Testing knowledge base

I like Agile methodolody and everytime I try to adapt some practices from this methodolody to testing.

On that time, it's Planning Poker technique.

Benefits of this technique: 
1. Estimation are wighted up
2. Everyone understand and know what timeline they will have
3. Common responsibility of made decision.

How to play:
Make group of estimators and a Moderator.

1. Each estimator gets a deck of cards
2. The moderator reads the description of task
3. Task are discussed by team. Open points to be clarified.
   
4. Estimators should select an estimate card and and place it face down on the table
5. After all estimates are in, the cards are flipped over
6. In the event that the estimates differ, the high and low estimation are discussed.
7. Group briefly debates any arguments. Then estimation session repeats until decision is done.
   
8. The moderator notes down the final estimate and the group continues with next task.

What are necessary things before meeting:

1. Work Breakdown Structure should be done.
2. Task should have as much information as possible.
   

Today, I would like to think about test management activities that always should be in mind of test manager. So the list is following:

1. Lateral Thinking in Developing Test Cases
2. Convey Issues as They Arise
3. Improve Communication
4. Always Keep Updating Your Business Knowledge
5. Learn the New Testing Technologies and Tools
6. Improve the Process
7. Common Knowledge Base

From one company to another I've been seen that Test Teams have some problems with productivity and motivation.

There are a lot of reasons for these things:

• unclear requirements and job that needs to be done
  
• manual (monkey) job
• there is no progress in developing testing knowledges
• and so on

How my team and I overcome these obstacles?

Zone-Model and Study Groups.

Study Group is already described by me. So I would like to emphasize my attention to Zone-Model.


Key principles:
1. Test team is self-organized in one zone.
2. 10 hours for sharing activities per week for team in zone. Please note: there won’t inefficiency here because sharing activity will be performed in rotation by projects and hence always some project will have extra pair of hands and therefore benefits.
3. 10 hours is flexible and should be spread during week by team members. Workload and current tasks should be taken into account. Namely, team members should communicate each day and plan sharing activities. For example: Monday – 3 hours, Wednesday – 2 hours, Thursday – 2, Friday -  3 hours.
4. Monitoring is fulfilled by test manager.
5. Daily meetings for every zone to plan activities for current day and further days (~5-15m).
6. Retrospective each month to take actions and improvements (~1h). One of points to be discussed is changing team members between projects.

Risks:
1. Team members aren’t supported activities. Mitigation: Please see key principle 4, 5, 6.
2. Planning and estimation of future work isn’t done and hence impact on sharing activities. : Please see key principle 4, 5, 6.

You would probably know that study process is one of key principles to be on the top of you profession. Moreover, this is motivation and inspiring stuff. Learn process should be ongoing both in life and at work.

When I took over Test Manager responsibility I saw that this process wasn't set up at all. So I strongly decided to set up this process.

What I did.

My Team and I had a set of discussions around study group. This idea is not new but nobody I know set it up in testing. Well, My team and I agreed to create Study Group.

Principles is following:
1. Study Session should be on weekly basis.
2. Study Session should have timebox. We defined it as 1 hour.
3. There should be trainer that prepare defined topic every time.
4. Half of session is theory and another is group practice.
5. Topics should be defined by Test Team by the end of each study session.
6. Materials should be gathered and uploaded to some server.

I would like to say that it's good practice and it works perfectly for whole team as team building aspect.