Time to lead

The role of a tester on an agile team is so much more than “hey can you test this with your super testing skills”. Testers are, on the one hand, chameleons who need to adapt their skills to new situations within the team. On the other hand, we can’t just react to situations – we need to lead the team, other testers, product owners and customers towards better quality. Yet agile teams don’t generally bestow formal authority. And, as testers, we’re often trying to lead from a position that is still not always appreciated (“agile teams don’t need testers”, “testers are just bad developers”, “you’re just a tester”…).

In complex situations where we’re dealing with unknown unknowns plus sticky, messy humans, communication is key. A degree in psychology would sometimes be helpful. Multiple years of cat-herding too. In this workshop, Zeb and Alex will focus on communication.

The workshop will consist of the following topics:

• Communicating the value and role of testing
• Testers as the communication glue for various stakeholders and within the team: talking about testing, risk and quality at the right level for the right audience
• Enablement: Teaching, coaching, coercing and encouraging others within the team to take on quality-related tasks and to support the value of the product through testing
• What testers and other team members can do together, resulting in better and more efficient results

The workshop will focus on hands-on exercises and activities, led by Zeb (our friendly developer) and Alex (our friendly tester). No programming skills are necessary, but we will be doing some work involving code in groups and in a safe learning environment.