Doing something to be successful

I had an inspiring discussion with a colleague in testing the other day. A significant project had just come to a successful conclusion with a launch in a project that had it's share of challenges in learning what to deliver. My colleague had just been asked as the test manager to meet up with head of development to explain what they do in testing so that the team is so successful - in relation to others, in particular.

As I'm quick to jump to conclusions and have talked with the colleague every now and then, I started listing things they could have done:

• Collaborate? (this is not a testers only team, but a development team)
• Test continuously? (I know they do, having heard bits of interesting yet vague information)
• Focus on value, not documents? (Some information is valuable, some is worth remembering)
• Create test automation? (Couldn't expect any less from a great exploratory tester my colleague is)
• Have good people who learn and become better? (It wasn't always easy)

My colleague replied: "All of those. Plus, in comparison to other teams, we have dedicated testers inside the project. And we don't do just test automation, we do exploratory testing too. And we have good developers that actually care about testing their own code." 

I love hearing good news. And I love delivering useful, working software with quality information.