Leading Testing Activities
If you moved into test leadership roles, what do you wish you could tell yourself before you started? That's where this thing started. Well, that and the career level at work where I have to teach other people how to lead testing without them having a background in testing as I had.
I quickly realized that while there were plenty of resources on how to manage testers and how to move into management roles, there was little about being an individual contributor leading testing activities—being the project manager of the testing activities, as I often took to calling it.
How to Get Started Then?
To start your leadership quest, you need three things: a little know-how, an opportunity, and the inner voice of Pippi Longstocking: “I have never tried that before, so I think I should be able to do that.” One article that conveys this mindset is “Leading Test Teams When You’re Not A Manager.”
“I’ve acted like a leader during my test career, even if I didn’t realize it then. These patterns of behavior included
- Mentoring and coaching others.
- Being a sounding board for other testers when they needed someone to listen.
- Introducing other testers to new ideas (like exploratory testing).
- Doing presentations for other teams on how testing is done.
- Running workshops on various aspects of testing.”
Nicola Lindgren, 2021, Leading Test Teams When You’re Not A Manager.
In the article, Nicola Lindgren provides additional insights into steps you can take in your team. It lists both potential problems of informal leadership and how to move forward with informal leadership. The actions are similar to moving from a contributor to a “Tech Lead” role. Irina Stanescu writes, "I became a Tech Lead first in my head, and later in reality. [...] to get leadership roles, start embodying leadership qualities and behaviors”.
The Pippi mentality often says, “I can do that” for any work task. Unfortunately, it's not that easy in some organizations and for some types of people. Tanya’s story, Being Glue, tells how she was disregarded for promotions and opportunities while being a person who actively makes things stick together and work seamlessly. I’m glad to hear that being Glue now has more positive connotations.
Take a listen to the Quality Bits podcast, Team Glue & Why QA is a Tech Leadership Role, with Vernon Richards, APR 16, 2024 SEASON 2 EPISODE 17:
Moving into leading testing activities is more about the skills of leading than the skills of doing testing. The following drawing above is inspired by “How to Grow from Senior to a Lead Role” by Gregor Ojstersek of Engineering Leadership.
One of my most effective leadership techniques:
- Identifying where people aren't talking to each other properly (or at all).
- Getting them together in a room and facilitating a constructive conversation.
- Take action and assign owners and dates for completion.
- Track and follow up on the actions.
Rob Bowley, 2024,
Starting a testing leadership role doesn’t require a formal IT education compared to other IT roles. There is no one path to testing roles, making the global testing community a diverse group of people. The Testing Peers share in their podcast nr. 87, the group’s academic paths come from biology, astrophysics, architecture, humanities, and politics. They mention how testing is a space focusing on skills like
- Communication skills
- Coaching and training skills
- Customer-facing skills
No matter how you want to go about leading a testing activity, it all comes down to more human aspects than specific tooling, technologies, or terminology.
Read more in "Leading Testing Activities" available here:
- LeanPub PDF/ePub https://leanpub.com/ltabook
- Kindle Print on Demand: https://a.co/d/1j72Qzg
- Physical book from me locally
All the references and resources of the book are listed here: https://github.com/jesperottosen/jesperottosen/blob/main/LeadingTestingActivities.md