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5 Reasons Not to Be a Test Manager
- 2. 5 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULDN’T BE A TEST MANAGER ANDREI PIRVULESCU Voting code: #8591
- 3. About me: -Tester for 9 years- @andrei_pir
- 4. @qteamsolutions About me: Test Consultant / Co- founder
- 5. Bucharest Chapter @tabaradetestare About me: Organizer / Facilitator
- 6. I never was a Test Manager… but I worked with a couple of them
- 8. This presentation is not focusing on the “bad” of Test Management… but instead focusing on the Test Managers that are awesome!!!
- 9. What is a Test Manager?
- 10. It comes in many names: Test/QA/QE Manager Head of QA Director/VP of QA Test Coordinator Test Director
- 12. Job description/Responsibilities: “Company X is looking for a leader with a strong engineering background to manage Test Engineers. As a Test Engineering manager you'll grow and mentor your team”
- 13. Job description/Responsibilities: “Ensures projects are completed on time and according to product specifications, quality standards and deliveries are properly documented”
- 14. Job description/Responsibilities: “In this role, your contributions and leadership will be vital to providing a high quality user experience to our customers.”
- 15. Job description/Responsibilities: “The QA Manager will direct, manage and participate in the day- to-day operations of a team of software testers. Will manage all the operational aspects of the software testing teams to ensure business and product objectives are met”
- 16. Reason 1: You are/were not a tester
- 21. Reason 3: Not a T-shaped person
- 23. Reason 4: You want to manage and not lead
- 25. Reason 5: You need glory or validation
- 27. Bonus reason: You don’t want to
- 29. “Fata mea e manager Urcă firma pan' la cer” (Partizan) aka “You need to be a manager”
Editor's Notes
- First of all I want to say thank you to the organizers for all the hard work they put in and for the amazing speakers they manage to bring in. It is truly an honor to be in the same conference program with such big names from software testing.
- Software tester for 9 years, going soon on the 10th,. Yeah I guess I’m getting old. I have had different testing roles in the last years,in the last years I’ve been leading teams from 3 to 20 testers which was my biggest team, mainly testing web applications and mobile apps. You can find me on twitter at andrei_pir
- Currently for the last year I am a test consultant and co-founder at a web development consultancy company called qteam software solutions. You can find us on twitter
- In my part time I am an organizer / facilitator at the software testing community called tabara de testare in the bucharest chapter. I am saying Bucharest chapter because tabara de testare is in Cluj,Bucuresti, Iasi and Timisoare We have meetups each month with all sorts of presentations. If you want to find out more don’t hesitate to talk about after the presentation of at the party. We do the meetups via meetup.com So I have some disclaimers to do before going to the reasons.
- First I never was a test manager. Currently because the client kindly asked I have the role of Director of QA, I skipped the test manager role apparently.
- Before unveiling another disclaimer I have 2 questions: Are there any test mangers in the room or people with other titles that could be interpreted as test managers How many did read the description of the session?
- Did you expect to talk dirt abut my test managers? Well it is not about this. The reasons are inspired by the really good managers that I worked with
- So now that we clarified that we’re not going to talk about test managers, What is a test manager?
- Head of qa – that’s one of my favorites. I always wondered what happens if you cut the head ? Just like slaying dragons right or Hydra?
- While preparing the slides for the conference I got the idea that I should include Test Managers job descriptions and responsibilities from Linkedin. So these are from linkedin – The search was done in Romania as a country so what you are going to see are real and actual fragments from jobs posted on Linkedin
- While preparing the slides for the conference I got the idea that I should include Test Managers job descriptions and responsibilities from Linkedin. So these are from linkedin – The search was done in Romania as a country so what you are going to see are real and actual fragments from jobs posted on Linkedin
- I honestly see enough reasons to not be a test manager right now. I’m just kidding. What I wanted to showcase through these job descriptions is that I don’t think there can be a general description of this role and that it is context driven by so many things: the company, the culture, the software that is developed and so many other things. So now that we have an idea of what a test manager is and does let’s see why you shouldn’t be a test manager
- For this reason I have put this slide from Cartoon tester because I really like it, especially the typo from the title. I think it is more fun this way. The story behind this cartoon is that Andy Glover didn’t knew anyone at that time that first wanted to be a tester and that there initial career plan was in fact totally different. And this is great, diversity is amazing. So the same case for test managers – somehow ended up taking the testing part. I think that you have to have a really strong background around testing before going as a test manager because the best test managers that I’ve met were before testers. Besides the management part I think you need to have a testing background to be an awesome test manager from the beginning. At some point you need to give directions in terms of an automated tool or what types of testing types apply on a project. So learn it or leave it
- providing encouragement or emotional help
- the capacity to place oneself in another's position.
- As you saw it’s tough to be a test manager and I think being a t-shaped person is really important. So T-shaped persons is a metaphor used in job recruitment to describe the abilities of persons in the workforce. The vertical bar on the T represents the depth of related skills and expertise in a single field, whereas the horizontal bar is the ability to collaborate across disciplines with experts in other areas and to apply knowledge in areas of expertise other than one's own. As a test manager you are going to work along with other people, a lot of people like development managers, delivery managers, devops managers and you really need to be a t-shaped person in order to be able to work across so many displines and with so many people.
- As I said in the beginning there were a lot of great speakers at romanian testing. One of the presentation that actually inspired me to do this session was Fiona Charles presentation “The dying art of test management”. What I got from that presentation and agreed upon is that Test management is also evolving just like testing and the management responsabilities like project management or test infrastructure management are dying and there is a lot more need of leadership as a manager. Wonder how does leadership takes over the management part? I think it does by inspiring people to do their best work through the following possibilities: -leading by example: through your skill, through your passion -fighting in your testers corner – try to understand what’s happening and help them find a solution, guide them -having a growth mindset - In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work
- Unforgettable leaders with loyal followers don't need the glory or seek validation; they understand what they've achieved. They shine the spotlight on others, then stand back and celebrate their accomplishments, which helps boost the confidence and trust of others.
- RTC presentation in february where the presenter(Sharath Byregowda) ended up every time in a leadership management position
- Another situation for this reason is what I was thinking that maybe it is a cultural thing at least here in romania.
- Being a manager is not the end of the finish line or the ultimate position that you may want to achieve. Maybe you are a great test lead and you want to improve even more