Topic: Tester performance

The methods of measuring the performance of a manual tester are highly specific to an organization (and/ or the project) in which the tester works. One way of measuring the performance could be to assign goals to the tester at the beginning of a performance review period (say, a year) and judge their performance with respect to each goal with the aid of the following:

1) Project data (planned and actual effort spent on testing activities, defect metrics e.g. defects discovered, defects re-tested etc.)

2) Feedback from the customer/ other team members/ manager

Then the collected data and manager's evaluation could be discussed with the tester and a mutually acceptable score of performance be agreed upon. The goal of performance measurement should be to provide objective data on the performance by the person relative to pre-agreed goals.

Measuring human performance is a complex subject and requires serious thought, planning and execution. I have mentioned only a brief outline of a possible performance measurement process.