W11

Personal Excellence

10/15/2014 1:45:00 PM

Adventures of a Social Tester

Presented by:

Martin Nilsson

House of Test

Brought to you by:

340 Corporate Way, Suite 300, Orange Park, FL 32073 888-268-8770 ∙ 904-278-0524 ∙ sqeinfo@sqe.com ∙ www.sqe.com

Martin Nilsson

House of Test As a result of a mistake, Martin Nilsson started his career in Test working with mobile platforms. Martin says this mistake was the best one he has made in his professional life because testing suited his temperament perfectly. Several years later he joined the Swedish firm House of Test Consulting where he still works today. After a stint in the telecom industry, Martin became a performance test consultant for a shipping company. He then changed assignments to consult as an exploratory tester for a company in the business intelligence business and today consults as a project test manager for that same company. Follow Martin on Twitter @MartinNilsson8.

Adventures of a Social Tester An experience report from a social

tester

By Martin Nilsson

A social tester according to James Bach

• Social Tester: The social tester wants you! Social

testers discover all the people who can help them and prefer working in teams to being alone.

Social testers understand that other people often

have already done the work that needs to be

done, and that no one person needs to have the

whole solution. A social tester knows that you don’t

have to be a coder to test– but it sure helps to

know one. A good social tester cultivates social

capital: credibility and services to offer others.

My story

An early experience about building rapport using

mail and chat and why I started reading Times of India

A later experience and a course that taught me the

importance of relationships

and how I learned to use the coffee cup as a

work tool

How I work today and some practical advice on how system

analysis can be used

Dev. Team 1 Dev. Team 2

Off-shore dev. team

Project Management

Test Team Project 1

Me

A simplified container analysis Inspired by the work of Donalde Gray

Project 2

Service tester

Dev. Team 1 Dev. Team 2

Off-shore dev. team

Project Management

Test Team Project 1

A simplified container analysis Inspired by the work of Donalde Gray

Project 2

Service tester

Me

Containers

Differences

Exchanges few

many

small

large

close

long way

strong

high

Agreement

weak

low

STABLE

CHAOS

Certainty

Original diagram created by Donalde Gray

A recent example

Team 1 Team 2 Team 3

Test Lead

Test Lead forum led by

Test Coordinator

(me)

Manager Project Leader

A recent example – What I did

• “Presentation” for Managers about the work of the

test leads

• Push Project leads to sync with test leads

• Weekly morning coffee meeting with a weekly

guest from the project

What more happened • Better organization

• Clear goals and responsibilities

My biggest learning

The software we create is merely a subsystem of the

human system. Therefore a solution to a problem

might be worth looking for on the human side.

When working the human side a coffee cup is an

outstanding work tool.

Questions and perhaps some answers!

Thank you!

Contact me! Mail: martin.nilsson@houseoftest.se Twitter: @martinnilsson8

Meet me! StarWEST