Images of Enterprise Test Organizations: Factory, Center of Excellence, or Community?

The organization of the testing process is an important part of any enterprise software quality management effort. However, little consensus exists how enterprise test organizations should be built up and structured, especially in connection with continuing penetration of recent trends such as enterprise agile development. This position paper is built upon our industry experience. During our transformation efforts connected with changing a test organization’s sourcing arrangement and management approach in a large multinational firm, we noticed that people tend to prefer one distinct perspective to make sense of enterprise test organizations. But such a one-sided approach makes it difficult for them to talk to each other about the test organization. To illustrate this, we use Gareth Morgan’s Images of Organization as an analytical lens to discuss three distinct images of test organizations we claim people typically carry in their minds. Our work increases understanding of design and transformation efforts related to management of enterprise software testing.