Matt Heusser’s Blog
Testing at the Edge of Chaos
The Boutique Tester Goes Big-Time
The fine folks at SQE just published my article, “The Boutique Tester“, on Stickyminds.com.
The article was listed as a thought experiment; a “what if.” A few people have asked me for more meat on the bones on the business model, but to do that, I have to ask – what do you want to talk about?
Comments (3)
at October 27, 2009, 6:11 pm:
I liked James Bach’s “Have Internet – will test!” story he made out of this. Personally I would like to get some hands on there and start a boutique testing shop, but I’m too scary about the risks – in the end I’m just a fearful European…
Kind regards
Markus Gärtner
at October 27, 2009, 6:13 pm:
the link to the article on stickyminds gets redirected to
http://www.stickyminds.com/sitewide.asp?Function=edetail#at
which generates a message: Sorry, your document could not be found.
[It seems to be working for myself and Markus - I just tried again manually. But if it doesn't work for you, try going to http://www.stickyminds.com and clicking on the article; it'll be on the stickyminds homepage for a week. Also if it doesn't work for you, leave a comment here. I'll keep working on it.]
at November 17, 2009, 9:58 am:
Like Markus I am interested in starting a boutique testing shop mainly because it is an opportunity to start testing as a external testing advisor in smaller (software development) companies. Things I would be interested about would be:
- What kind of services to offer
- Do you concentrate on 1 industry
- What are your actual clients (IT managers, Project Managers, QA)
kind regards Edgar
[It's not an easy question to answer. The 'large' software testing labs, with more than about five people, tend to fizzle out over time. After all, they only do part of the process and they have a bunch of pay checks to feed. I would think that to be successful, you would want to have a 'hook' - like Karen Johnson, who is a boutique tester (my words, not hers) that acts as a consultant, often setting up the testing practice at startups. Or do training. But I have hope ...]