Test leadership — bringing about focus

A bit of a break from my Testing Principles series to talk about Test Leadership and how to bring about focus.

I’m working on supporting a team to review the regression testing they have in place. It got me thinking about leadership and for me, how it is sometimes about creating a direction, figuring out the steps to get there and guiding, influencing to stay on that path. Often I find there are distractions to move you off the path and you have to gently nudge everyone back.

So for example, the broad goals for sorting out regression is 1) Regression is fit for purpose 2) Reducing regression execution time. So my first immediate focus is the first goal. Is our regression testing any good? Reviewing what are we testing and why?

In a team meeting there might be a conversation that starts up about efficiency. Speeding regression up, using a risk based approach or utilising automation. However, the immediate focus is the first goal. So it’s a gentle reminder that the conversation that’s going on about efficiency is important, however, we need to focus on the first goal. Is our regression testing fit for purpose? Then we will move onto the second goal.

It does remind me of my experience of leading a scrum team. There were times where the team would go off on tangents in meetings and I had to nudge them back into the focus of the meeting. It’s making sure that we get the outcomes of why we came together in the first place. Although still listening to the tangents and if it’s important, to make sure the points are picked up.

So overall, a part of test leadership requires an understanding of the order of priorities and reminding the group of those.