"Testing is the responsibility of the whole team"

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Hello, my name is Antzie and I'm a bottleneck. I don't want to be one and I know I shouldn't feel like one, but I do. 

For years I've been hearing and reading that "testing is the responsibility of the whole team" and that "testing needs to be done, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be done by the tester of the team", and I completely agree with those statements. I wish I could benefit from those statements 40 hours a week. I've been trying to pitch them to my team, but perhaps I need to improve my sales pitch in the first place because I'm clearly not good at it.

For a couple of months, every single sprint we close, we have bugs and tasks in "Ready to test". I know I shouldn't feel like a lousy tester because of it, but I do. I'm a person who enjoys finishing a sprint with zero things in my to-do list. It gives me peace of mind. It allows me to enjoy my Friday afternoon feeling that I managed to complete something...that I managed to close a chapter on Friday and I get to start a new one on Monday. 

I understand that cultural changes take time. I also understand that testing takes time and that if by the first half of the sprint all the tickets estimated are waiting for me on the "Ready to test" column, then new tickets are grabbed from the "groomed" backlog, and so new tickets will be added to my pile. Do they equal the 20% of buffer time and capacity? I'm not sure, but it overwhelms me.

Perhaps that means I should dedicate less time to each ticket, but if I've estimated x amount of time for each, then why should I reduce it only because I have more stuff to do now? It doesn't feel right to ditch my own estimation only because I want to "finish on time".

Should I just learn to be okay with finishing all sprints with stuff stuck in the "Ready to test" swimlane? It doesn't feel like it's the solution to my problem.

I know what you're thinking, but I'm very vocal and I struggle to shut up about the things that matter to me, so I've brought this up multiple times in our retros. My team knows I'm frustrated and they've suggested leaving their finished tickets in "Code review" so I'm not overwhelmed. However, that looks, smells, tastes and feels like a placebo to me. 

I know what you're thinking and no, I don't want to quit, I happen to love this team, I want to stay and I want them to help me. I think this is a growing opportunity for all of us.

What I want is to do pair testing. I want to do mob testing. I want to do all the things suggested by Explore It! and Agile Testing Condensed. I want to be a Modern Tester. I want my team to understand that this is not only on me and the other tester of the team (we're actually one big mobile team but split in two mini teams). 

Some people might say: "If I do your job, then that means you need to code too then" and whereas I disagree with it, I know I would if I could, if I had the skills to do it...I so would, especially if a team member was drowning and they kept asking for help during every single retro. 

So dear team buddies, if you're reading this, please help me. Please jump on the evolution bandwagon with me because sometimes I feel like I'm the only one seeing this Thestral. 

*Note: I don't know how on Earth I forgot to mention The Modern Testing Principles but I've mended my post. In my defence, I was frustrated with the mobile app of Blogger because I had written a draft there but it was never saved, so I had to re-write this post. Of course I uninstalled the app afterwards.