Anyone can be a tester

I came across a situation a few weeks back that I have faced many times before. There is a  project kicking off and it's going to require testing - excellent I should be able to help. Being a passionate tester and test manager I asked if they need any help, after all there are several 0's in the project value. The project leadership team said 'no, we are all good the team from blah office are available'. No problems I say, let me know if the situation changes. Being a tester, and to be frank, a nosey little bugga I did some research, it turns out that the 'Test Manager' has 'Solutions Architect' as her current role in her email signature - hmmm. A little more investigation and the 'Testers' are listed as 'System Engineers' as is the 'Performance Tester'. I was feeling rather deflated. But it got me thinking - why is that so many people in IT organisations seem not to respect testing as a profession? I mean have you heard of a tester being asked to come on board a project to be a SharePoint developer, or DBA?

I recall a presentation delivered by Dr Mark Pedersen, a colleague of mine at K.J. Ross & Associates titled "Selling Testing to the Business". In this presentation there was a slide which presented the findings of a study done by HP in the early 90's (Grady, 1994). I have included it below...

I've translated and calculated some more metric's into the table below. I like to look at things from a few angles.

Test Type	Defects Per Hours	1 Defect every ... Hours	... Defects detected in an 8 hours day
Day to Day	0.21	4.76	1.68
Black box	0.28	3.57	2.24
Glass Box	0.32	3.13	2.56
Inspection	1.05	0.95	8.4

For the purpose of this post, I am focused on the 'Day to Day' vs the 'Black Box' metrics. Based on the above numbers it's reasonable to infer that by using Black box testing technic's (and all other things being equal) we will find slightly more defects than if we just followed the business processes.

My hypothesis as to why so many IT people don't respect testing as a profession, and were the old saying 'Anyone can do testing' comes from, is based on the observations and experiences were folks from all manner of backgrounds and vocations have been involved in testing and found defects just by using the system in the manner to which it was intended... And here in-lies the challenge to the current and next generation of testers to advance the profession by improving our effectiveness - or maybe it's a case of simply communicating the improvements we've already made????