Alright folks, here’s the next installment of the play-by-play. This week was a shorter one due to observing the American holiday, and it was also shorter due to the huge wave of things happening this week (it was hard remember everything). Enjoy, and as always, I appreciate your comments.
Click on the “Read more” link below to view the full play-by-play.
Alright. So it’s been a week since I was given the chance to be “test manager” for our small project. I spent some time cataloging my reactions, and figured it would be interesting to others. I’ve written them as a play-by-play, to best describe my reactions as I had them. This is a long blog post — almost too long — but I think the detail is worth it, both for me and for anyone who’s interested.
Click “Read More” below to view the full play-by-play.
If you haven’t seen my previous post, I’ve been given the chance to lead a testing group for the next few weeks. For this new role, I was told to document my process. This is what I came up with.
Although I think I have most stakeholders already onboard, I wanted to create a proposal that outlined some of my ideas about testing, as well as how we’ll do session-based test management. Even though I could have just “documented my process,” — they’re giving me a lot of free reign here, which I love — it’s a proposal because… well, it’s likely going to change, and I’m not the only one with input. 
I have this fear that it’s too general — which, it likely is — but I think the specifics will come as we flesh out what works best for us. George Box comes to mind: “All models are wrong, some models are useful.”
Guess what — I’m moving to Brooklyn!
That’s right. I’ve decided that SoHo’s way too expensive for my meager bachelor’s degree wage. Instead of paying the exorbitant amount to be “on location”, I’m packing up and moving out of the city to somewhere much less expensive.
Pros:
Cons:
If you payed attention to my big NYC move a couple months ago, you should notice that my contract in the Manhattan apartment is not up yet. This is true. However, I’ve found someone who wants to sublet my apartment and pay rent for me until the contract ends in August.
The impetus of the move was all about saving money. The trouble was, although I was in a really cool area — SoHo’s pretty hip nowadays, or so I hear — I couldn’t take advantage of it because I didn’t have much disposable income. Now that I do (or, will, once I move) I can do things like play around in SoHo, or go to a friends wedding in Miami without worry.
Official move in date is the 15th of this month, though I could move in as early as the 12th. If, by that time, I haven’t given you my new address, feel free to bug me for it.
Oh, and I’m gonna paint this one, no matter how long it takes me! Colors. Maybe bright ones. Maybe Earth tones. I don’t know, but it’s gonna be a good space.
So, in a totally unexpected turn of events, I’ve been crowned the interim test manager for the next five weeks!
To make a long story short, our organization doesn’t have a structured testing group. From before the time I’ve been here until now, developers were expected to both write code and do testing (in this case, “write code” == write code + unit tests + other styles of automated tests, and “do testing” == do whatever’s needed to find new bugs). Because we’ve got a very important release looming five weeks from now, and because we put out a few large fires after the last release, management decided to enlist a testing group until at least five weeks from now. And — to make this great news even better — they’ve decided to let me take on the effort.
They’re pretty much letting me do whatever I think is best. There’s a few limits to what I’m able to do in this position, but the most exciting questions were “Tim, do you want to lead the testing effort?” and “Tim, how many people do you need?”
I’m still doing research to figure out what would be best in our context, but my inclination is to do some form of session-based test management. My guess is that it’ll turn into the Bach brother’s SBTM with a little bit less paperwork. Although we may not be using James’ test management software, the idea though, is the same: create charters, do sessions, debrief… rinse, and repeat.
If this position turns out to be something longer than five weeks, however, there may be a chance we can keep more records a la the Bach brothers’ SBTM. I’ve talked to one of the stakeholders already, and — if that becomes a reality — we would (could) release all or most of our session sheets into the public domain. What this means is, since NDA’s don’t exist in our organization, we could amass the first publicly available database of session-based testing records. From a research/bleeding edge point of view, this could get very cool very quickly.
Since I’ve needed to do some research in order to assess risk and prioritize the testing effort, I’ve been holding meetings with stakeholders in order to get their point of view. When talking with them, I’ve found these questions to be very helpful:
I’ve asked these questions to five important stakeholders so far — two devs, two managers, and the guy who answers the phones — and I’ve gotten great responses, and some great ideas for initial charters.
All in all, I’m very excited, and I can’t wait to see what comes of these next five weeks.
UPDATE, 3/1/08: When I described who I talked to to get information, I mentioned “the guy who answers the phones.” To his credit, this guy does much, much more than simply answering phones, and he is a real asset around the office. I decided to describe him that way in order to emphasize his user-facing role: he is the sole person responsible for talking with users. Because of this, he is privy to a wealth of information that others generally don’t have, and is therefore extremely valuable to this project.
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