First of all. I am honored to be invited as a guest writer at the testeye! I will start my contribution by asking for your assistance.

In the next year I have been asked to give a couple of classes for test managers that are fairly new in their role. I have been looking through the content description of a class I am supposed to take over and realize that I have a problem. So much of it seems to be picked from an ISTQB-class and just seem to be cementing the old ways of testing. I refuse to spend half a day talking about eight ways of measuring test which means measuring quality and is based on test case success ratio. And I am not going to dive into standards too much either.

So what am I going to put in a two day class for new test managers? These are some of the more important subjects I want to talk about.

1. Schools of testing: a test manager needs to understand that there are some fundamentally different ways that testing can be done. Since many of the students will be working as consultants they need to be prepared for the many different company approaches they may encounter.
2. Test Strategy: What is the testers’ mission. How do I plan my resources and my tasks. Time estimation. What do I need to know to do a good job. What kind of documentation should we create? When am I done testing?
3. Communication: How do I as test manager communicate with the rest of the project and within my team. This includes giving and receiving feedback, basics of presentation techniques, maybe a bit of Myers-Briggs model
4. Explaining test to non-testers: Why are we not QA, why does it take so much time? Why do developers need to test as well. What is our goal as testers. What responsibilities do we NOT assume.
5. Managing a group of testers: Is it like being a project manager with testing skills? Important management principles: avoiding micro-management, coaching your staff, manager = problem remover, administrative tasks you need to do. Session-based test management
6. Effective bug management: templates, process, content, bug advocacy
7. Career plan for TM: what to read, what to do

So, fellow testers. What would be the three most important things YOU want to see in a test management class? Maybe the three things you wish they had told you before you agreed to your first job as a test manager.

And I have this great idea as well. What if we skilled context-driven testers together created some really good material for a test management class and made that material free to use for everyone? Like the BBST-class.  I really believe in sharing which is why my test design book in Swedish is available for free download at testzonen.se. Maybe it´s time to make the English version downloadable from thetesteye?

Cheers

-Tobbe

I’ve just gone through a three day course in Rapid Software Testing (RST) run by James Bach. This is the first time I’ve seen him in person. I’ve previously seen his responses and discussion from the yahoo group software-testing. I’ve seen the presentation on RST by Michael Bolton and I think either of them would do this well.

I thought he would be a lot more aggressive in person, but he was just inquisitive and straight-forward. It was very nice to hear him talk about ideas and war-stories that are similar to my own experience, but things that I might have not been able to think through. It is obvious that he has a vast experience in testing from many different situations. He talked many times about his integrity in testing (though phrasing it differently), that he has quit projects or jobs when he could not accept the “evil bureaucracy” or managerial demands that was outrageous.

The course itself focused heavily around how to do rapid testing and the concepts around exploratory testing. He had many exercises that were all of them thought through and challenging. I got lots of new ideas for testing, test managing, test theorizing and test planning. As always you were able to get a look at new tools that can be used in testing as well as books that you must add to the bookshelf.

I can recommend doing this course if you want to dwell deeper into the concepts of exploratory testing and rapid testing. I would have enjoyed working with him seeing that many of his ideas are great and along my own ideals.