Rotating Team Members

Let's suppose that no one from the disciplines listed previously is available to help on your project, and you are still determined not to test your own materials. Another alternative is to draw upon colleagues of similar disciplines who are not working on the same product. An example of this approach is for technical communicators to test each other's manuals or for software engineers to test each other's program modules.

In such a scenario, the person whose product is being tested could help prepare many of the test materials and make the pretest arrangements, then turn over the actual moderating of the test to a colleague. One of the advantages of this approach is that two (or more) heads are better than one, and it is always beneficial to have someone other than yourself help prepare the test. 

The person acting as the test moderator would need time to become familiar with the specific product being tested and to prepare to test it in addition to the time required to actually moderator the test.

Should you decide to implement this approach, you must plan ahead in order to build the test into your mutual schedules. You cannot expect your colleague to drop everything he or she is working on to help you. Of course, you would reciprocate and serve as test moderator for your colleague's product.