The Top Three Power Skills for Testers: Communication, Collaboration and Creativity
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Why are communication, collaboration and creativity the most important power skills for testers? So often we hear that in today’s world of Agile and DevOps that we need to become more technical, and learn to code to make a valuable contribution. But why are Agile and DevOps being implemented in most organizations today? They came about because of need for speed in our competitive business climate. Yet with a need for speed comes an even greater need for quality. Our organization’s online reputation is at stake, and we testers are the champions of quality! Visit www.QualiTestGroup.com to learn more.
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The Top Three Power Skills for Testers: Communication, Collaboration and Creativity
- 1. Power Skills for Testers October 26, Communication, Collaboration and Creativity by Gerie Owen
- 2. Gerie Owen • Test Manager, Test Lead, Tester • Subject expert on testing for TechTarget’s SearchSoftwareQuality.com • International and Domestic Conference Presenter • Marathon Runner & Running Coach • Cat Mom www.qualitestgroup.com 2
- 3. Agenda |Communication |Collaboration |Creativity |Innovation and barriers |The intersection of ideas |Mindsets and intersections |Conclusions 3
- 4. Testers! We are the Champions of Quality!
- 5. Champions Lead! • COMMUNICATION • COLLABORATION • CREATIVITY
- 8. Communication is Hard! Conversation is unpredictable
- 9. Communication is Hard! We are attached to our Devices!
- 10. What we lose through our devices |Spontaneity |Flow of random ideas |Unexpected solutions |Unexpected problems |Most importantly |We lose communications skill!
- 11. Role of Communication |Streamline processes |Share insights |Get work done |Solve problems |We LEAD by Communicating
- 13. Designing for conversation |Put people together in non-meeting settings |Lunchroom |Offsites |Work spaces |Standups
- 14. Communication By Example |Put ALL electronic devices away during meetings |Provide time for conversation |Don’t send mixed messages
- 15. Include Distributed Teams |Introduce personalities into calls |Get the team together occasionally |Use multiple communications channels
- 16. Why talk? | You solve problems more quickly | You address issues you never knew you had | You establish trust | You get practice communicating effectively
- 17. Communication is Critical |Required for COLLABORATION |Leads to CREATIVITY
- 19. What is Collaboration? | Working together to create!
- 20. Why Collaborate? | You Learn About | Yourself | Others | Intersection of Ideas | Creates Energy through Disagreement | Creates New Possibilities
- 21. Why Collaborate? | Collaboration Increases our Visibility | Creates Alignment of Goals and Objectives 21
- 22. 22
- 23. Lead by Collaborating | Be visible | Foster transparency and respect | Set expectations | Use technology effectively | Drive innovation through creativity
- 24. Champions Drive Creativity and Innovation
- 25. Why is Creativity and Innovation Difficult? |Our “Innovation” is incremental; we build upon our current knowledge and expertise |We collaborate with colleagues from within our own field, we “innovate” the same old ideas |We may improve on our processes; but we don’t create anything truly new in direction
- 26. How Should We Innovate? |True innovation cannot come from only one field of study |Groundbreaking Innovation comes from “The Intersection” of multiple disciplines
- 27. Innovation comes from the Intersection |Frans Johansson describes “The Intersection” as the place where: | Different cultures, domains and disciplines connect | Established concepts clash and combine | Groundbreaking new ideas are generated |Stepping into the Intersection is known as the “Medici Effect”
- 28. Where do we find Intersections? |We can find both within ourselves as well as within our teams |Our fields of study are not just our careers, they are everything that we are involved in |In today’s world of Agile, DevOps and distributed teams, we collaborate with colleagues from many different, often disparate areas of expertise |This is a good thing!
- 29. Finding the Intersection |It’s not just about putting together seemingly unrelated fields |It’s finding the relationships between them |And we find relationships by |Lowering Associative Barriers
- 30. What are associative barriers |Our minds analyze problems by association |We solve problems based on past successful actions |Useful in most situations, however |Association doesn’t encourage different perspectives or exploring unrelated concepts |The more we associate similar things, the less we create |When we associate seemingly unrelated things, we enable intersectional innovation
- 31. What are the Characteristics of Innovators? |Innovators are: |Exposed to many disciplines and cultures |Curious and self-taught in many fields of study |Most importantly, they have: |Low Associative Barriers
- 32. A Team’s Intersection |The Honey Pot Story
- 33. Lowering Associative Barriers |Be Aware of our Biases |Have a Growth Mindset
- 34. How do Biases Support Associative Barriers |We maintain certain beliefs which may or may not be factually true |We may be predisposed to believe something that affects our work and our conclusions |Biases impact our ability both to analyze and to associate freely
- 35. Biases that Support Associative Barriers | Representativeness • People tend to make judgments about situations based on how similar the situation under consideration is to others with which they are familiar | Confirmation Bias • People consider only the information which supports what they have decided is true
- 36. Biases that Support Associative Barriers |Congruence | The tendency of experimenters to plan and execute tests on just their own hypotheses without considering alternative hypotheses. |Framing | People react differently to choice depending upon how the information was presented. People avoid risk when a positive frame is presented and take risk when a negative frame is presented.
- 37. What is a mindset? |Developed by psychologist Carol Dweck |How we mentally approach life and its challenges |Why brains and talent don’t bring success |How they can stand in the way of it |Why praising brains and talent doesn’t foster self-esteem and accomplishment, but jeopardizes them
- 38. Characteristics of a fixed mindset |We are either smart or dumb |We have to continually prove ourselves |Failure is a personal reflection on our intelligence
- 39. Characteristics of a growth mindset |We can work to improve our intelligence and abilities |What we have now is only a starting point |We accept failure as a learning process |Having a growth mindset allows you to be open to seemingly unrelated ideas
- 40. Step Into The Intersection |At your lunch table | Ask each person what fields they are in both professionally and personally | Find the intersections
- 41. Testers….We are the Champions of Quality |Testers Champion the Quality Process Through: | Communication | Collaboration | Creativity Driving Innovation
- 42. References • The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, and Cultures, by Frans Johansson • Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman • Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in the Digital Age, by Sherry Turkle • Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck
Editor's Notes
- Why are Communication Collaboration and Creativity power skills for testers? So often we hear that in today’s world of Agile and DevOps, we need to become more technical, learn to code in order to make a valuable contribution. But why are Agile and DevOps being implemented in most organizations today? They came about because of need for speed in our competitive business climate. Yet with a need for speed, comes and even greater need for quality. We see this in the rise of digital strategy and CRM projects. Our organizations online reputation is paramount and
- So how do we become champions ? Well, let’s look at what champions do.
- And how do they lead… they lead through communication, Up down and across the organization Collaboration with multiple groups across the organization to achieve organizational goals, being visible and fostering alignment of objectives and goals We have to be creative and innovative in finding solutions to issues and assessing the quality of our applications These are our power skills…let’s take a look at each
- How many of you are checking emails or texting right now?
- Remember that game where a little story is told from one person to the next and by the time it gets to the last person, it’s a totally different story?
- Mobile devices have fundamentally changed the ways in which we communicate and we lose so much because of this.
- For example do you im or skype with your colleague who is sitting at the desk across from you? We don’t talk anymore But why is talk so important?
- So how do we lead by communicating?
- We need to provide a clear, consistent message to all of our stakeholders and to do that we must lead by communicating and the best way we can do that is by talking
- Most importantly, however; we should
- And don’t forget distributed and remote team members!
- Use some meeting time to talk about hobbies, personal interest, what you did over the weekend etc But what else is important about talking?
- Talk leads to collaboration; it’s the basis of collaboration
- And it is the only and I’ll argue only way to innovate. In his book, Group Genius, Kevin Sawyer shows that no true invention was the brain child of one person. All innovation comes from groups. And we’ll talk more about innovation later. So let’s move to our second power skill, Collaboration.
- It’s about working together to achieve a common purpose.
- Have you ever been in a meeting where someone suggests and idea and others build on? That’s the power of collaboration. So how do we lead by collaborating?
- As testers, in order to lead, we must be visible to all of our stakeholders; not just our own teams. When we are visible, leading our teams, collaboration creates alignment of goals. How often is scope an issue in your projects? Often, that happens from misalignment in objectives. So how do we lead by collaborating?
- Foster transparency and respect: people need to feel that they won’t be judged for suggesting ideas Set Expectations on how the meeting will be conducted Use communication technology effectively, especially with distributed teams And by leading collaboration, we drive creativity and innovation. So now let’s talk about creativity
- Usually when a team meets to discuss a problem, they look at how they handled similar situations in the past. We segregate our ideas which limits our ability to think out of the box
- We need to look at issues from many different angles, and not just rely on our usual historical approaches
- Talk about the Renaissance.
- When you get together in groups or teams, you find that most everyone has at least on other, completely disparate, interest; something they have studied, done for a hobby etc and the increases the intersections exponentially.
- Yet assembling many seemingly unrelated ideas is the easy part; the more complicated part is finding relationships between those ideas. That way we do that is to lower the barriers that narrow our focus. Because I am a runner, we could say that has nothing to do with testing. However, Wearables story So let’s talk a bit about associative barriers.
- We look for relationships between different things, but we often segregate our thinking. For example, I lowered my associative barriers when I thought about my running problem from a tester’s perspective.
- My own fields of interest are software testing, running, fashion design, teaching and I used my running and testing passions to create a framework for testing the human experience of wearables.
- Teams can use the diverse fields of study of their team members to create innovative solutions. So how do we lower associative barriers?
- Johansson tells us that the best ways of lowering associative barriers is to reverse assumptions and look at an issue from at least three different perspectives, but I believe there are more ways.
- Biases narrow our thought processes. If we believe something for example, we can only test if we have requirements, then it will be difficult for us to find ways of testing when we don’t have them. Over 100 biases have been identified, however there are some that specifically support associative barriers
- Mindset is the framework from which we approach problems and challenges. Dweck identified two types of mindsets.
- Can you think on someone who has a fixed mindset?
- Can you think of someone who has a growth mindset?
- We lead as champions by using the tools of communication collaboration and creativity.