Last week I organized a meeting with several colleagues who have, just like me, several years of experience in the improvement field. I’ll try to cover the topics we discussed in a number of posts, this is the first. The meeting turned into a great discussion about test improvement and we discovered – despite working in the same industry – so many different stories to tell. Any situation is different, isn’t it?
Which underlines the most important lesson to learn in successful improvement: there is no such thing as “one tool to rule them all”, sometimes not even within one organization or department.
This is the what differentiates a manager from a leader: a manager sticks to his model of choice and tries to fit the context in his model; a leader uses what is “fit for context and purpose”. And in many cases, that’s more than one model or no model at all.
So, if you really want to improve, one of the things you have to keep in mind is that you need to focus on improving and not on the model you want to use.
The characteristics of each test improvement model define its added value and its limitations. And that is why the foundation for succes needs to be laid at the start of any improvement initiative: what model(s), if any, will you use?
To be able to decide, you’re first step needs to be defining the objectives of your initiative:
- Reduce time
- Save cost
- Improve the quality of the delivered product
- Improve the quality of the test process
- Improve the skills & knowledge of the team
- ……
Scope comes second:
- what area will you consider
- what is the size of the group to consider
- is only testing considered or do you include other disciplines like development and operations as well
Third is taking into account the resources that are available for the initiative:
- Budget
- Time
- Skills
- ……
Culture of the organization is fourth: are they open to change, eager to improve. Context is fifth: what approaches and tooling are already being used. And sixth is your best guess of the current maturity: the more mature an organization is, the easier it is to implement improvements and ensure that current “good” practices remain in place.
In other words, current & future test improvement has to be:
The next step is to come up with an approach that suits all of the above. Worth another post, I guess.
Ruud Teunissen 