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 …
Tag Archives: TestManagement
We need cooperation between testers and developers
Sometimes there can be competition between testers and developers. Cooperation between testers and developers is better for the company and the customer. “A system must have an aim”[1]. A company is a system and so has an aim. Testers and developers are components of the company’s system and so share the company’s aim. “The obligations …
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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 …
How do testers assist organisational learning?
“Most organisations focus on the acquisition, processing of data and information….but data, information and knowledge are not all that can be learned, there is also understanding and wisdom”[1] Testers contribute to each of these types of learning. “These five types of mental content form a hierarchy of value; data have the least value, wisdom the …
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Great careers advice for testers – A Review of The Software Testers Journey by Nicola Lindgren and Vernon Richards
This book offers useful advice to testing professionals on how to build their careers. The advice in the book includes examples from testers on how they progressed in their careers. There are different career paths: people, technology and business. When you start your career you should consider which direction you want to go in. Thinking …
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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Why does testing take so long?
Sometimes testers are asked ‘why does testing take so long?’ The question should not make testers feel defensive. We should always be looking to improve our test process. Testers can use a technique from Toyota to answer the question and improve our process. Testers want their testing to flow easily from one task to the …
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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Two ways of learning that benefit testing
Testers are learning all the time. I have been reading John Dues’ new book Win-Win: W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge, and the Science of Improving Schools with the Profound Deming Book Club and have gained insights into different ways of learning. “Moving from planning to doing is deductive learning and moving from …
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How do you decide which tests to automate?
An end-to-end test pack needs to run quickly so that it does not slow developers, and at the same time provide useful feedback to the developers. This makes deciding which categories of tests to include in the test pack challenging. A ten-minute video from Russ Ackoff has helped me better understand my decisions on one …
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Who is responsible for quality? Is it the tester, or the team?
I have been reading John A. Dues’ new book Win-Win W. Edwards Deming, the System of Profound Knowledge, and the Science of Improving Schools with the Deming Profound Book Club. John Dues uses an equation to describe who is responsible for student performance[1]. This equation works as a useful analogy to describe who is responsible …
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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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