Few days back ‘Teresa’ asked me an interesting question.
“I was intrigued by your website because it seems you are truly passionate and interested in testing. In my organization, we’ve found that it’s really hard to keep the GOOD testers in testing. Many of the really skilled testers are always looking for change and want to get out of testing for some reason. I would love to hear if you have any ideas on how to keep the good testers in testing?”
Teresa, first I will address this high attrition rate problem for all employees and then I will come back to addressing “How to keep good testers in testing positions?”
0% employee turnover is just a imagination and unrealistic in current competitive world. Employee turnover to certain extent is ok. However increased turnover in any company indicates some serious problems.
Though I am not a HR expert to reduce the attrition rate, I will suggest some common measures from employee perspective, which can minimize this turnover to certain extent. These measures will be applicable for every company and employee. Also we are in context of software testing so I will concentrate more on how to retain good testers in their positions.
I will address each and every solution we can try to keep low attrition rate. So sit back, get relaxed as this is going to be a long article.
Who will get help from this article?
This article will helpful to Company management, Managers, Team leads in development and testing and of course to the emerging testers who are tomorrow’s leads.
What are the effects of high attrition rate on company?
- May lose projects in hand - as clients are not happy with high attrition rate
- Financial burden on company
- Cost to recruit new employees
- Cost of new employee training
- Time for ramp-up in new projects
- Workload on existing employees
- Low employee productivity due to unstable work and overtime
These are few important drawbacks of high attrition rate.
How to reduce attrition rate?
First let’s go to root cause of “why employee leave the company?”
The main reason is “lack of appreciation for their hard work”. I mean if company is not caring about employees then why would they stay in such company?
Keep in mind ‘more money’ is not always the solution! Nowadays employees are more concerned about quality of life and their family needs.
Here are some solutions on high attrition rate:
- Hire the right people in right positions
- Understand the employee needs and provide it to them
- Respect them
- Always appreciate good work
- Regularly ask for employee input and take appropriate action
- Offer training opportunities to gain advanced knowledge
- Better to become employee oriented
- Pleasant working atmosphere
- Career growth opportunities
- Value employee creativity
- Job security
Last one is very important. Your employees should feel secure about their jobs. If you can’t provide job security or at least feeling of job security in employees mind then your company deserve for high attrition rate.
These are some one liner solution. Let’s take some practical solutions.
Motivation:
Any software team should consist of highly motivated and skilled people. Good motivation comes from good leadership. Good leadership provided by team leaders and managers can bring down the attrition rate. In my career I observe employees leave the company just because of their boss. Some unrealistic demands or lack of motivation and leadership can make employees think over their position and career.
So leaders should motivate and energize colleagues when they lost all hopes.
More Money:
Give them a good compensation and benefit package.
Fun at work:
As I said money is not always the solution, fun at work is also important. Only more money can’t motivate the team if you don’t have fun culture in your company. I believe in “Work hard, Play hard” culture, so plan some sporting activities, outdoor trips, different competitions between different teams etc etc… There can be so many such activities, which can act as refreshment for employees.
Help to settle employee life:
What I mean from this is to help employees providing stability in their life. I know this is not going to be a simple task but company can help employees by providing medical insurance, medical facilities to employees. Housing is the first priority of most of the employees. So help them getting good accommodation.
‘Teresa’, you asked about retaining testers in good positions. So let’s come to testers problem.
What are the common complaints from testers?
“Sometimes developers ego as they are better than testers”
“Tester is responsible for every fault”
“Schedule slips due to testers”
“Testers are not getting the respect”
“Management don’t consider them equally with developers”
These are some common complaints from testers and this makes them feel insecure in their job, affecting their daily work and may result in high attrition rate.
Management needs to address these complaints early before testers leave the company. The solution is - organize your teams effectively, improve communication between developers, testers and management. This will lead to better understanding and addressing of testers needs.
Below are the baby steps, which can retain good talented testers in their positions:
Provide them training:
Train all your testers. Provide them training for free, if not possible then with cheap cost. Make available some remote courses, seminars and books to study. Sponsor and help them to get the software testing certifications.
Appreciate the good work:
Don’t go behind the quantity of bugs. See the quality of bugs and appreciate those testers working hard to find it. Regularly comment positively on good work from the team.
Reward testers for finding good quality bugs. Keep some weekly or monthly competitions such as “Bug of the week” to reward the testers. This will help to build a successful QA team.
Set finite boundaries to everything:
Your goals should have clear boundaries and completion criteria. Setting goals, those not having end can become a boring task. Don’t let feel the team that this testing work is going forever without any insight goal.
Take every bug as a learning opportunity:
Don’t bother testers about the bugs that slip through. Make these bugs as a learning opportunity. Let them know why they overlooked that bug. This way they will learn from their mistakes and will not make the same mistake again at lest for the same bug.
Don’t make testing a repetitive task:
Some times we get bored doing same thing again and again. Testers job involve with repetitive task. So take care to distribute your work so that no tester will execute same test case repetitively on any project. Randomize the testing work in team, this way team will get knowledge of whole product, helping to find more bugs.
Good solution to avoid repetitive work is to rotate the experienced employees internally in different projects.
Create good relation between testers and developers:
Testers need encouragement and support to find more and more bugs so that the final release is bug free. Build a good team of testers and developers. Treat everyone similarly.
Don’t forget to celebrate:
Celebrate each and every success moment. This will help to build good team spirit. Host product release parties to recognize accomplishment.
Conclusion:
Show your appreciation to those employees who work hard. This is a key to successful business. Show your employees that you are committed to fulfill their needs.
Over to you:
These are my personal thoughts to keep good employees (testers) in their positions. I am not a HR expert but I have mentioned here everything what I feels from employee perspective to stay on the job.
I want your views “What keeps you on the job?” You can share your personal thoughts, your expectations from employers or any personal experience in this matter.
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52 comments ↓
Vijay,
Thanks for your nice article. before to that i want to tell you thing. I am also working as a test lead and working so many team members apparently found we are getting the resource. how ever i am not seeing the dedication among them. In their views executing the test cases if they found any defect in those test cases that’s defect else product will go with the defects. In this real time world no project has 100 % test cases. no body is realizing to that fact.
Vijay, really u touched each and every point that could be the solution on attrition..
i too faced big problems keeping talented people with us.
we are trying each and every solution we can do for this problem.
Recently our CEO also addressed this problem infront of all employees and this came into effect as after his speech it’s now 6 months we are seeing the result.. we managed to reduce attrition rate! Obviously his speech was great, touching to each employees heart and making them feel proud with this company.
So as a management don’t try to hide attrition rate from anyone. this would worsen the problems. Speak on it openly to know the exact cause..
That’s a tip from me..
Best luck
Hello Vijay,
U r really helping the testers. Thanx alot…….
Really a very useful article…good work…Keep it up Vijay!!!
Hello Vijay,
Thanks for helping the testers….
awesome article, exactly my thoughts. i agree with each and every word in it. thank keep going
Thanks for nice artical. In most of the product based companies testers work on same kind of task for long time.Testers get bored with same work and start looking for new challenges.
One way to keep them in job is change there nature of work every half yearly.
good article!
Excellent article.It addresses all the issues very clearly.I have something to say in response to Hanu’s comment.Be it in developement or testing , as a test lead if you dont see dedication in your team - be sure the problem is not with team members but somewhere else
I only wish you understand the root cause sooner than your manager.
In general , HR people and managers complain frequently about people leaving - but seldom they really try to retain people.As long as the person is in the company ,their policy is to keep him/her as low profile as possible - by giving them average rating-not paying any attention to small matters like whether the person is willing to work in some project or not.They justify everything in terms of “business reasons”.Then when the employee minds his/her own business by moving on - they start crying foul.
If IT companys start selecting HR people as judiciously as it select engineers - and start having some real working HR policies ( rather than some obscure mission/vission bullshit with which general employees do not have any reason the identify ) which the managers cannot override at their will - things will change.By nature - people try to stay in their comfort zone.They move because they dont get that comfort zone in their companies and try to find it elsewhere.
Nice article, learn a lot from it.
Great article. Very supporting and motivating points!!!
Thanks a lot Vijay, Keep going .. We are always with you to listen, appreciate and share views.
yes, I agree with Vinod
Best and excellent article, really this will help for each and every organisation.
And more of a concern, why Test Engineers are not given with a good respect in most of the S/W industries?In my view the success and failure of any project mainly depend upon the good testing!
Please comment…
Hi i want to share all information regarding software testing and jobs in bangalore
plz let me know
its really a good article.
thankz a lot for the information…
Note:
http://testershelp.googlepages.com is another good site to find information on Testing
I am working as a test lead, In my experience the problem starts from requirement phase itself and it carry’s on till testing phase. If the project specifies a clear requirement then i dont think there wont be a confusion in testers mind who are responsible for creating test cases(should write all possiblity of test cases) then execute it, do regression testing more time to release the product without bug. But this all will happen only when we get clear requirement and also the time line. Most of the time testers are not given enough time line to execute and do regression testing. why i have written all this is because most of the testers complains about unclear requirement that makes most testers to think of. As a conclusion there are lot of reason behind the attrition as vijay said in his article.
Thanks
very useful and informative article
Hi,
I would have to agree with what has been said. My company does not pay very well but the fact that my manager takes good care of the team and respects the effort that is put into every release makes me stay in this company even though other offers have been lucrative.
Thank you.
great one!
nice ans sam………
hi,
I agree with your words. really your clarification on attrition rate is very clear.
An Article was too good,I wish everyone from IT company read this article.
Well…indeed a very good article and touches upon the day to day issues which we all faces, being a Test Lead, a Test Team Member, or even a Client or Customer…I would like to add here as to why a Developer would have insecutiry from a QA.
1) The very first reason I can foresee has psychological implication, no one would like to say their baby is bad…this is a fact…once a QA representative goes out and finds a defect it is considered as a part of negligence on part of developer…which makes it difficult for a developer to survive with continuously high expectations from his management….
2) To a certain extent we as a QA representative also are at fault….once a bug is found we become insensitive of how a developer would feel…he puts is hrs in getting the code ready for build..and immediately here comes a QA guy arguing about his logic…I know few of you might not agree with this statement of mine…but this is a fact , we as a QA resource ignore this very issue, which goes a long way in making things more vulnerable….
3) The way defects have been communicated is a real big issue…play it down folks….it si just another defect…it becomes the job of a QA lead and Development lead to talk out the strategy at a mature level as to how to handle defect…
I understand this is not the right forum to discuss all this, but just wanted to share my views with you folks….
Thanks….
@Amit : I couldnt understand ur 2nd point.Testers dont get paid for pampering the developer sentiments.It is their job to pin point bugs and get them resolved.It is developers responsibility to behave maturely and not take it personally.
It seems u believe in top heavy model.The organisations who believe in this philosophy tend to have highest attrition rate in the industry.
No bug is just another defect - it is ANOTHER DEFECT and it needs to be communicated that way.
Hi,
Thanks for the article! It touches upon most of the relevant points.
I make another suggestion to retain the testing professionals in their organizations. The company/ department/ division/ team should provide a constant stream of learning opportunities to the testers. This would challenge them and help them become better in their skills/ acquire new skills etc. If this is not possible, at least some un-scheduled time should be provided to the testers so that they may get time to analyze their skills and upgrade themselves.
Regards,
Inder P Singh
nice and clean article..great work…
Sam: I knew while writing this, that there will be few who might not agree wth my way of thinking…Now here is my explaniation of what you think:
I never said that Testers are paid for pampering…”, it is this mentality which creates a gap between Developer and Tester, and results in not so good quality of product, I think we should understand one point: QA and Dev , though are two different Practices, but they are have to walk hand in hand, else your product is bound to fail..
Second:
You Said “It seems u believe in top heavy model.The organisations who believe in this philosophy tend to have highest attrition rate in the industry.”, Well I do not believe in Heavy Model stuff….and so far as the Attrition rate is concerend, we have been able to bring down the graph by this same approach…..
I myself am a Tester, and have been through all this…well for me Defect is not ANOTHER, but yes it is Another Defect which surely has to be communicated in proper maneer, and no way it should be hide, or it should be played down, but the way of communication should be different, that is my perception and have fetched me Huge dividends…may be not yours..so…chill…!!!!
what is bug report & where is asign ?
“Thanks for your nice article. before to that i want to tell you thing. I am also working as a test lead and working so many team members apparently found we are getting the resource. how ever i am not seeing the dedication among them. In their views executing the test cases if they found any defect in those test cases that’s defect else product will go with the defects. In this real time world no project has 100 % test cases. no body is realizing to that fact.”
Sam: Hi hanu. I have reply for ur above comments. First of all u should train them in such a way tat they should know the project in depth. Testing can be done in two ways a) Logical testing, wer we can test the project using logic. b) Test case testing, Just executing the test cases. Im working for past 2+ yrs in Insurance project n i dint got any remarks. I worked hard but all appreciation goes to my boss. If u team members r struck then show them the way.
what is bug life cyscle ?
Hi Vijay,
Excellent article…
But unfortunately none of the above mentioned “one liner solution” are implemented in my team.
May be I can try to implement those when I become a team leader. Thanks for this article.
Suresh
Hi Vijay,
I have to go for an interview at IFLEX SOLUTION, I have around 2.5 years of experience in manual testing, but never worked on any Automation tool on real time.
Can you pls guide me about the level of interview and how should i prepare to crack.
As far as my practical experience is concern i am confident about the project on which i am working or worked, but in times i stuck to define something with a proper defenation.
Pls tell me Do’s and Dont’s.
Hope to hear from u soon.
rgds
Vishal
Call: +919830704327
E-mail: bishalchaperia@gmail.com
Inspiring article. Better all management teams should read this.
hi iam ashok B.tech(I.T) 2006 passedout i finished my CSTP certificate in black box testing from STC technologies chennai, but this one year i found very hard in finding a testing job in chennai , i never want to relocate to any other state bcoz of my family situation so plz help me to get a testing job i would be thank full to u all, i don’t have any experience and i did a project in QTP tool also iam familiar with manual & automation so help me out my no-9840500185
you can mail me to ash_22_30@yahoo.co.in
Hello Vijay,
I want to do some certification course in testing. Please suggest me which would be a better option?
Best Suggestions For all employees as well as to the management people.If uyou follow these definitely you will get better results.
ya good and nice
That’s a great article. Thanks for your sharing about your own experiences. That’s very thing I found for my job.
Hello Sir\Mam,
I am Nikhil Mangal persuing MCA (2006-09)
with 73% from Oriental Institute of science and Technology,Bhopal.
Looking for a major Project.
Contact:-
Email: nikhilmangal09@gmail.com
Mob: +91-9009662339
Software Skills:-
•Languages: C,C++, Data Structure,Visual Basic ,Java,Dot Net
hello…….
Explain me incident management…..?
Indeed a good article, I myself changed my job a month back, the reason being ‘lack of appreciation for my hard work’.
Hello Vijay,
i’m totally agree with your thoughts and suggestions. i think my company following most of the valuable point you have mentioned in order to retain good testers. My company always appreciated for my hard work and gave me good incentives and promotions. Now I feel I’m part of my company and I don’t feeling leave this place at all. As a lead QA engineer I’m encouraging my team to be like me because I know our management will appreciate them if they perform well.
Thanks,
Regards,
Qtppro75
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Its good please continue for a long term, let testers take help and suggestions
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Awesome! article.I have experienced all n i left the organization due to the addressed issues.I learned java to enter into development.But that has not become successfull.This has happened only bcoz of my incomplete achievement in testing.Once i achieve something in testing then i would enter into development, this is my goal.
Hai all
I am prasanna,as a QA Engineer.I got this site from my friend.This is very use full one for us(QA’s).The article is really nice and easy to understand(User friendly).
I got lot of new ways for testing and how to mange the employees.Every one should be used this site and improve their knowledge.
Each and every one says”Testing is an easiest job”.But it’s not true.
“IMPROVE THE QUALITY AND RESCUE THE LIFE”
Thanks to ALL………..
Hi Vijay ,
Can u give Suggestion “Basic tips for testing .net WEB Application” ,can u please sent the reply for my mail id”prvelvinoth@gmail.com”
Hi
Realy this is very nice article . And on this article I wants to follow this method in my company for improve
the work system & enviorement.
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