leadership

Even with the best tools and processes in the world, if your staff is not focused and productive, your testing efforts will be weak and ineffective and your finished product will reflect this. Retired Marine Colonel, long-time test consultant Rick Craig describes how using the Marine Corps Principles of Leadership will help you become a better leader and, as a result, a better test manager or tester. Learn the differences between leadership and management and how they can complement each other. Discover new approaches to energize your testers and learn to avoid some that won't. Rick explores motivation, morale, training, span of control, immersion time, and how to promote a consistent testing discipline within your organization. He addresses the role of "influence leaders" and how to use them as powerful agents of change.

When members of a development project are asked to become a self-directed agile team, some claim that leadership and leaders are obsolete. Or, is a different type of leadership exactly what agile teams need to truly flourish? Pollyanna Pixton describes a new, collaborative leadership style that does not attempt to control or micro-manage. It's one that asks the right questions at the right time to generate new ideas and develop creative products that customers need and want. Pollyanna explains the four areas of collaborative leadership-creating an open environment where the best people can work, learning from stakeholders throughout the enterprise, prioritizing innovative solutions based on business value, and standing back to allow the team to succeed.

Outsourcing testing software projects to countries in Asia is a trend that is here to stay. You have a growing number of choices for an outsourcing country in Asia-India, China, Taipei, Korea, and others. Although India currently dominates the scene and both Taipei and Korea have historically provided excellent quality, though at a higher cost, China is quickly moving to become the leader with even lower billing rates and a large number of experienced and educated engineers. In this session, Jacob Hsu offers an overview of the Asian outsource scene including the latest trends and data. Take away a checklist of best practices for successfully outsourcing product testing to Asia, including how to manage distributed testing teams, how to overcome language/cultural issues by country, and what types of testing should (and should not) be outsourced offshore.

"Testing in the cold" refers to those times when you feel there is no commitment to testing and people or other circumstantial factors are not being cooperative. Hans Buwalda provides forty-five tips for testing in such a situation, including issues on commitment, politics, managing expectations, dependencies, difficulty of testing, motivation of participants, and practical issues and problems. Learn how to successfully "test in the cold" when circumstances appear to be working against you.