Does this sound familiar? In a major system project, whether it’s an ERP rollout, a system upgrade, or any other large-scale change, testing often ends up on the shoulders of business main users. Our test managers see the same pattern project after project: key users know the processes inside out, but building a test plan, writing test cases, and managing test environments is completely new work for many of them. That’s why many organizations bring in an external test manager for this phase – testing calls for its own specialist expertise – just as running the business does.
Testing expertise that stays in-house
A test manager brings hands-on experience in test planning, building test cases, and managing test data and environments. At the same time, they train your own people in best practices and tools, so the know-how doesn’t disappear when the project ends, it stays in-house. In practice, this can mean a main user learning, during the project, to write test cases clearly enough to keep updating them on their own afterwards, without outside help.
Extra capacity exactly when you need it
Coordinating and preparing testing can easily take up someone’s entire working day, especially if it’s new territory for them. When an external professional takes on that responsibility, your own team can focus on running the business alongside the project.
A test manager also makes sure the right things happen at the right time, and nothing gets missed. We’ve noticed this play out concretely in situations where a main user was responsible for both testing and day-to-day customer service at the same time: once testing responsibility moves to the test manager, the key user gets back to their core job, and testing no longer depends on evenings and weekends.
One steady hand across a multi-vendor environment
During a change, an organization typically has several legacy systems, new solutions, and the migrations and integrations between them in play, each with its own vendor. This shows up especially clearly in ERP projects, but the same holds for any large system landscape. Testing a setup like these calls for technical understanding, managing dependencies between systems, and smooth collaboration with different stakeholders: a combination that’s rarely already sitting in-house.
A typical example is when integration testing touches several vendors at once. The test manager brings the vendors to the same table, agrees on a shared test sequence, and makes sure no one is left waiting needlessly on each other’s results. They also help build a process that confirms coverage and test readiness before moving to the next test phase.
Catching risks before go-live
A bug found in production can wait months for a fix in off-the-shelf software, depending on the vendor’s release cycle. Thorough acceptance testing makes sure critical issues are found and fixed before go-live, not after. An external test manager often brings a fresh perspective here too: they take a critical look at test coverage, and also flag the need for non-functional testing, such as performance, security, and usability, which can easily get lost under schedule pressure.
A concrete example: a billing error found during acceptance testing gets fixed within a couple of days. Found after go-live, that same error can end up on incorrect invoices sent to customers before anyone notices.
One person holding all the threads
Testing requires close collaboration between the business, vendors, and other stakeholders. The test manager prioritizes findings, communicates proactively, and makes sure testing stays on schedule and every party knows where things stand. In practice, that means a weekly status review where the same person tells leaders directly which tests are done, which bugs are blocking go-live, and who’s fixing them.
An unbiased eye on evaluating bugs
When a test manager has no ties to the system vendor and no attachment to “this is how we’ve always done it,” they can assess findings objectively. They can tell clearly whether something is a genuine bug or just a different way of working and resolve disagreements constructively, so the project keeps moving. We’ve seen situations where a vendor insisted a bug was “working as intended.” An external test manager can challenge that reading without damaging the vendor relationship, because they have no stake of their own to protect. That same objectivity also means the test manager makes sure, early in the project, that requirements and acceptance criteria are documented in enough detail. Without clear, jointly agreed requirements, it’s hard later to hold a vendor to fixes or changes that were never defined in the first place.
How our test managers use AI
Just like in other project work, AI frees up time from repetitive tasks in test management too. Here’s how Taskmill’s test managers put AI to practical use:
- Drafting test cases: AI turns requirements and user stories into draft test cases, which the test manager reviews and refines
- Generating test data: AI quickly creates realistic, anonymized test data for different test scenarios
- Prioritizing bugs: AI groups findings by severity and impact, so the test manager can focus on what matters most first
- Selecting regression tests: AI suggests which tests are worth rerunning after a specific change, instead of the whole test suite
- Status reporting: AI pulls the testing status from different tools into one overview for the steering group
- Analyzing error logs: AI surfaces anomalies and recurring error patterns in large volumes of data that would otherwise get lost in manual review
- Ensuring coverage: AI helps find gaps and risks especially in interfaces and integrations, making it easier to confirm test coverage systematically
AI doesn’t make decisions on the test manager’s behalf, but it frees up time for what genuinely needs a human: mediating between vendors, weighing risks, and having the conversations with leaders about when a system is truly ready to go live.
Where should you start?
If you have a major change ahead — whether it’s rolling out a new system, a system upgrade, or another large-scale project — it pays to think about test ownership early. At Taskmill, we help organizations build testing that supports the project practically and people-first, working alongside your team.
Get in touch, and let’s talk more.