In the zone

It has been almost 2 months since I started at Blocket. Two really interesting months. As always when starting a new job it takes a while to understand how things works. One of my tasks as Test Manager was to get some sort of test process in order. As I support five teams it was challenging to get a clear picture of the bottlenecks, how much testing effort was needed and the work flow. The first weeks I went to every team asking them if they had anything for me to test. Some times they did, some times they didn't. I was always sitting with the feeling that there might be something to do, but it is very hard to keep track of 5 team boards at once.

So I did what I love most, I did my own whiteboard. It is called The test zone. Whenever the developers has something they want to have tested they bring their note and add it to the board. If the note fulfills the entry criteria that are listed of course. Then it's really easy for me to see how much that needs testing for the day and when the board is empty I can focus on for example broadening my domain knowledge.

Beside from being very visually clear how much there is to test, the board also keeps me from acting as a mum or a police to the developers. I function as a service provider, if they don't want the service and my help to test something, that's fine. Then that's their choice. This means I'm not positioning myself as in charge of Quality. Which is a big relief on many levels. At my previous job I would get really nervous and try to keep track on everything that should be tested. Now I let the teams be responsible for that decision. AND, if this "fails", and a lot of bugs are being released etc, it is up to the development process to change how they want to work so it includes more testing.

I also added a timeline to the board so that the teams can mark when they are planing to release. That way we migrate the risk of two teams wanting to release at the same time..

I must also add that this is a great place to work. When I started the fist day I went and said hi to all the teams. Every team said things like "Finally, more testers!" and "Can you start now? We really need you". It not often the whole development department are so unanimous in wanting more testers.. It was a really cool experience :)