At the the recent “Online Test Conference – Fall 2020” a workshop reminded me to look at the problem. And it’s always a people problem. Which got me thinking later on in the program – what’s this talk trying to solve?
You, yourself, is responsible for getting the training, learning and knowledge you need. Don’t wait for your boss – be proactive, it drives your success. Here are some places to start:
Meetup’s are happening online now, which removes one primary barrier to attending great talks. Similarly conferences go online, some with a fee, some for free – some even in multiple time zones. Lastly online training sites are abundant with relevant information for the challenges you have. Yes – also for you!
With plenty of talks about risk based testing, test management in the light of automated deliveries, BDD etc. With live slack groups the experience is almost as the physical conferences :). Next up in may is the Online Test Conf, Spring 2020 with topics for everyone in convenient global time slots.
When your boss says there’s no budget for attending conferences in person this year (again!), there are other ways to attend – physically. You could try to submit a talk and get accepted, but the barrier is quite high. A great way is simply to reach out and volunteer to help the program committee. If you can time it, with regards to the budget year, ask you boss based on the conference program aligned with your company strategy. At least what the boss should do is to allow it to be company time – else take the time off. …
If you are hungry to learn
What I see in the global testing community is that Scandinavians are complacently waiting for the company to pay time, money and effort to their learning, while people in emergent economies (Hi Sfax and Argentina) are eager to learn and on the forefront of the trends of the trade. They are driving the change of a positive inclusive community.
Weinberg
1997 in Making Sense of Change Management: A Complete Guide to the Models,
Tools and Techniques of Organizational Change https://flylib.com/books/en/2.28.1/
In the recent years I have been working on projects with no dedicated testers but plenty of testing. The testing has primarily been performed by subject matter experts. This is where it gets interesting, as my role on these projects has been to lead the testing being performed by people that have limited experience in testing. They also have no desire to be testing specialists, after all they are already specialists in their own subjects, however, everyone agrees and insist that the testing needs doing. So how do we ensure that the testing being done is done well? After having worked on several very different projects, yet still with subject matter experts doing the testing, I have been able to get both the public process clerks and the technology specialists to perform excellent testing. This talk is about the approaches that I have found work well:
One of the approaches is for me to prepare the test cases and prepare them only as headlines. Sometimes preparing the tests as open questions helps too.
Another approach is to lead them as if they are doing the project participation voluntarily. They probably are, but still it helps to respect where they are coming from.
The lessons though (good and bad) is relevant to many testers in other situations, especially being the only “tester” on the team. The story applies equally to developers and business end users doing most of the testing and you will have them contributing with great testing in no time!
What you will know after the talk:
An understanding of how testing looks when done by subject matter experts
How to lead a testing activity with an appreciative and motivating style
Examples of how teams can do great testing without dedicated testers
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:
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”.
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.
Recruiting for testing roles these days should be mostly about curiosity, problem-solving and less about productivity and text book knowledge. Recruit for right brain skills – not so much operational process jockeys.
Similarly HFresearch have compiled an analysis that even on a management level the trend is to hire for creative thinkers over “operational experts that improve business performance and productivity”. Talent focus should be on right brain thinkers over – The wonks who spend all day staring at spreadsheets, focused on execution “left-brained” activities are less in demand .
But where do we find curiosity training?
If that is the skills we are looking for perhaps we should stop looking at university programs in computer science or engineering, when we want to recruit testers. I have a computer science master degree, and that was really theoretical and while it somewhat focused on problem solving, the lesson was rarely about thinking outside the box.
I think I would rather hire people with business domain skills and train testing theory, than hire a process jockey with no experiences in besides textbook examples. That’s also how I came into testing myself, practical activities first – formal training later.
Perhaps it’s not as such important to have an university degree to get into testing. Though it helps 🙂 A diverse background is important, I know of librarians, laboratory technicians and humanities majors that bring good competencies to the testing field.
Finding one higher education that focuses on building curiosity, whole picture thinkers is hard – perhaps dungeons and dragons, as also discussed at the conference?
Complexity is a Matter of Perspective 