Launch of Aqastra
For the past fifteen or more years, a significant amount of the onsite training we've done for clients has been oriented towards teaching business users to become acceptance testers. Typically, clients ask for a 1-2 day introduction to the basics and some practice in creating and running tests. In most cases the client wants to introduce their people to some structure and method so they can be joined by some professional testers and led by an experienced test manager. On occasion, we've been asked to lead these teams.
As far as I can tell, a large proportion of professional testers in user companies started this way. Maybe starting with a temporary secondment which stretched on and on, or perhaps they switched career by moving from a business role in one company to a testing role in another company in the same industry. At any rate, most business-originating testers get little support in their new career.
I've been involved in training/coaching many test teams who have had little or no testing training, but whose main value is perceived to be that "they know the business". Teams like these usually relish the opportunity to learn some testing-specific skills and break out of what is usually a repetitive and less effective mentality/approach.
Organisations such as banks, insurance companies, telecoms firms for example often find themselves needing to recruit software testers whilst letting experienced business staff go elsewhere. A company may be reducing headcount in their business whilst outsourcing testing to foreign companies having zero experience in the business supported by the software to be tested. Too often the outsourcer tests by rote, with little imagination or insight into the behaviour of the business needing software to be tested. This tragic situation is expensive too - irreplacable experience is lost forever; an expensive, business knowledge-deficient and often less than effective service is procured elsewhere.
There is plenty of evidence of companies retraining business people to become business analysts, programmers, technical support, but there seems to be limited efforts to recruit and induct business people into testing with mentoring/coaching support in a systematic way - at least in the UK.
On 30 January 2008, at the UK Test Management Summit, a new company, Aqastra, was launched to provide assessment, re-training and mentroring services wanting to recruit business people into their testing teams. Aqastra is a joint venture of Susan Windsor and myself designed to support transitioning of business people to beoming professional testers.
In others posts, I'll describe how we will operate this service and explain our thinking.
If you want to know more, take a look at the Aqastra website here: 
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