Time for the Essentials

Admittedly, I’m skeptical about outsourcing testing activities - whether near or far. For me, a lot of communication is part and parcel of testing, and I like it to be direct, personal and ongoing. However, there is one idea that is related to this topic that I find all the more exciting: how we deal with our time and the really important things, be it in the project, during testing or in our private lives. If you pay attention, you sometimes notice

• Test analysts who manually copy hundreds of data records from one table to another when preparing test data: click, ‘Ctrl+c’, click, ‘Ctrl+v’, click, ‘Ctrl+c’, click, ‘Ctrl+v’, …,
• Project managers who spend ages tinkering with heading formatting in Word (the first sign is usually to “design” page breaks with a sequence of blank lines) or
• Test managers who spend days working on test reports for tests in which they were not really involved.

They all have one thing in common: they could be spending their time on more important things. Now, the reason for “dealing” with these unimportant things may be ignorance, or it may have been chosen more or less consciously. Either way, the time and money that is sometimes wasted here calls for action. What can you do? I have identified three effective options for myself and my colleagues: automate, learn and delegate. I consider all three when I notice that I, my testers, colleagues or anyone else is “busy”. Here are a few ideas as examples:

Automate routine tasks

Especially in software development, we have all options open to us. Test data migration can be done quickly with a script. Even with on-board resources or free tools such as Macro Recorder, Automator or various C/R tools, a lot of the small stuff can be done quickly. Expertise is easy to find in the team or project. The automatic opening of the ticket or test case system or the automated transfer of test results alone save time in the long run. Clean-up scripts can also work wonders.

Learning how to use tools

A tool can only be used effectively if you know how to use it. This not only applies to our test automation tools and development environments, for which training courses are usually offered. It also applies to standard software such as Word, Excel or even Windows or Mac OS itself. These are used on a daily basis and many people do not know how to use them. Learning here does not just mean training in the form of courses, but in particular the tricks, knacks and keyboard shortcuts that make life easier. These can often be learned in the project environment or in communities.

Delegating to employees and colleagues

Far too often, we believe that we have to do everything ourselves “because the others can’t” - but this is often wrong. Delegating is always a question of trust, both between superiors and employees and between colleagues. Of all the options, this is certainly the one that takes the most effort (which is probably why very few people do it), as it involves giving up control. But jumping over the shadow - or being pushed - and seeing that someone else can also complete the task with a good result in less time can promote a whole new way of working together. This is where you often come up against the walls of process descriptions: “The test manager writes the test report, that’s what the process says” - even though the tester himself may be able to evaluate the test results much faster and better.

Delegating - in private

Last year, I started to delegate certain private tasks to a VPA (virtual personal assistant) as a self-experiment. This assistant then researches various topics, for example, or even cheap prices for this and that. It sorts data, tables and databases, brings them together and adds missing information. He organizes the metadata of the music collection or simply makes documents look pretty. I’m happy to hand over these tedious tasks, and the time I’ve gained is well worth the price.

These are just a few ideas, but once you pay attention to them, it’s amazing how many of these avoidable time wasters you can notice in yourself and in your environment.
With this in mind, take note and eliminate them so that you can concentrate on the important things. This is where focus comes into play … but that’s another story.