Episode 4: Aligning Testing to Quality with Marcus Merrell

Inside The Outer Loop

In this episode, Marcus Merrell, Vice President of Technology at Sauce Labs, bring his experience to Inside The Outer Loop! Together with Curiosity Software's hosts Huw Price and Rich Jordan, Marcus Merrell discusses the lack of innovation in the testing space over the last 20 years, and why testing should be at the centre of quality efforts. Marcus rejects the idea that testing is a janitorial effort and cost centre, seeing it more as a revenue protection and growth opportunity if utilised properly! The discussion gets started with a few questions, why is innovation limited to digital testing and model-based testing? How do we get beyond the dogmas and fashions around favouring tooling over business risk? The takeaway is that focusing just on the common trappings of economically expensive bugs, even with 99% code coverage, it pulls focus away from reflecting on real business risks. This takes teams beyond the "must deliver yesterday" culture. Software practices require testers to have a seat at the executive level to inform the company about the kinds of risks they’re exposed to, but there’s a rabbit hole syndrome that has freed up a misconception that testers are irrelevant. The way to combat this is through finding early adopters to incubate, diffuse and prove culture change is an option. In terms of organisational risks, it’s great having a testing capability and team, yet unless somebody’s feeling pain when something blows up, how likely is it they will react? And at a more granular level the conversation needs to be on persuading organisations to spend time thinking about requirements, and quality at the start of the software delivery lifecycle. Inside the outer loop – brought to you by the Curiosity Software team! Together with industry leaders and experts, we uncover actionable strategies to navigate the outer loop of software delivery, streamline test data management, and elevate software quality. Tune in to transform the way you think about software delivery, quality, and productivity!