Evaluation is a form of feedback. This includes evaluation of testing team in the organization which is to give feedback about testers and how well they do their job. Objective feedback is necessary in all cases. However and in case of evaluating testers, several things might go wrong. In this post I will focus on one way of evaluating testers and will show what might go wrong with it based on my experience.

There are several ways to evaluate testers and their performance and each organization uses its own way or ways. One way is the number of issues found by testing team. Another way implemented in some organizations to evaluate testers and that will be in focus in this post is to evaluate testing team by getting feedback from colleagues at work.

There are many issues when giving feedback and I already discussed them in a previous post in this blog. One of the issues is being biased against testing team. We all know that being biased is a human nature. This can happen especially if the person evaluating the testing team is one of those affected by the results of testing such as project managers, programmers or engineers. If testers usually find many issues with that person’s work, then there is high possibility that the feedback from that person will be negative. Therefore, the organization should train its staff on how to give objective evaluation.

Wether being biased or not, it is really a fact that those who give the evaluation do not know how to evaluate testers. I believe that the best people who can evaluate testers are the testers themselves. Testers are able to see the whole picture and to look to the positives and negatives of individual and team performance. However, testers are also humans and should avoid bias when they evaluate each other.

Finally, here is the link for my previous post “Giving and Receiving Feedback“. Hope you will also get benefit from it.

http://www.AnwarBosbool.com/2012/09/giving-and-receiving-feedback/

All the best…