The document outlines strategies for becoming an effective manager, emphasizing the importance of hiring skilled individuals, fostering feedback and coaching, and facilitating career development for team members. It stresses the need for strong leadership in managing hiring processes, understanding business priorities, and removing organizational obstacles to improve team capacity. Additionally, it advocates for collaboration among testers and developers to enhance overall project quality.

1. Becoming A Kick-AssTest Manager
Johanna Rothman
New: Hiring GeeksThat Fit
@johannarothman
www.jrothman.com
jr@jrothman.com
781-641-4046

2. © 2013 Johanna Rothman
Awesome Champions
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NoVictims Allowed!
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People

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Develop High-Value People
No commodity-testers anywhere in the world
High-value people
Hire people who are smarter than you are

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Feedback and Meta-Feedback
Not evaluation or praise; feedback
When you use a peer-to-peer feedback approach:
Create an opening
Describe behavior or results
State the impact
Make a request
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Coaching and Meta-Coaching
Not just teaching, offering options with support
You create an environment in which everyone coaches
everyone else
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Career Development
Where can people go?
How do they know?
How can you help them?
Testers are generalists; help
them move into other
positions if they want to
How are your testers climbing
the career ladder?
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Lead Hiring Effort
Recognize when you need
more people
Initiate the hiring
Job analysis
Job description
Manage the phone screens
Manage the interviews and
interactions with HR
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How DoYou Do AllThis People
Stuff?
One-on-Ones
Biweekly is okay if you
are agile
Monthly is too far apart
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Business
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What is Important to the Business?
Making money
Saving money
Testing is about
information, not about
defects

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HolisticView of the Project or Program
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Quality Changes Over a Product’s
Lifetime
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OneWay to Improve Quality?
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Partner with developers

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Leadership
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Forget About Solo Experts!

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Forget About Multitasking!
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BuildTester & Organizational
Capacity
Know your tester capacity
How many of you know
your organizational velocity
now?
Remove system obstacles
Recognize when a team is
stuck
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Communities of Practice
Build functional skills across the organization
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Project Portfolio Changes OverTime
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Only Staff the Strategically
ImportantWork
When you consciously do
not staff the unimportant
work, you lead
Not making those decisions
creates management debt
As well as chaos
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Remove Organization Obstacles
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What are some of your organizational obstacles?

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Grow People
Grow people organically
Some testers are developers
whose code doesn’t ship
Some testers are not, but
these days, they had better
add value in other ways
What information are your
testers providing?
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UnderstandWhat’s Important to the
Business
Facilitate release criteria
that fit your project
Provide information, not
just defect information
What do your dashboards
say?
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Lead
No multitasking
Spread the expertise-love
Know your tester capacity
and build upon it
Build communities of
practice
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Be More Influential
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Awesome Champions
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Let’s Stay inTouch
Tons more on jrothman.com (articles and blogs)
Pragmatic Manager: www.jrothman.com/
pragmaticmanager
Please link with me on LinkedIn
@johannarothman
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