ISTQB ATM Advanced Test Manager – People Skills – Team Composition

1. Introduction

Welcome to the last chapter of the Syllables for ISTQB advanced Level Test Manager Certification. The chapter is about people skills and team composition. Being a test manager, it’s not all about knowing technical details and how something should be done. Manager is someone who manages the team, who builds up the team, who motivates the team and who gets the things done. So let’s see how the manager should work and what are the factors to be considered.

Test managers should recruit, hire and maintain teams with proper mix of skills adequate training and growth opportunities provided to every team member. Maintain a set of skills that allows effective functioning in a high pressure, fast paced environment. This chapter covers below topics how to assess skills how to fill in the gaps to create a synergistic team how to motivate the team how to communicate effectively. So let’s get into details about all of these one by one.

2. Individual Skills

As a manager when you are supposed to build up a team a successful team who can deliver as expected. Assessing and identifying individual skills is the primary factor, so let’s try to understand details about individual skills. Facts about testing tester improves with experience and education, education or training. The test team members should have willingness and ability to teach and learn from peers. The testing should be a mixture of skills and experience. Environment and project are more important when it comes to value specific skills. So what are the effective factors for testers knowledge base? The first one is use of software systems understand the system from end users perspective and knowledge of where the greatest impact of failure of system can be. Understanding how the system should react in various situations. So that is how a tester can conclude the use of software system. The second one is knowledge of the domain or business.

This is the most important point for any tester. The more you know about any domain or business value, more you’ll be able to add value to the testing. So domain expertise gives an idea about which areas are of most important to the business, how knowledge of this can be used to help prioritize the testing activities, creating realistic test data and test cases and verifying or creating use cases. The third one is participation in various phases of the software development process activities including analysis, development and technical support. Knowing software development process gives insight into how errors lead to be a defect and how it can be prevented at first place. Experiencing technical support provides knowledge of user experience, expectations and usability requirements.

Experience in software development is useful in using test tools which require programming and design expertise as well as in participating code reviews and analysis. The fourth important factor is participation in software testing activities. The software testing activities mainly includes requirement analysis, risk analysis, test case design, test execution and reporting and interpersonal skills like giving and receiving constructive criticism, influencing and negotiating team playing well, organization attentive to details, strong written and verbal communication skills taste managers should have knowledge, skills and experience in relevant activities. Project management capabilities like planning, tracking, process reporting, et cetera. The skill assessment of team all the skills appropriate for job to be done as well as for the position should be listed. Each team member should be assessed against those skills via scoring system. Based on the assessment for strong and weak areas, relevant training can be provided. Defining specific criteria to assess the individual skill is important. Performance goals can be set to improve their skills in particular area.

While reading this particular slide, what I remember is just after getting the Istqv Advanced Level Test Manager certification, I was assigned a team of five members and I was supposed to do skill assessment for them and we literally followed all these points on the basis of work experience and domain knowledge. We bifurcated the team members and we tried to understand their strengths and weaknesses, their specific position in the team, their expectations. And that’s how we assess each and every team member. And believe me, it works so well not with the management only, but with the team members too. Then comes hiring part. As we all know, Taste Manager is a key member when it comes to hiring for the team. So people should be hired for long term and not for short term or single project.

Proper mentoring from Taste Manager helps the resource to be ready for next opportunity. People who are intelligent, willing to work, adaptable, curious, with learning, attitude and team players are supposed to be hired to be part of team. A strong team should be built by balancing the strength and weaknesses of team members. And then comes training skills. Assessment spreadsheet helps in identifying strong and weak areas of team members. The weakness that has greatest impact on effectiveness and efficiency should be addressed first. Training via different options like in house training, elearning training courses. Custom training sessions is useful. Self study approach via books, webinars, internet resources are another good option for training. Cross training where the skilled person mentors the fresher for strain skill has also been found effective. So that was all about how to assess gifts and how to utilize it as a team.

3. Test Team Dynamics

With this. Let’s talk about testing dynamics. What are the points to be considered when it comes to testing team dynamics? Selection of right person is most important for management role rather than individual skills. Dynamics of the team should be considered. The complementary skills and personality types to the test team should be looked for. The team should be mixed of technical skills and variety of personality types. The team should be able to deal with multiple projects of varying complexity. Successful interpersonal interactions with other project team members is another statistic of strong testing. The individual selected should be able to deal well with high pressure situations. The individual to be selected should be matching to the work environment of organization. If the individuals are valued and feel needed, they work harder and effectively as a team. Informal cross training work load balancing work as a team dynamics give the test manager more time to deal with external factors.

Based on individual assessment process, every team member should be given a defined role on the team. New team members should be quickly accepted in team and should be provided with adequate supervision and support. Individual skill building along with vision to deliver best quality helps in creating best testing. To hire a new team member, objective assessment of skills should be done via interview, taste, work samples, review and reference verification. Then comes assessment of skills. The specific skills to be assessed is varied from organization to organization. Commonly, following skills can be assessed to screen the best candidate technical skills. Technical skills can be demonstrated by deriving test cases from requirements document reviewing, technical documentation, writing review commands in a clear, understandable and objective way, applying various testing techniques appropriately to given scenarios, assessing a failure and documenting it accurately.

Demonstrating an understanding of defect classification information demonstrating an understanding of root causes of defects using the tool to test a given API, including positive and negative tests. Using SQL to find and alter database information to test a given scenario designing the test automation harness that will execute multiple tests and gather test results executing automated tests and troubleshooting failures writing test plans or specifications writing the test summary reports that includes an assessment of the test results so that was all about technical skills. With that, the person needs to demonstrate some interpersonal skills. So how to identify the interpersonal skills.

Presenting information regarding a test project that is behind schedule. Explaining a defect report to a developer who thinks there is no defect. Training a coworker. Presenting a problem to management regarding a process that is not effective reviewing the test case created by a coworker and presenting the comments to that person, interviewing a coworker, complementing a developer, creating effective interview questions, and allowing skills demonstration would be an ideal way for the test manager to determine areas of strength and weakness of team members. The test manager must be able to diffuse controversial situations. He must know the correct media to use for the necessary communication. And he or she must be able to focus on building and maintaining relationships within the organization. So that was all about testing dynamics.

4. Fitting Testing within an Organization

The subtopic is about fitting testing within an organization. So what exactly it is? What does fitting means? We all know that testing has less important most importance in organization. But it really depends on organizations maturity. So there are different situations where the testing can be different. Let’s try to understand those situations. Number one is no independent testers. In this case, there is no independence and the code is being tested by the developer who wrote it. The developer, if allowed time to do the testing, will determine that the code works as intended which may or may not match the actual requirements.

The developer can fix any found defects quickly. The second situation is testing is done by developer. Other than the one who wrote the code, there is little independence between the developer and the tester. A developer testing another developer’s code may be reluctant to record defects because ultimately they both are team members. A developer mindset toward testing is usually focused on positive test cases because he wants to prove that the product or application is working properly. Testing done by tester who is part of development team. The tester or testing may report to project management or may report to the development manager.

The tester mindset is focused more on verifying adherence to requirements. Because the tester is a member of development team, the testers may have development responsibilities in addition to testing. The testers manager may be more focused on meeting schedule than achieving quality goals. Testing may be given a lower status in the team than development. The tester may have no authority to influence the quality goals or the adherence to those goals. The fourth situation is testing is done by test specialists from the business organization, user community or other no development technical organization. Here test result information is reported objectively to the stakeholders. Quality is the primary focus of testing. Skills development and training are focused on testing. Testing is seen as a career path. There is specific management devoted to the testing group that is quality focused. So after listening to this point, you must be able to understand this is the ideal situation which any organization would try to achieve.

Number 50 external test specialists perform testing on specific test types. Expertise is applied to specific areas where generalized testing is likely to be insufficient. Test types could be usability, security, performance or other areas where specialization is necessary. Quality should be the focus of these individuals but their view is limited to their areas of speciality.

A product that performs well may not meet its functional requirements, but that may go undetected by the performance specialist. Number six is testing is done by an organization external to the company that is mostly outsourced testing. This model achieves the maximum independence between the tester and the developer. Knowledge transfer may not be sufficient for the tester to test completely clear requirements and a well-defined communication structure will be needed. Quality of the external organization must be audited regularly and finally, varying degree of independence between development and testing activities. More independent testing results in more isolation and less knowledge transfer. A lower level of independence in testing may increase knowledge but can also introduce conflicting goals. The level of independence is determined by the software development model being used within Agile Development, the testers are most often part of the development team. So that was all about it.

5. Motivation

Motivation is the primary factor for any team or any team member for that matter to work as expected to give the best output and being a test manager, someone needs to understand how to motivate people how to motivate a person to get the best output. Test manager should to play an important role in motivating the test team or acting as a champion of the testing. The test manager should recognize the individual testers achievements. The test manager must also give fair and honest feedback about mistakes. He should be fair and consistent in his job to motivate the team.

As a right example, there are multiple ways to motivate a testing team member like recognition for the job accomplished approval by management, respect within the project team and among peers increased responsibility and autonomy adequate rewards for the work done including salary, increased responsibility, recognition, et cetera. If tester’s contribution is not understood and measured, regardless of whether the end product is successful or not, tester might get easily demotivated.

For example, a tester can work very hard on a project that has an impossible deadline. The tester can do everything possible to drive the quality focus of the team, putting extra hours and effort and yet the product may ship before it should due to external influences. The result may be a poor quality product despite the best efforts of the tester. So in this kind of testing, if the tester is blamed, then he can easily get demotivated together. Data about testing job done well, the point should be considered by testing should be as below tracking appropriate test metrics migrating risk sorry mitigating risks recording and recording results accurately recognition of testing team is apparent in promotion opportunities. Increased responsibility and merit increases. Recognition and respect are acquired when the tester contributes to the incremental success of the project. This is best achieved in an individual project where the tester is involved at the beginning and continues involvement throughout the life cycle over time. With positive contribution, tester wins respect from project stakeholders.

6. Communication

Communication this is the last subtopic for this chapter that is Team Composition and People Skills for Taste Manager. We all know communication is a key skill, is a key factor for anyone to get succeeded. Testing communication primarily takes place by the following means documentation of test products like test strategy, test plan, test cases, test summary reports, defect reports, et cetera.

Feedback provided on reviewed documents, like requirements, functional specifications, use cases, component test documentation, et cetera. And information gathering and dissemination interaction with developers, other testing members, management, et cetera.

Communication of testers with other stakeholders should be professional, objective, effective, focused on achieving test objectives, focused on improving quality both in products and processes constructive feedback with diplomacy and objectivity the test manager communicates with users, project team members, management, external testing groups and customers. And as we all know, these all are stakeholders from different groups. So the test manager needs to have extraordinary communication skills with diplomacy to handle all these kind of stakeholders. With this, we are completing the course. The syllabus for Advanced Liver Test Manager Certification from Istqv.

I hope this course will be useful to you and will be really helpful in you passing the exam. Believe me, to design this course, I really worked hard because this is the lengthiest labels for Ispqb and taking out bullet points and making these slides to make the course more interesting or concise was a task for me. I hope you will agree that I did my work well. Please don’t forget to leave the feedback for me so that I can make it better. Thank you very much.