs (requirement specifications) without telling anyone else. I slaved-away for the test cases I’ve written and now that I’m in the execution phase I’m finding out some functionalities are either gone or changed so much my test specs need re-writing!

I’ve made my frustration known by sending an email to everyone in the tech team that I will no longer stand the abuse and I will not accept anymore build release from them without giving me proper handover release notes. So there!

Are they quaking in their pants? I hope.

On the other side of the ring, our trusty QA contractor (left to work on an old version of our application) was being very quiet. So since Monday I’ve been coaxing him to give me the blow-by-blow state of his tests. Until this morning I’ve been trying to get developers and business managers to assist him & get things moving. I hope he appreciates it. Otherwise he’d be sitting there for an hour scratching his head or biting his nails. And the most important factor is we don’t have time anymore. We need him to assist me in my testing & get out of version 1.

I feel alive. I’m busy, I’m working & I’m doing what I do best – breaking the software. But hey I think I am also acting like a manager, could it be true? I’ve been aiming for that for how long now? Darn it’s elusive. Nearly had it last year but was jilted because of maternity issues. Yes I could sue but for what? So here I am starting again & managing myself — and a contractor who gets paid better than me.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005 at 4:26 pm and is filed under work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.