Managing Expectations: The Hidden Art in Test Consulting
Writing by admin on Friday, 16 of July, 2010 at 5:41 am
Testing is becoming more and more important to companies worldwide, with an increasing focus on quality assurance and continuous process improvement. However, some common challenges faced today start with a client’s understanding of what testing is, what purpose it serves, and the time and resources it takes to complete.
One of the major challenges in test consulting is engaging the client, establishing a shared vision, understanding their requirements and meeting their expectations. The ability to establish trust and rapport with a client from day one is crucial in establishing successful test projects and longer term client/supplier relationships. In consulting, expectations are the success criteria through which a client will measure your work regarding a future target or goal.
All test consultants must have expectations at the forefront of their day to day activities. Inherent in all these challenges is the test consultant’s ability to communicate and educate a client on what the testing process involves, what each test phase will cover, how long it takes, resources required throughout the testing lifecycle, and common terms and definitions used in testing.
Testing is an iterative process and so is managing expectations. It is therefore essential to truly understand your client’s needs, and then be able to set, manage, and influence their expectations, and learn from such experiences.
A challenge often faced is when expectations are misaligned to the overall goal (realistic or otherwise), resulting in required standards and expectations of the client not being met and hence be deemed a failure. However, raising the issue of unrealistic goals early in the lifecycle can influence and realign both the goal and expectations, whilst establishing a level of trust and a sense of unity that you are working in partnership.
Test consultants should develop their own methods for setting, managing, and influencing the clients’ expectations. They should consider the tools and techniques such as, Time, Cost, and Quality that will help generate tangible metrics to influence a client’s expectations; articulate the risks and their overall impact and severity that significantly influence client decisions within a project and amend their expectations; discuss priorities, roles and responsibilities and jointly develop action plans; remove assumptions, deal with facts and re-emphasize the shared goal; remove ambiguity; and develop guidelines around the client’s expectations.
Test consultants should also gather feedback to ensure that you are still focusing on the same shared goals and deliverables. The longer a client/supplier relationship is, the more perception and expectations change and the greater the need to monitor such changes.
Another key problem in consulting is when false expectations are set, or the expectations of the client and consultant are mismatched. Setting high expectations is always preferable, but they must be reasonable and achievable if they are to be successful. It is always better to under promise and over deliver than over promise and under deliver.
Category: Offshore Software Testing, Software Testing
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