Help with the changes that happen when moving from testing to quality coaching
In my last post I talked about the changes you may have to get used to when you move from a testing to a quality coach role. In this article I will explain what you can do to help you with these changes.
You will have to be less hands on
This can be a hard one as if you have been a tester for a long time you may feel that you are not adding any value or not contributing to the team. This could be because you are not producing anything or because you are not so hands on.
To help you with this change you can:
Remember you are a key component to what the team produces and you add value for the customer
- Yes you may not test but your contribution as a quality coach means that you are helping the team deliver value to the customer. You are helping the team improve the quality of the features that they are delivering, now this is not just from a testing perspective but from other perspectives in the SDLC. For example you will be asking questions about the value of the features themselves as well as monitoring the use of the feature in production and using that to drive future changes.
- Yes you may not test but your contribution as a quality coach means that you are helping the team deliver value to the customer. You are helping the team improve the quality of the features that they are delivering, now this is not just from a testing perspective but from other perspectives in the SDLC. For example you will be asking questions about the value of the features themselves as well as monitoring the use of the feature in production and using that to drive future changes.
Help improve how the team test
- You can get involved in testing but just in a different way. You can use all of the testing skills that you have acquired to help teach and coach teams to improve their testing. Yes you will not be doing the testing but as you help the team improve their testing you will see the benefits of the team growing their skills as well as better quality features being delivered.
You will be working across multiple teams
Working across teams can be hard. How much time do you need to spend with each team? Do you split your time 50/50? Or do you help one team for one week and then the other for another week? There is no right or wrong answer to those questions. As with testing it all depends on context…..
No 2 teams are the same. Yes they may have people with the same job titles but those people will bring other skills and opinions and experience.
To help you with this change you can:
Try and understand what experience and where on the quality journey the teams are.
- Does one team have more experience of having a quality coach? If so they may need less of you time. If you have a team that has never worked with a quality coach they may need more of your time as it is a new way of working and they may need some help to get used to it.
- Does one team have more experience of having a quality coach? If so they may need less of you time. If you have a team that has never worked with a quality coach they may need more of your time as it is a new way of working and they may need some help to get used to it.
Only attend the meetings where you can add value
- There is no point attending all of the meetings across all of your teams. If you did this your days would probably be spent in meetings with very little time left for coaching. So pick and choose. The team have a meeting about some intricate code they are working on ? You may not need to go to it. Team have a meeting about acceptance criteria for a new feature? - You should probably go to that.
- There is no point attending all of the meetings across all of your teams. If you did this your days would probably be spent in meetings with very little time left for coaching. So pick and choose. The team have a meeting about some intricate code they are working on ? You may not need to go to it. Team have a meeting about acceptance criteria for a new feature? - You should probably go to that.
Talk to the teams
- Ask the teams how would they like you to help them? Assumptions are the mother of all mistakes so don’t assume that you know what help they need. You may have to ask.
You will be a jack of all trades and master of none
There seem to be specialists around everywhere are the moment - and I’m not just talking about software development. A day doesn’t seem to go by where you don’t hear or see some advertisement for a company and how amazing their specialists are. But as a quality coach you won’t have a speciality. Your value is that you are a jack of all trades and a master of none…
To help you, think about general practitioners in the UK. They are doctors who see multiple patients a days and have to potentially diagnose a condition in a single 10 minute appointment. Now you could call them a jack of all trades as they need to know a little about a lot in order to help them diagnose the patient. These doctors are very important and without them the specialists would be overwhelmed with patients and a lot of their time would be wasted. For example of they referred a patient to the wrong specialist it would waste time and could potentially lead to a negative outcome for the patient.
To help you with this change you can:
Learn
- Learn about things where your knowledge is a little light. This may be something like observability or could be something like BDD. There are so many resources out there that you can quickly get up to speed and be able to have valuable discussions with teams.
- Learn about things where your knowledge is a little light. This may be something like observability or could be something like BDD. There are so many resources out there that you can quickly get up to speed and be able to have valuable discussions with teams.
Contribute in more areas
- Being a jack of all trades means you can get involved in lots more conversations and add value to these. You don’t need to be an expert to raise valid points and get others thinking about things they may have missed.
If you want to learn about the phrase jack of all trades and master of none:
NOTE: I use it as a positive thing even though it can seem a little negative.
Know what is going on in the software world around you
Knowing what is going on in the software quality and testing world is always a good thing and it gives you knowledge and experience in areas you may not know a lot about. It can also give you a new angle on something you do know a lot about. You can learn new skills and may be able to use some of other people experiences in your company and team.
Has someone come up with a new unit testing framework? Has someone written a blog post about their experience with quality coaching? Whatever you read there will usually be something of value in it. Now how can you go about this easily when there is so much out there about testing and quality? Well it’s not easy but, off of the top of my head the below are a great starting point:
There are many more and my bookmark manager (Raindrop) can testify to this witg the number of articles I have saved and tagged!!!! LinkedIn is also a good place to read articles. Remember don’t just go for the popular blogs!! There are people out there who have some great ideas and posts that are definitely worth reading.
To help you with this change you can:
Set time aside to read about what is going on in the testing world
- A good way to do this is to assign some time each week to reading blog posts and watching videos. For me It’s an essential part of a quality engineers/quality coaches role and one that can really help grow you and your teams.
The testing will be done differently
Life is often about compromise and sometimes accepting that people do things differently. This can be a great thing as well as something that is a little frustrating. Take loading the dishwasher for example. Now I load it a specific way but my wife does it totally differently. “How’s that going to get clean when you load it like that?” - a phrase I used to hear all too often. My wife would then start rearranging the plates and cups. I thought I had done a good job but she clearly felt differently. Now being someone who is keen to learn what I did wrong, when she next loaded the dishwasher I watched what she did. Yes I didn’t agree but as she explained why she was doing it, it made a lot of sense. So the next time I loaded the dishwasher, I loaded it differently.
From a testing perspective you may be stuck in your ways or have a very clear idea about how testing should be done. However as a quality coach that probably isnt your responsibility anymore. It may be difficult watching a developer test a feature and you really want to jump in and tell them exactly how they should test it. Now that may seem like a good idea but how is that developer going to grow their testing sills and improve if you keep telling then what to do? They need to learn themselves and a great way to do that is to ask questions. Let them get better by you asking the questions and them working out the answer.
Also if the team test differently to you, you may learn something. Just because you think that your way of testing would be better that may not be the case. You may see developers testing and realise that they have found a better way than you.
To help you with this change you can:
Be open to learning
- Accept that things may be done differently but approach it with an open mind. Be curious and be prepared to learn things that may change you perspective on things.
You will have to be a self-starter
Being a self-starter is an essential skill as a quality coach. As a tester you may just wait until you have been given some feature to test and then off you go. However as a quality coach you need to work with multiple teams and you need to help them in their quality journey. So by being able to understand the team, its members, how it works as well as all the other aspects of software development, mean you need to make a start and that start needs to be initiated by yourself.
To help you with this change you can:
Start small.
- Don’t try some huge initiative to start with and overwhelm the teams with what you want them to do. Start small by setting a goal for yourself, for example, understanding what each people roles in the team are.
- Don’t try some huge initiative to start with and overwhelm the teams with what you want them to do. Start small by setting a goal for yourself, for example, understanding what each people roles in the team are.
Just start.
- Its like confidence. They say that to be confident just make a decision. To help with self-starting, just make a start.
Run workshops
How can you help teams learn and develop new skills? One way is workshops. Now workshops are a great way to get teams thinking about various quality concepts. Now running workshops can be daunting but a little preparation is a great way to make sure that everyone gets something out of them.
It can be daunting running workshops but providing you have planned what you want to do and people know what to expect, the chances of it being beneficial greatly increase. Yes you will make mistakes but we only ever learn and grow when we make mistakes.
To help you with this change you can:
Run the workshop idea by members of the team prior to running it or if you want to run it past the entire team.
- This doesn’t have to be a long session maybe just 15-30 mins explaining what the workshop is about and the outcomes that you are hoping for from it. In return the team can ask any questions that they may have. When you start doing workshops the best thing to do would to be start small. You don’t need to start with a killer workshop that will solve every problem that the team has in a certain area.
For example you could run a something like a fast feedback workshop. The aim of this is to understand how fast the feedback loops are in your team This would involve mapping out the process that the team follows from start to finished and speaking with each team member individually in order to see how quick the feedback is. I did one of these which you can find here:
Leave the team
Now ultimately the aim is to leave the team. They can manage and navigate software quality without you and you know that they will be successful. Now leaving a team can be hard especially if you have built great relationships with the people you work with.
Knowing when to leave the team can be difficult.
To help you with this change you can:
Think about what you want to do after quality coaching.
- Do you want to coach more teams or would you like to move into a different role. Knowing what you want to do can help you keep sight of the long term goal and make leaving the team a little easier.
- Do you want to coach more teams or would you like to move into a different role. Knowing what you want to do can help you keep sight of the long term goal and make leaving the team a little easier.
Explain to the team why the end game is no quality coach. That way they will understand when you do leave.