How to break someone into testing?

Question

OK. Our product works. Beta testers are actually getting their stuff done. Time for the next iteration. But how to ensure quality? We need a tester!

How do I get someone fresh off the street started in testing? I have no clue on how to do it myself (I'm a developer, not a tester)!

We are a tiny team:

• 2 architects (as in buildings, not software, they are the domain experts here) figuring out what to build
• me building it
• and a new guy to do some testing before we push releases out

None of us has a clue on how to do this professionally. So far we have:

• a bunch of virtual machines spanning the configurations we would like to test
  • various versions of windows
  • german and english, the two languages likely to be in use by our customers
  • the host software we are writing for (Autodesk Revit Architecture 2010, we are building a plugin for energy calculations)
• a text document describing some tests I did (installed release xyz, did this, did that, etc.)
• a bug tracking system the tester can add all the bugs he finds

I expect we will need a test script. But how? Who? What? When?

Answer 1

Why are you looking for "someone off the street"? To me, it sounds kind of like asking "I want to hire a new programmer, how do I get someone off the street and get him up to speed programming my software?". Why would you want to do that, over hiring someone who is a programmer already?

In your situation, which is that you don't know much about testing, I'd definitely think about hiring someone with experience in the field.

Specifically, I'd probably look for:

1. Someone with some experience performing tests under his belt (since you're going to want him actually doing tests).
2. Someone with some experience writing test plans/etc.
3. Someone with some experience running a QA team.

The last point is optional, but hopefully your team will be growing as your software grows, so it might make sense to get someone who can grow in the role as well (not to mention having the experience to help you decide when and how to grow the QA team).