Lessons learned from conducting industry surveys in software testing

We have conducted a number of industry studies looking into aspects of software testing. These include a survey of practitioner view on software tester performance indicators and team formation issues; detailed worklog analysis of representative tasks conducted by software testers; feedback on a proposed approach to software tester performance evaluation; and collecting indicative personality factors of software testers vs other software developers. These have proved to be challenging exercises. Key issues to overcome include reaching appropriate testers in industry, gaining management and company consent, structuring surveys and questionnaires to balance time vs detail, and gaining sufficient response rate and response quality to be useful.