This document outlines the process of building a new software testing team from scratch within a short timeframe. Key steps included defining team roles and hiring internal resources, setting up infrastructure and providing extensive training on testing processes, tools, and the software architecture. Training occurred both through classroom sessions and shadowing existing testing teams. The team focused on writing test cases, reviewing each other's work, and learning through hands-on testing and feedback. After 5 weeks of preparation, the new team was able to successfully test and go live with the new software on time and on budget, though quality could still be improved. Management support and extensive training of new testers were essential to the team's success.

1. BUILDING A TESTING
TEAM
From an empty room to a fully productive team in
a short time
Luís Amaral
May 20, 2016

3. Agenda
• About me
• Context
• An empty room
• The plan and the timeline
• Architecture spotlight
• Hiring
• Infrastructure and room setup
• Training and knowledge building
• Processes and Tools
• Test case writing and reviewing
• Testing and learning
• Conclusions

4. About me
• Currently:
• Independent Consultant focusing on Test Management, Quality
Management and Project Management
• Vice-chair of the ISTQB® Marketing Working Group
• Co-founder and member of the board of the PSTQB
• Owns and runs an online business
• Lives between Switzerland and Portugal
• Past:
• Co-founder and director of Strongstep – Innovation in Software
Quality
• Worked and lived in several European countries with in
development and management roles
• Masters in Informatics Engineering from FEUP, University of Porto,
Portugal

5. Context

6. Context
• Telecommunications operator
• New E2E software with all its implications
• Billing
• CRM
• All provisioning operations
• Local adaptations
• Multi-site, multi million dollar project, large number of
people involved

7. An empty room

8. The plan and timelines
12.03 19.03 26.03 02.04 16.0409.04
Pre-UAT
Env. QA 1
Env. QA 2
UAT
Team definition - Tracking tool
training
- QA
preparation
- Tools training
- Arch. training
- Print Tool
training
- Other apps.
training
- JIT
shadowing
- Training
refresh
- Business test
cycles reviews
Test cycle writing and self-training
Team preparation UAT activities

9. Architecture spotlight

10. What’s the most important
item in a team?

11. Hiring

12. Hiring
• We had to focus on internal resources
• Ideal world:
• People with business, technical and test skills
• What do we prefer?
• It is easier to train someone to test than someone to have the
business knowledge
• We can hire/use some technical skills of other people when needed

13. Hiring
• What have we done?
• Identified the critical areas of the business that would require
testing
• Internal recruiting: full time or part time
• Key points:
• Avoid part time recruiting special in fast and resource shortage
environments
• Use them as soon as they are available, you never know when
you’ll loose your resources

14. Infrastructure and room setup
• Easy part:
• Computers
• Chairs
• Tables
• Setup/configure a full network environment
• In the telecommunications world there is not only software
• You have to have a fully functional network to test E2E
• Some of the tests have been done in a test network and others in
the live system
• Key points:
• All takes a lot of time, specially if it does not depend only on you,
start with this from day 1

15. Training and knowledge building
• The advantages we had:
• There were other countries that had a similar software deployment
in previous years
• There is a testing team fully managed by the integrator in place and
testing
• General introduction about testing
• What is testing
• What are the goals
• The psychology behind a good tester

16. Training and knowledge building
• We’ve focus a lot on testing on the job
• We’ve shadowed the previous phase testing team
• We’ve travelled to other countries to learn
• We’ve brought experts from other countries to teach
• Key points
• The business knowledge of the resources brought a great
advantage to leverage the experts available
• Until you start doing you don’t encounter any problems

17. Processes and Tools
• Typical day of a tester (in this environment and per area
of work)
• Environment checks
• Morning meeting
• Reporting
• Escalation
• What to do if I’m stuck
• ...
• Repeated this specific training
• Written process for the main happy path flows

18. Processes and Tools
• Group and individual sessions depending the tool goals
• E.g. incident management tool for all
• E.g. Billing tools to the billing team
• Everyone had a sparring buddy to support
• Key points:
• Repetition improves performance
• Spot checks improves as well performance and can bring great
team benefit

19. Test case writing and reviewing

20. Test case writing and reviewing
• We had users, not testers as a starting point
• How to bring them quickly into the test case writing mode:
1. Study other test cases
2. Review previous testing phases test cases
3. Write their own test cases
4. Discuss the written cases in small groups
5. Review the work done
• Rinse and repeat

21. Test case writing and reviewing
• Key points
• We’re all different
• Consistency is difficult and takes time
• Being very open to feedback is your best help to success

22. Testing and learning
• This was the easy part as we’re only starting the journey
• 5 weeks to go
• Training and learning never stops
• Psychology is important for people who never had this job
before and have been put under great pressure

23. Testing and learning: rinse and repeat

24. Conclusions
• Management support is key
• The 3 most important things: People, People, People
• We went live on time and budget, quality was good, surely
can always be better
• In the end a strong team was built
• A subset of this team stayed as the testing team, other went back
to their business jobs

25. Thank You!
luis.amaral@acm.org