Pressing the Green Button

For years at conferences and meetups and in social media, I have been hearing regularly from testers who tell me that they must “sign off” on the product or deployment before it is released to production, or to review by the client. The testers claim that, after they have performed some degree of testing work, they must “approve” or “reject” the product. Here’s a fairly typical verbatim report from one tester:

In my current context, despite my reasoned explanations to the contrary, I am viewed as the work product gatekeeper and am newly positioned as such within a software controlled workflow that literally presents a green “approve” or red “reject” button for me to select after I “do QC” on the work product which as a bonus might be provided with a list of ambiguous client requests and/or a sketchy mock-up with many scattered revision notes (often superseded by verbal requests not logged).

It’s important to note that in project work, a mess of competing information is normal — not completely desirable, necessarily, but normal. When information about the product is unclear, it’s typically part of the tester’s job to identify where and how it’s unclear. Confusion and uncertainty ratchet up product and project risk.

After all, if you’re not sure about what the product is supposed to do, how can the developers be sure about it? In the unlikely event that the developers know how the product should work and you don’t, how will you recognize all of the important bugs? Whether you, the developers, or both aren’t straight on what the client wants, bugs will have time and opportunity to breed and to survive.

The tester continues:

Delivery of the product to the client for their review is generally held up until I press the green “approve” button. The expectation when I “approve” is that the product (which I did not build) is “error free”, meets contradictory loosely defined “standards” and satisfies the client (whom I have not met). The structure is such that I am not to directly communicate to the client, so all clarifications and questions I have are filtered through a project manager.

I am now beginning to frustrate the developers with whom I have previously built a great rapport by repeatedly rejecting their work products for even a single minor infraction. I also frustrate project managers delaying product delivery and going over budget. I predict there will soon be pressure from all sides to “just approve” and then later repercussions of “how/why did this get approved”. I combat this by providing long lists of observations, potential issues, questions, obstacles and coverage notes with each “rejection” or “approval” and I communicate to project managers that they do not need my approval to proceed and may override at anytime.

Some testers seem happy with the authority implicit in “approving” or “rejecting” the product. Most express some level of discomfort with the decision. To me, the discomfort is appropriate.

In the Rapid Software Testing view of the world, it is not the job of the tester to approve or disapprove of things. It is the job of the tester to identify reasons to believe that some person who matters might approve or disapprove of something, and to explain the bases for that belief. Decisions about what to do with a product, including approving or rejecting it, lie with a role called management.

If you’re in a situation like the tester above, and someone offers you the responsibility to approve and reject products, and you desire to be a manager, this is your big chance! Seize the opportunity—but don’t do it without the manager’s title and authority—and salary, while you’re at it. If you’re offered the approval or rejection decision without becoming a manager, though, I’d recommend that you politely decline the “offer”, and make a counteroffer—perhaps one like this:

“Thank you for honouring me with the offer to approve or reject the product. However, as a tester, I don’t believe that it is appropriate for me to make such decisions without management authority. Here’s what I would do in this tester’s situation, though; I’d say this:

“I will gladly test the product, learning about it through exploration and experimentation. I will evaluate the product for consistency with these (contradictory, loosely-defined) standards. If the product appears to be inconsistent with them, I will certainly let you know about that. If I see inconsistencies or contradictions in those standards, I will let you know about those too, so that you can decide how the standards apply to our product. But I won’t limit my testing to that.

“I will tell you about any important problems that I find. I will tell you about problems that appear inconsistent with things desirable to important people. Here’s an example of how I might categorize desirable things, and here’s an example of how I might recognize problems in the product.

“I will report on anything that appears consistent with some notion of an ‘error’. However, I will not assert that the product is error-free. I don’t know how I could do that. I don’t know how anyone can do that.

“I would prefer to interact freely and directly with stakeholders, for the purposes of obtaining clarifications and answers to questions I have without bothering the project manager. (I will, of course, keep responsible records of my interactions; and I will not presume to make decisions about product or project scope, since that’s a management function.)

“If you would prefer to restrict or mediate my access to stakeholders, that’s OK; I can work that way too. Doing so will likely come with a cost of extra time on the part of the project manager, and the risk of broken-telephone-style miscommunication between the stakeholders and me. However, if you’re prepared to take responsibility for that risk, I’m fine with it too.

“Since I am manager of neither the product, nor the project, nor the developers, I do not have the authority to direct them. However, I am happy to report on everything I know about the product—and the apparent problems and risks in it—to those who do have the required authority and responsibility, and they can make the appropriate decisions based on everything they know about the product and business and its needs.

“I am not a gatekeeper, or owner, or ‘approver’ of the quality of the product. I am not a manager or decision maker. I am a reporter on the status of the product, and of the testing, and of the quality of the testing, and I’ll report accordingly. My “approval” is immaterial; what matters is what managers and the business want. It is they, not I, who decide whether a problem is a showstopper or something we’re prepared to live with. It is they, not I, who decide whether problems are significant enough to extend the schedule or increase the budget for the project.

“It’s my job to contribute information to any decision to approve or reject, but it’s not my job to make that decision. I would like someone else to be responsible for the ‘approve’ or ‘reject’ checkbox as such. However, if the tool that we’re using restricts me to ‘approve’ and ‘reject’, let me tell you what those mean, because what they say is inconsistent with their normal English meanings, and we should all be aware of that.

“Pressing ‘Approve’ means this, and only this: ‘I am not aware of any problem in this area that threatens the value of the product, project, or business to any person that matters.’

Pressing ‘Reject’ means ‘I am aware of a specific problem or I have some reason to believe that there could be a problem in this area that I have not had the opportunity to identify yet.’ In other words, ‘reject’ means that I see risk; there’s something about the product or about the testing that I believe managers or the programmers should be aware of. ‘Reject’ means no more than that.

“In either case, we should frequently discuss my observations, potential issues, questions, obstacles and coverage notes, to avoid the possibility that I’m overlooking something important, or that I’m over-emphasizing the significance of particular problems.”

How you’re viewed depends on the commitments (another example here) that you make and declare about what you do, what you’re willing to do, and what you’re not willing to do. If your role, your profile and your commitments don’t match, getting them lined up is your most urgent and important job.

Related reading:
Signing Off
When Testers Are Asked For a Ship/No-Ship Opinion
Testers: Get Out of the Quality Assurance Business