This document discusses the need for leadership in the testing community to drive innovation and change. It provides examples of challenges facing testers at different companies and how they are addressing them through approaches like shifting testing left into development, adopting agile practices, and using analytics. It argues that testing is no longer just an end phase but must be integrated into continuous delivery. For change to happen, testers will need to embrace new approaches, challenge old ways of thinking, and stand up as leaders to define the future of testing.

1. A personal view
Paul Gerrard
paul@gerrardconsulting.com
gerrardconsulting.com
@paul_gerrard
Will the Test Leaders Stand Up?

2. Diversity, Innovation and
Leadership
My Theme for Today

3. Theme
• The testing community is large and diverse
• We work in every single systems domain
• Every day, testers get asked to solve the most
diverse, challenging and difficult problems in
no time at all
• Innovation? You bet!
• Right here, right now, our business is changing
• But it takes people to lead that change.

4. Some EuroSTAR
Delegates with Diverse,
Interesting Challenges
I could have picked perhaps 10
people at the show that I know as
examples

5. Mike Jarred,
Director of Testing
• The Challenge
– Testing perceived as a bottleneck
– Testing perceived to be poor at estimating
– Testing required to work long hours to help ensure delivery
• Responses
–
–
–
–
Introduce measures that makes quality visible
Measure rework as percentage of development time
Correlate Dev quality with rework, express time in terms of money wasted
Waste is opportunity cost

6. Mike Jarred
Director of Software Delivery
• Recognise trends for all products and show
ongoing improvements
• Implement business analysis
• Product quality and product management
alignment
• Creating a Portfolio Management Office
• Challenge the business to ensure there is
understood benefit and prioritisation for all IT
work
• Improving … improving … improving …

7. Rob Lambert
• NewVoiceMedia - a leading provider of true
cloud contact centre and voice solutions,
enabling businesses to deliver a personal
and unique customer experience quickly and
securely
• Service availability and security are critical
attributes of the cloud
• Guarantees 99.999% service availability
and publishes the performance of it's
services on the world's only cloud contact
centre Trust site.

8. New Voice Media - Challenges
• First challenge:
– Become reactive to dramatic, fast moving market changes
– Adopted agile and took our release cycle down from every
9 months to every week
• Second challenge:
– Growing the team rapidly whilst still maintaining our
delivery focus
– Development team grew from 15 to 50+ in just a year.
• “We needed to break down the barriers between
teams to enable a holistic environment. So we created
a DevOps structure to bring the teams together both
physically and culturally.”
Hiring!!

9. Dave Parkinson
Director, First Party Quality
Assurance Europe
PlayStation - a business within Sony Corp.
It’s a hardware and a software business
Large network of global game developers
Support proprietary hardware platforms and
mobile devices
• Desire to front load testing activity.
•
•
•
•

10. The Old Model…
Concept
Prototype
First
Publishable
α
PRE-PRODUCTION
PRODUCTION
β
Master
POST-PRODUCTION
Black Box Testers
• Sequential,non-iterative, siloed,corrective focus
Live
APPROVE
& RELEASE
Independent
Of
Developers
Future model
Concept
Decommission
1st Release
PRE-PRODUCTION PRODUCTION
ITERATE
Test Engineers
Test Analysts
Black Box Testers
Test Management Engagement
Co-located
Co-located
Co-located
and/or Offsite
Hiring!!

11. The Old Model…
First
Publishable
β
• IterativeProducts&Services α
PRE-PRODUCTIONTesting Engagement
PRODUCTION
POST-PRODUCTION
• Lifecycle
Independent
• Detection& PreventionFocus Black Box Testers
Of
Developers
• • White, Grey , BlackBoxTesting focus
Sequential,non-iterative, siloed,corrective
• Extensiveautomation
Future model
Concept Testing becomes discipline of product development
Decommission
•
1 Release
Concept
Prototype
Master
Live
APPROVE
& RELEASE
st
Testing Paradigm Test Engineers
Shift…
PRE-PRODUCTION PRODUCTION
ITERATE
Test Analysts
Black Box Testers
Test Management Engagement
Co-located
Co-located
Co-located
and/or Offsite
Hiring!!

12. Three Innovations
Agile
Shift Left
Analytics

13. #1
Agile doesn’t work
but being agile might
Agile is no longer innovative.
Challenging Agile and being agile
might be.

14. #2
Shift Left
Developers in test
Testers everywhere

15. #3
Test Analytics
Analytics from production
Analytics from test
What an opportunity!

16. We are in transition
• A re-think is in progress
• Adopting new architectures and a more streamlined
approach to development
• Requirements half-life of weeks
• Agile approaches are homing in on continuous delivery
• Kanban-Ichiwichi-Hokikoki-Kamikaze-Driven
Development – Whatever!
• A hybrid Agile-Structured process:
– Structured Analysis, Agile Delivery?
– That would be SAAD!

17. What is Agile really,
really about?
COLLABORATION
and
RAPID FEEDBACK

18. The trend of testing
• Testing isn’t a stage at the end, it’s a part of all
creative activities
– All artefacts are tested, by someone, in some way
• Front-loaded testing (test early, test often)
– But it’s not always called testing
• Test-driven approach isn’t about test, its about
design+risk – embrace it
• Behaviour-driven approach connects
requirements, software design and testing

19. Change Needs
Leadership
Will you lead change or be changed?
Some thoughts on leadership

20. “I must follow the
people. Am I not their
leader?”
Benjamin Disraeli
Politician’s view

21. “The first responsibility
of a leader is to define
reality. The last is to say
thank you. In between,
the leader is a servant”
Max DePree
A businessman’s view (Jeeves leadership model?)

22. “Lead me, follow me, or
get out of my way!”
General George Patton
A soldier’s view

23. “You don’t lead by pointing
and telling people some
place to go.You lead by
going to that place and
making a case”
Ken Kesey
A radical author’s view

24. “You don’t need a title
to be a leader”
anon
anyone can be a leader (volunteer)

25. “A leader does not
deserve the name
unless he is willing
occasionally to stand
alone”
Henry A. Kissinger
slings and arrows

26. “I start with the premise
that the function of
leadership is to produce
more leaders, not more
followers”
Ralph Nader
now we’re getting there

27. “Don’t get so far ahead
of people that they
cannot follow”
Paul Gerrard

29. Every now and then,
stand still for a while
and let people catch up
Because there’s trouble ahead and
you can’t face it alone

30. Will Test Leaders Stand
Up?
Here are the clichés you need to kill

31. Developers write code;
testers test because
developers can’t
No they don’t

32. Goal: End Manual
Feature Checking
Let the tools do it all and
free the testers to do exploration
Please!

33. Testing doesn’t just
apply to existing
software, at the end
We test systems, not software;
We test early, we test often but it
might not be called testing

34. Testing is about
measuring achievement,
not quality
Align systems delivery with project
goals and risks and you’ve got a seat
on the board

35. Testers don’t own
testing anymore
Be a TestMaster

36. The phase after
development is
REWORK, not Testing

37. The phase after development is
REWORK, not Testing
• Test Phase should not exist
• Testing must align with development, not
follow it
• Change focus:
– Emphasise up-front automated test design
– Integrate test with code change and software
delivery
• Testers must embrace the change, not resist it
• Make that leap! Stand up!

38. A personal view
Paul Gerrard
paul@gerrardconsulting.com
gerrardconsulting.com
@paul_gerrard
Will the Test Leaders Stand Up?