Test Team lead – filling project gaps.
Submitted by Ainars Galvans on Wed, 01/02/2006 - 10:19.
test management
I believe that there are some specific for Test Team lead compared to other team leads. Although I've never been development lead I, still I believe test lead needs to be Leader and Manager much more than any other lead. His/her decisions, escalations and reports are the same if not more significant compared to even the project managers'.
Also I believe QA should fill the gaps. It should not only do testing. It should do whatever the project fails to do. If there are poor requirements analyse/management... And this is what the Lead should do.
First of all I do read management theory and like to read it. I have G. Winberg “Becoming a technical leader” on my desk now that I have red already few years ago and I do re-read it now slowly (slower that first time). I learn much more new.
However I don’t like al that theories about person types. I found myself being able to change my personality type depending on project needs.
Also I never think about motivation theory when doing management job. I know testers are mostly de-motivated by a lot of monkey job and routine they need to do and lack of management recognition (a lot of stories about tester is cause of any defect detected in production). My main tasks as manager is to avoid assigning monkey job to my team and avoid them to hear management blaming us for bad quality – I do argue with them and never fear of being fired, that’s ME. And to demonstrate management what a great job we have done.
Well there are much more ideas in my head at the moment, and thanks Rich for this post – this inspirit me to write few more topics to my blog.
G. Winberg describes difference between manager and leader. I once tried to be manager without being lead, when joined as team lead to project where every tester had solid experience with product and it’s testing. It was hard at the beginning to admit that I’m not going to be lead tester in this group and I will always be asking them to help me understand what they tests… I was lucky to have several leaders in that test group (overall about 15 persons), so I only led the performance testing. That was a great experience and rather successful one.
However I love to be a leader and a manager at a time. This means I have to be the first tester assigned to the project and learn the architecture of the software and later use my coaching/presentation skills to tell everyone what this software is and what it is not about to do. Make some or even most of decisions of either the issue is a bug or a feature, etc. Test items for which test effort could be dramatically reduced based on risks/architecture knowledge/etc. – I mean you should assume responsibility skip a lot of testing to save time. That’ s the black art of testing – decisions of what no to test.
Oh yes, the specific of testing is that you could drop it and none will know it unless customers detect defects. But they will detect them anyway…
If developer don’t write a single line of code, then code don’t compile. If tester doesn’t test single test case with single test input data, there are a good change that it does not matter and very good chance that even if it matter, it is not critical and this release could be shipped with the bug anyway.
Also I believe QA should fill the gaps. It should not only do testing. It should do whatever the project fails to do. If there are poor requirements analyse/management, QA should take responsibility of testing them, if there are a strong person who manager requirements, then QA should not waste their time trying to suggest what seems wrong in requirements. If there are lack of architect, if there are no System Analyst or he is running out of time, if the project manager is overloaded with work, if there are no support person or none to talk to customer – QA should take responsibility to overtake any type of project activities, although always deputy (coordinate critical decisions). QA person is jack of all trades. Lead tester have all the technical and personal skills required to be moderate analyst, architect, manager.
By doing that type of job even at moderate quality/speed may contribute project more that doing excellent testing and leaving that job never done. Late found defects are too expensive to fix… But of course, never forget that testing is your primary goal. Try to do all the other tasks through the testing
Been there done that.
Also I believe QA should fill the gaps. It should not only do testing. It should do whatever the project fails to do. If there are poor requirements analyse/management... And this is what the Lead should do.
First of all I do read management theory and like to read it. I have G. Winberg “Becoming a technical leader” on my desk now that I have red already few years ago and I do re-read it now slowly (slower that first time). I learn much more new.
However I don’t like al that theories about person types. I found myself being able to change my personality type depending on project needs.
Also I never think about motivation theory when doing management job. I know testers are mostly de-motivated by a lot of monkey job and routine they need to do and lack of management recognition (a lot of stories about tester is cause of any defect detected in production). My main tasks as manager is to avoid assigning monkey job to my team and avoid them to hear management blaming us for bad quality – I do argue with them and never fear of being fired, that’s ME. And to demonstrate management what a great job we have done.
Well there are much more ideas in my head at the moment, and thanks Rich for this post – this inspirit me to write few more topics to my blog.
G. Winberg describes difference between manager and leader. I once tried to be manager without being lead, when joined as team lead to project where every tester had solid experience with product and it’s testing. It was hard at the beginning to admit that I’m not going to be lead tester in this group and I will always be asking them to help me understand what they tests… I was lucky to have several leaders in that test group (overall about 15 persons), so I only led the performance testing. That was a great experience and rather successful one.
However I love to be a leader and a manager at a time. This means I have to be the first tester assigned to the project and learn the architecture of the software and later use my coaching/presentation skills to tell everyone what this software is and what it is not about to do. Make some or even most of decisions of either the issue is a bug or a feature, etc. Test items for which test effort could be dramatically reduced based on risks/architecture knowledge/etc. – I mean you should assume responsibility skip a lot of testing to save time. That’ s the black art of testing – decisions of what no to test.
Oh yes, the specific of testing is that you could drop it and none will know it unless customers detect defects. But they will detect them anyway…
If developer don’t write a single line of code, then code don’t compile. If tester doesn’t test single test case with single test input data, there are a good change that it does not matter and very good chance that even if it matter, it is not critical and this release could be shipped with the bug anyway.
Also I believe QA should fill the gaps. It should not only do testing. It should do whatever the project fails to do. If there are poor requirements analyse/management, QA should take responsibility of testing them, if there are a strong person who manager requirements, then QA should not waste their time trying to suggest what seems wrong in requirements. If there are lack of architect, if there are no System Analyst or he is running out of time, if the project manager is overloaded with work, if there are no support person or none to talk to customer – QA should take responsibility to overtake any type of project activities, although always deputy (coordinate critical decisions). QA person is jack of all trades. Lead tester have all the technical and personal skills required to be moderate analyst, architect, manager.
By doing that type of job even at moderate quality/speed may contribute project more that doing excellent testing and leaving that job never done. Late found defects are too expensive to fix… But of course, never forget that testing is your primary goal. Try to do all the other tasks through the testing
Been there done that.