Lessons I learned from years of testing, formally and informally

1. Many
Lessons Learned from 20 Years of
Managing Testing
Johanna Rothman
New: Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects
www.jrothman.com
jr@jrothman.com
781-641-4046

2. Software Testing Has Nothing to do
with Product Quality...
2

3. Software Testing Has Everything to do
with Product Information
3

4. More Information Means More
Testing Approaches
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
...
4

5. How do You Provide Information?
Weather report
Test dashboards
5

6. No Traffic Lights!
6

7. Weather Report
7

8. Test Dashboard
8

9. Lesson: Software Testers Are Not
Victims!
Testers Have Power
9

10. Do You Have Enough People?
How do you know?
What is not getting done?
10

11. 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
11

12. 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
12

13. No is a Necessary Tool
13

14. 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
14

15. A Little Experiment
15

16. Maybe
16

17. 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
17

18. A Project Portfolio
18

19. Combination View:
Low and Mid Level
19

20. 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

21. Congruence
21

22. 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
22

23. Congruence
23

24. Lesson: Software Release is a Business
Decision
24

25. Testers Do Not Get to Judge the
Goodness of the Product.
They Provide Information About the
Product.
25

26. Release Criteria are Your Friend
26

27. Process != Testing
27

28. There’s More...
On www.jrothman.com
I’m @johannarothman on Twitter
Visit http://www.jrothman.com to read more or sign up for my email
newsletter. Or give me your card. Or fill out a yellow form.
28