Rajnikanth and Test Coverage

"I know that my product lacks test coverage and thats why i have hired you as consultant. Can you increase test coverage in 2 weeks?"

"Don't tell me that i should change my automation framework to get better returns. Can you suggest improvements to the existing framework so that we get better coverage asap?"

"Your audit report says there is lack of communication between manual and automation teams. I disagree with you. How does test coverage suffer if they don't communicate. Can you explain?"

These are comments from some of our customers recently and all they are looking for is a pill that will solve their test coverage issues. Their products suffer from lack of test coverage for 2/3/5 years but the moment they outsource, they want the outsourced vendor to help them increase test coverage the next day after the SOW is signed.

I am reminded of Rajnikanth movies where he becomes rich in just one song. I wish i can do something similar for test coverage improvement. Any Rajnikanth's out there in our industry to do this? Please revert ASAP.

8 opinions:

Gokul said...

Rajini formula holds no good here, because Rajini "Solradhaidhaan seivaaru" (Does what he say) and "Seiyaradhaan solluvaaru" (Say what he is going to do) But in this industry, Nodbody does what they say or nobody says what they (will) do! :-)

William Echlin said...

The old phrase 'out of site, out of mind' comes to mind. Nothing is more true when it comes to outsourcing software testing.

If the client had set the rquirements in the first place then this might not have been such a problem. With no requirements set for your software testing project you've no idea where the road will take you.

One of the biggest problems for software testing companies that act as a 3rd party for testing is setting the expectations of the client. Clients seem to think that once software tesitng is outsourced that's it, job done, problem solved. It's never like that. In fact more co-operation is needed between the software test teams than ever before.

So I'd suggest this is a question of setting your customers expectations early on and agreeing KPI's that could be used to quantify those expectations.

Just a thought.

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

Cool one!

Vasu said...

Thanks Pradeep

Vasu said...

William,

I agree with you completely but unfortunately sometimes for the simple sake of winning the project from competitors, we don't set expectations correctly and agree to every demand made by the client.

Parimala Hariprasad said...

So if you want to be an independent consultant, be prepared to be Rajnikanth or atleast close to him. May be James Bond could sort it out too. Tough! Very Tough.

Good Post,
Parimala Shankaraiah

Vasu said...

Thanks Parimala

Partha said...

Good one Vasu.