William Sherkenbach was Corporate Director of Total Quality Planning and Statistical Methods at Ford Motors and Group Director Process Improvement at General Motors. He wrote that “both of these great companies are better because their journey included Dr. W. Edwards Deming”[1]. In this book, Sherkenbach explains “how to operationalize the Deming philosophy in business, government …
Tag Archives: Leadership
Dear Software Testing
This weekend, I saw a play that showed a manager driving out fear to lead his team to success. The play was ‘Dear England’ and dramatised Gareth Southgate’s term as manager of the England men’s soccer team. The play shows Southgate using psychology. He hired the psychologist Dr Pippa Grange to be Head of People …
Testers should not be defensive – A review of “Teaching Smart People How to Learn” by Chris Argyris
Testers often make suggestions about preventing bugs and sometimes find that these suggestions are rejected. Defensive reasoning can be a cause of their suggestions being rejected. Chris Argyris explains how defensive reasoning can prevent a company from learning and then explains how a company can overcome its defensiveness. I discovered Chris Argyris’s work through the …
Should we add new features or improve the usability and discoverability of existing features?
Some years ago, there was a disagreement within the company where I was working. The Test Manager and Customer Support Manager wanted to focus on learning about customers’ problems and solving them by improving the discoverability and usability of features. In contrast, the Product Owner wanted to engage customers by creating new features. I was …
To copy a testing process “is to invite disaster”
Sometimes, we hear about a company that creates high-quality software. The company has great testing and quality processes, so we think about copying their ideas to improve our process. “If anyone were to study such a company without theory, i.e. without knowing what questions to ask,” they “would be tempted to copy the company”[1]. The …
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I am a student of testing
I have been a tester for twenty years. I have learned to think of myself as a student of testing and I am a better tester for it. I am a tester and, as a tester, I learn nearly every day. Over the last week, I have learned some new aspects of the Playwright API. …
“The Purpose of Analysis is Insight”
Testers want to analyse the product and process to improve quality. Once every engineering team had a statistician, that is not the case today. Testers can help their team by using statistics, such as control charts, to do analysis. There are a lot of resources to help us use statistics, for example, this blog post …
What training did you get when you became a Test Manager?
From conversations I have had with friends in the UK and the US, I have found that it is a common experience for people not to receive management training when they first become test managers. I received training as a manager and have learned that I was fortunate to do so. A test manager or …
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A great resource for leaders in test and quality – A review of “Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn” by Katie Anderson
The Toyota leader Isao Yoshino learned many lessons during his career. Katie Anderson shares these lessons in “Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn “, which I have just read with the Profound Book Club. Toyota has made so many innovations in quality. If you are a Test\QE\QA Manager or Lead or want to become one …
“Go see, ask why, show respect”
Test analysts, test engineers, test leads and test managers need to understand customers so that our testing includes using the product as the customer uses it. To do this we need to learn how customers use the product by meeting the customer and seeing how they use it. Mr Fuji Cho, the former President of …
My new guiding principles are helping me to automate tests.
It is useful to have guiding principles on how to be a good employee, teammate and tester. I work in teams that describe themselves as lean or agile and so I am interested in learning what lean and agile are. Learning about how lean and agile came about helps me understand them. John Willis has …
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Whoever you are, whatever you have achieved you should recognise the achievements of others
Dr Joseph Juran rose from poverty to be an internationally respected management consultant who specialised in quality. His work included popularising the use of the Pareto Principle and creating The Juran Trilogy. Juran focussed on the role of management in quality. He wrote and contributed to many books including six volumes of Juran’s Quality Handbook. …
How to help your team complete their work and so have more time for testing
Testing can be hard, particularly when time is short because the team has a tight schedule. While working with Rob Falla I learned to use Critical Path Analysis to help my team deliver work on time, which helped me have more time for testing. Sometimes it is hard to complete the work that a team …
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How long will that test automation take?
Sometimes testers are asked how long it will take to automate a batch of tests. Planning how long your test automation should be simple, however, the plan will have missed some requirements. There are three types of requirements[1]: “We will never understand all the requirements of a story ahead of time”[2], this applies to test …
Cooperation helps to improve testing, helps testers and helps the company
Testers can help increase cooperation across the company, and cooperation will help us and the company. Testers give feedback to developers when we test. We should also get feedback from other departments and customers on our work and the product we are testing. The feedback we get from cooperating with other departments brings the perspectives …
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