Testers Tower

Six of PEST2 highlights in no particular order. Some of the very good ideas were too big to fit into highlights and will have their own post.

Highlight #1:

When you are being ordered to use a tool (in a certain way) then the best way to fight against it – is not to fight(at first).

•     Instead, learn it. Find out what it can do. And what it can’t do.
•     Investigate, if it can used in a way that would fit your process
•     Then you can support your fight against it with good evidence.
•     If you start off with great hostility you will be flagged as troublemaker, whiner, and you will not be taken seriously.

Highlight #2:

Motivation – has both absolute and relative scale (for each person)

•   it is relative to previous value for that person in regard of time
•   it has absolute value to that person (high to low)

 

Highlight #3:

Eliminating human interactions as much as possible is apparently very good for highly specialized, after development, code testing for highly critical back-end core system maintenance.

Highlight #4:

People/teams are most often demotivated by confusion:

•     so what exactly are we going to do?
•     what is the goal of our work?
•     how exactly is that useful?
•     what resources are we going to have/need for this project?
•     How long are we going to go on with this?

 

Highlight #5:

Coaching trick:
If you want to know you have been understood, summarize it incorrectly and see if they point it out.
If not, then you know they did not get it, or are too shy to show you made a mistake. Either way there is more coaching to do.

Highlight #6:

Team-leads, to have a healthy team (more on this in future post):

•    Share boring tasks equally over all members
•    have a Bug Chase Competition from time-to-time:
•        “be the first to find a reproducing sequence for specific intermittent bug.”
•         after 30 mins, no-one wins. Back to work.
•  Remember that you are not “number 1″ in the team, but there to help the team forward. You back them up  and defend from external troubles.