Software test manager guide? Don’t treat quality assurance as the final development phase. “Quality assurance is not the last link in the development process. It is one step in the ongoing process of agile software development. Testing takes place in each iteration before the development components are implemented. Accordingly, software testing needs to be integrated as a regular and ongoing element in the everyday development process.” “A good bug report can save time by avoiding miscommunication or the need for additional communication.”

There is nothing worse than a report that has too many words and not enough pictures! Make your reports clear, concise and as up-to-date as they can be. By providing clear and up-to-date information your own team, as well as your management team, will be much more aware of the status of your testing and any issues you face. Any key issues can then be tackled as and when they occur, or red flags be raised earlier rather than weeks down the track.

How would you like to have all the software testing knowledge you need in one comprehensive book? Whether you want to level up in the software test management field, or gain useful knowledge on the sector as a whole, A Test Manager’s Guide is the resource for you. After passing the ISTQB Foundation Certification, this eBook was great source to better understand what to expect from the Test Managers working on my Software Projects. See extra info at Cania Consulting.

Report findings in the context of business value. Focus on the data that is being communicated back to stakeholders, from your findings as part of testing – the data should be in context of ‘how’ the behavior observed is detrimental to the objective of the feature or application being developed. Engage the end user. Probably the most important person in the whole process, yet many times we may be tempted to keep them at arm’s length; you should involve the customer actively. Have them give frequent feedback on the product for future improvement and development; software developers who respond quickly to customer feedback are generally more successful. Always keep learning. [The] IT field changes; way [faster] than some of us would like. If you are not constantly updating your skills, you could get irrelevant, obsolete and outdated. In a world of lay-off paranoia, it is a good idea to rise above it all, gain immunity and feel secure. The best way to do so is to make learning a habit.

Isolation software testing trick for today : Normally with agile teams it is ideal to have a daily standup meeting where everyone discusses what they are working on, identifies any roadblocks, and raise any team-wide issues that should be addressed. With the move to complete teleworking, we have used our normal team chat application (for us a combination of Google Chat and/or Spira instant messenger, but you can use Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc.) to write a new thread with a daily standup message each day: This was so successful that our sales and marketing team have followed suit with their own version! Its a good, quick medium that works with the immediacy of a standup and avoids long drawn out meetings that are the reason you “stand up”. We have also been experimenting with a virtual 15 minute Google hangout call. When we had the team partly colocated and partly teleworking this wasn’t necessary, but with people feeling socially isolated due to the wider quarantine conditions, hearing/seeing each other has been helpful. One team member also showed us his cats playing which was a nice morale boost! Explore a few more details on https://cania-consulting.com/.