Lessons Learned from 20 Years of Managing Testing

Johanna RothmanNew: Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects

www.jrothman.comjr@jrothman.com

781-641-4046

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Software Testing Has Nothing to do with Product Quality...

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Software Testing Has Everything to do with Product Information

More Information Means More Testing Approaches

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The more complex the problem, the more diversity you

need in testing

End-to-end system testing

Combinatorial testing

Feature-based testing to assess risk

Area testing for developer feedback

...

How do You Provide Information?

Weather report

Test dashboards

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No Traffic Lights!

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Weather Report

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Test Dashboard

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Lesson: Software Testers Are Not Victims!

Testers Have Power

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Do You Have Enough People?

How do you know?

What is not getting done?

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End the Multitasking

How many of you are context switching between several

#1 priorities?

Do you confuse urgent and important?

You can only do one (important) thing at a time

If you decide who is on what project, you must develop a

project portfolio

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Yes Can Get You Into Trouble

Saying ‘Yes’ leads you to agree to work you may not have

the people or time to do

And agreeing to something on the spur of the moment

might lead you to agree to something you don’t know

anything about

A True Story

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No is a Necessary Tool

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No Can Get You Into Trouble

If you only say ‘No” or say ‘No’ in the wrong way or to

the wrong project, you can run into political trouble

A True Story

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A Little Experiment

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Maybe

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Maybe is a Disaster

The people who want to hear “yes” will hear yes

The people who want to hear “no” will hear no

All of those people are your senior managers

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A Project Portfolio

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Combination View: Low and Mid Level

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Project Portfolio Explains Staffing

What do you do if you don’t have enough people?

Victim mentality: Placate and do the project anyway

Blame the developer-mentality: “If we had better people/

architecture/whatever, we wouldn’t need as many testers”

Super-reasonable: “The standard for a dev to test ratio is ...”

Congruence is explaining the needs of the project, the abilities and

number of people, and the context of the organization. Use the

project portfolio to explain.20

Congruence

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Many More Management Lessons

Interpersonal skills such as feedback and coaching

Creates an environment for success

Developing a strategy

Leads the hiring

Builds trusting relationships

Build training time into the work week

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Congruence

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Lesson: Software Release is a Business Decision

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Testers Do Not Get to Judge the Goodness of the Product.

They Provide Information About the Product.

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Release Criteria are Your Friend

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Process != Testing

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There’s More...

On www.jrothman.com

I’m @johannarothman on Twitter

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