The Test Manager at the Project Status Meeting
Brian Marick, Steve Stukenborg · 1997
Project management must decide when a product is ready to release to end users[SS1]. That decision is based on a mass of inevitably imperfect information, including an estimate of the product’s bugginess. The testing team creates that estimate. The test manager reports it, together with an assessment of how accurate it is. If it’s not accurate enough, because not enough testing has been done, the test manager must also report on what the testing team is doing to obtain better information. When will project management know enough to make a reasoned ship decision? The test manager has two responsibilities: to report the right information, and to report the information right. Both are equally important. If you don’t have the right information, you’re not doing your job. If you don’t report it so that it’s accepted, valued, and acted upon, you might as well not be doing your job. To address both topics, this paper is organized around the situation in which the test manager presents “the public face” of the testing team: the status meeting. It covers the information to be presented and the needs of the people involved (which govern how to present that information usefully).