In Charge of Testing

As a Test Manager I oversee the testing in a project or program – I am usually the only testing specialist in the project, so, I need the right leadership skills and the right tools to succeed. I have to own the data about the testing and quality activities.

As the test manager I need to facilitate a quite a range of testing activities:

• Developer’s unit test
• Continuous integration tests
• Robot Desktop test automation
• Infrastructure specialists testing
• Any professional testing specialists?
• Business Analysts [1] or similar within the project
• End users or end user representatives

I need to balance that I need to know what’s going on (with regards to testing) but without micromanaging the people being involved in testing and quality activities. My role is to facilitate that testing things happen – like the project manager making project things happen. I cannot own the activities without owning the data about it. I need to cover the full spectrum of tests – from engineered (RDA and CI/CD) to people-based (scripts and exploration).

The most practical tool for a test manager with this scope is PractiTest, as there is more to testing than just the test cases [2]. The old term “ALM” [3] comes to mind – it is still relevant when I look for a full test management tool. I need to cover both the “inputs” to testing (requirements, tickets and user stories) and the “outputs” (bugs) in one location. I need the requirements and user stories in my tool, as I need to base my test analysis and planning on the delivery model (that may not always be agile). I need the bugs in the testing tool too, as bugs can happen in any work product of the project: documents, code base and even the tests. PractiTest acknowledge that there is more to IT projects than code.

I appreciate the key driver of PractiTest – that all activities happen in-flow. You don’t have to change window, stack pop-ups or go to another tool in order to run the tests or create bugs. Creating bugs happens in context of the test case and seamlessly moves all data about the run to the bug. Everything you need to do is context-based, and available to you on screen. And it has some cool features of read-only links to graphs for management reporting, and a smart built-in “rapid reporter” for exploratory testing notes.

It can be a challenge to switch to PractiTest if you are in a compliance setting, if you need on-Premise or if your team generally uses Azure DevOps (the tool formerly known as TFS). To get the full potential of Azure DevOps, though, you need the full Microsoft Test Pro licenses, so it’s not a free tool either – nor is DevOps intuitive for testing things doesn’t have the code available. As with Azure DevOps PractiTest is also SaaS only, with multiple data centers for regional data compliance. As there is always inertia towards a commodity it won’t be long before there is no good arguments to have test management tools on-Premise and for the tool vendors to provide the compliance certificates (ISO/SOC really should be sufficient, IMO).

Out of the box PractiTest supports the categories of testing above (engineered, scripted, exploratory) and has the necessary integrations too: Surefire for unit testing, Maven for CI/CD, Jira, ServiceNow or any other ITSM for requirement input. There is even a two way integration to Azue DevOps. As the web design is “responsive” it could probably run off a tablet. That would enable easier test documentation for field tests. It would be even better to have a small version of it on a phone and be able to use the camera for “screen shots”.

At work I am currently running a large project regarding customizing and implementing a standard commercial software system, PractiTest would fit right in, as we have the following test activities:

• Unit test by the developers
• Automation by test engineers
• Exploratory test by Subject matter experts
• Formal scripted testing with end users

And I need to own the data around all of this, if I want to in in charge of the testing (and not only the testers). We are very few software testing specialists on the project team, but as the manager of testing I need to cover many other people performing the testing. This transforms my role from test management to one about leadership, coaching, and facilitation of testing being performed by the SMEs – and anyone else really.

I will be talking about Leading When the Subject Matter Experts Test at ConTEST NYC 2019 until then read more about leadership:

• You don’t have to be a boss to be a leader
• Expectations around Testing
• Who is the tester?

1. Anthropologists and similar humanities educations can be great BA’s
2. looking at you Test Rail 😉
3. ALM = Application Life Cycle, like Micro Focus Quality Center etc.

Disclaimer: This is an influencer review sponsored by PractiTest.