Anton Muzhailo - team development techniques you must know to be a valuable test manager

1. Team Development Techniques
you must know to be a valuable
Test Manager
Anton Muzhailo, GlobalLogic, Ukraine

2. About the speaker
Anton Muzhailo
• Senior Automation Engineer,
GlobalLogic
• ISTQB Certified Test Manager
• ISTQB Certified Trainings
Coach, CodeSpace
• 4 years of teaching and
mentoring experience, 300+
students

3. Have you seen this before?
What do we invest What do we receive
Ideal agile process defined with all
needed tools and activities
Unpredictable releases Complex process
Metrics doesn’t show real situation

4. Have you seen this before?
What do we invest What do we receive
Formal retrospectives and reviews with
everybody present. Many improvements
Everything seems awesome on paper only
Continue making the same mistakes

5. Have you seen this before?
What do we invest What do we receive
Canonical planning with pointing poker.
Regular grooming and brainstorming,
formal estimation techniques application.
If we fail in planning we say
“We should be agile”
Last minute changes

7. The biggest challenge
- Now in this big world of cool frameworks and approaches, people
remains to be the most often bottleneck
- You can’t build effective processes before building the team
- Every process should be in engineers’ mind rather than on paper
- You must hire right people

8. Two types of team structure
Dominion model Communion model
 Clear responsibility/reporting chain
 Works with any people
 Easy to implement
X One can block others/everyone
X Always require skilled leader
 Multiple leaders in their own domains
 Resistant to bottlenecks
 More “agile”
X Doesn’t work without strong engineers
X People aren’t used to it

9. How to build the team right?
The ideal test team has:
1. a mix of skills (hard and soft) and experience levels
2. common goals
3. willingness and ability to teach and learn
4. clear communication
5. respect & trust
You can teach monkey how to code at some point
but you will never teach human how to be human

10. What are the real soft skills?
Test Manager/Lead should hire the people that are able to:
• Learn (Ask to use some new FW with the help of Google)
• Share knowledge (Ask to tell something or write some doc)
• Explain (Ask to proof his point of view with evidences)
• Negotiate (Prepare needed circumstances and negotiate)
• Review and be reviewed (Place in appropriate situation)
• Separate work conflicts from personal (Ask the thoughts)

11. Why soft skills more important?
Skill
Level
TimeA B C D E F G
Skill
Level
TimeA B C D E F G
Strong technical but low soft skills Lower technical but strong soft skills

12. How to define the hard skills
1. List all your skills and mark those applicable for a project
2. Compare this with the list of skills provided by customer
and add needed
3. Think about other skills that will be also helpful. (You may
use job vacancies web sites or linkedin )
4. Prioritize the value of each skill you marked applicable.
Assign them with a priority level: Must have, Better to
have, Will be a plus
5. Generate vacancy description based on this list

13. Skill set definition
Testing Skills
SDLC/STLC activities
Test Design
Test Management
Static Testing (Reqs, Specs)
Black-box Testing
White-box Testing
Performance Testing
Risk Based Test Strategy
Code Coverage
Test Automation
Test Planning / Estimation
Technical Skills
Win / Linux / OSX
C++ / Python / Shell
TCP/IP, networking
Patterns, O(n), SW design
Databases (Oracle, MongoDB)
Continuous Integration toolset
UI testing with Selenium
Hardware maintenance
C#-based servers
Cloud (Azure)
Unit Test frameworks
Soft skills
Mentoring
Learning
Public Speaking
Assessment / Audit
Negotiations
Customer communications
Interviewing
English
Review skills
Presenting (ppt, graphs etc)
Conflicts handling

14. Sample Project description
- FrondEnd / BackEnd: Angular 2 with Java and Oracle on AWS
- Android and iOS apps
- Fast iterations based on Agile/Scrum
- Custom automation framework on Ruby+Cucumber
- CI/CD on Jenkins/Docker
- Performance testing required from scratch
- 3 major releases during 1 year, additional 50% resources decided to hire
Main problems are: critical defects found on RCs, metrics doesn’t show real
picture, big staff turnover, severe dependence on several people, low skill
level of a test team

15. Final skills needed
Testing Skills
SDLC/STLC activities
Test Design
Test Management
Static Testing (Reqs, Specs)
Black-box Testing
White-box Testing
Performance Testing
Risk Based Test Strategy
Code Coverage
Test Automation
Test Planning / Estimation
Technical Skills
Win / Linux / OSX
C++ / Python / Shell
TCP/IP, networking
Patterns, O(n), SW design
Databases (Oracle, MongoDB)
Continuous Integration toolset
UI testing with Selenium
Hardware maintenance
C#-based servers
Cloud (Azure)
Unit Test frameworks
Additional Skills
C# backend
Cloud (AWS)
Ruby Automation + Cucumber
Mobile manual testing
experience (Android + iOS)
Dynamic testing (DynaTrace)
0 – no knowledge
1 – general knowledge
2 – basic experience
3 – able to use with some help
4 – do most of tasks personally
5 – expert, can teach and guide

16. Skills Required/Desired Jeremy Lucy Michael
SDLC/STLC activities R3 4 3 2
Test Design R3 4 3 2
Black-box Testing R4 4 2 2
Performance Testing n/a 2 0 3
Code Coverage n/a 0 2 3
Win / Linux / OSX R3 3 4 4
TCP/IP, networking D3 2 3 4
Databases (Oracle) D2 0 0 3
Continuous Integration toolset D2 1 2 3
UI testing with Selenium n/a 0 3 3
C# backend n/a 0 0 2
Cloud (AWS) D4 4 1 4
Ruby Automation + Cucumber n/a 0 0 1
Android + iOS manual testing D4 1 4 0
Dynamic testing (DynaTrace) n/a 0 0 2
TOTAL POINTS 25 27 35
Manual
QA

17. 0
1
2
3
4
5
SDLC/STLC activities
Test Design
Black-box Testing
Performance Testing
Code Coverage
Win / Linux / OSX
TCP/IP, networking
Databases (Oracle)
Continuous
Integration toolset
UI testing with
Selenium
C# backend
Cloud (AWS)
Ruby Automation +
Cucumber
Android + iOS manual
testing
Dynamic testing
(DynaTrace)
Manual QA
Jeremy Lucy Michael
• Lucy is required because only she
has Android + iOS testing skills
• Michael has more automation
skills and will be proposed to
apply for automation
• If we hire Jeremy and Lucy we
will have following manual QA
team

18. 0
1
2
3
4
5
SDLC/STLC activities
Test Design
Black-box Testing
Win / Linux / OSX
TCP/IP, networkingDatabases (Oracle)
Continuous
Integration toolset
Cloud (AWS)
Android + iOS
manual testing
Manual QA
Ideal Minimum Team has max
With Jeremy and Lucy

19. Skills Required/Desired Susan Rick Bob
SDLC/STLC activities R3 3 3 4
Test Design R3 3 2 4
Black-box Testing n/a 0 0 2
Performance Testing D2 0 3 0
Code Coverage R3 0 3 0
Win / Linux / OSX R3 3 4 4
TCP/IP, networking R3 2 4 4
Databases (Oracle) R3 4 3 2
Continuous Integration toolset R4 4 3 1
UI testing with Selenium R4 4 1 2
C# backend D3 0 4 1
Cloud (AWS) R3 2 3 3
Ruby Automation + Cucumber R4 2 4 2
Android + iOS manual testing n/a 0 0 2
Dynamic testing (DynaTrace) D2 2 0 0
TOTAL POINTS
Automation
QA

20. • Bob is totally lower than our
expectations
• Susan and Rick covers the gaps
of each other like a perfect mates
if we hire them, we will have
following automation qa team
0
1
2
3
4
5
SDLC/STLC activities
Test Design
Black-box Testing
Performance…
Code Coverage
Win / Linux / OSX
TCP/IP, networking
Databases (Oracle)Continuous…
UI testing with…
C# backend
Cloud (AWS)
Ruby Automation…
Android + iOS…
Dynamic testing…
Automation QA
Susan Rick Josh

21. With Susan and Rick
0
1
2
3
4
5
SDLC/STLC activities
Test Design
Black-box Testing
Performance Testing
Code Coverage
Win / Linux / OSX
TCP/IP, networking
Databases (Oracle)Continuous Integration…
UI testing with Selenium
C# backend
Cloud (AWS)
Ruby Automation +…
Android + iOS manual…
Dynamic testing…
Automation QA
Ideal Minimum Team max

22. Anton Muzhailo
/in/muzhailo
?