Archive for the ‘Leadership’ category

More on careers

July 8th, 2010

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I left out a couple of obvious things in my career post yesterday and thought I’d write them down before I forgot.

Managers

Yesterday, I wrote about the non-management career path for testers at MS. There is, indeed, a career path for managers – I just tend to talk about the non-management career path because that’s where I’ve tried to keep myself. We have two titles for people managers at Microsoft. We call managers who manage a team of non-managers Leads, and call managers who manage leads Managers. In other words, a Test Lead manages testers, and a Test Manager manages test leads. Got it?

Generally, Test Leads are in the Senior band, although it’s somewhat common to have leads in the upper ranks of the SDET IIs. The level of knowledge (and more importantly, amount of different testing experiences) testers have by the time they get to these levels gives them the confidence, ability, and credibility to be successful. Leads are expected to get some “real” work done in addition to managing their team. Test Managers are typically Principal or higher (although, as with Test Leads, may be in the upper bounds of Senior).

Something else to note is that the Lead role does not necessarily need to grow to the Manager role. If you are a lead, but never want to manage a large team of leads, you can grow to Principal+ levels as a lead. Or, you can be a lead for a while, bounce back to being an individual contributor, and bounce back to being a lead if you desire (and if the opportunities and business needs are there).

Another take on career stages

I recently re-read Spolsky’s Smart and Gets Things Done. That (the title, and the description from the book) is pretty much what SDETs and most of the SDET2s do. Senior SDETs (and SDET2s who are on their way) move to a stage of Smart, and Makes Stuff Happen. It’s one thing to know how to do stuff really well, but leaders are able to make stuff happen through influence (and the help and support of others). We expect Principal’s (and those about to be Principal) to think more about How Stuff Happens. Strategy, decision making and and solid systems thinking all feed into the “how”. Of course, you still need to dive into making stuff happen and getting things done once in a while, but setting the right direction, for the right reasons, is critical.

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Posted in General, Leadership, Test Careers

Careers in Test

July 7th, 2010

I’d like to elaborate on something from a previous post on SDETs at Microsoft. One thing that is perhaps a bit different about the test role at Microsoft is its tie to the career path. We are, for better or worse, big believers in career growth and expect growth in scope and impact from all of our testers.

Eric, a former manager of mine has a nice post on our “career stages” in this blog post. His post is on SDEs, but it applies to SDETs for the most part. Eric’s descriptions are wonderful, and well written. At risk of being a copy cat blogger, however, I’m going to offer a sentence or two of commentary on the non-manager SDET career stages at Microsoft.

SDET – This is where most of our testers start, and where you figure out how to do your job, and do it well. This stage is about learning the trade (tools, practices, dynamics, etc.). You won’t make it out of this stage just by being a fantastic tester – everyone in this stage is a fantastic tester.

SDET II – At this stage, the big thing is independence – SDET “2s” get stuff done, and don’t get stuck – in fact, they don’t let themselves get stuck. At this stage, testers also start to get their eyes of the immediate tasks at hand more often and think a bit about the future of their org. They have influence in their team, and often accomplish significant tasks that impact their entire org.

Senior SDET – Leadership is expected at this stage. It can be technical leadership or strategic influence – but the big point is that you have a huge amount of influence and impact on your entire team (with occasional forays into impact across your organization). For a longer explanation, please meet Alecha, Sanjay, Jodi and Kaz.

Principal SDET – SDETs at this level are expected to have influence and impact across their group (i.e. well beyond the testers that work in their own managers organization). We don’t have personas for this level shared externally yet, but if you think of the gang of four above with a much wider scope of impact, you’ll be close.

Partner SDET – This is scope of impact ratcheted up to 11. These folks leaders across an entire division (remember, that we’re talking about leadership – not management). They often make decisions that can save millions of dollars (and do so with consistency and confidence). Again – we have no personas for these folks, but just think of the same gang of four leading successfully across an entire division.

Internally, we have career stage profiles that define a lot more about these roles (some examples are in chapter 2 of hwtsam). The one bit of possible weirdness with the big emphasis on career paths is that we expect everyone to grow to at least Senior, and I worry sometimes that there are fantastically awesome wonderful super-testers who just aren’t capable of leadership at the Senior level. As I think about it though, I wonder if I (we?) just need a broader view of what leadership in testing really is. Right now, we have a relatively small percentage of folks at Senior+ levels, so I may be looking at this through eyes stuck on the small population of people currently “leading” at those levels.

Just hoping to clear up some mysteries – hope you find this helpful.

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Posted in Leadership, Software Testing, Test Careers

Politics

June 29th, 2010

I’d like to announce my candidacy for…no – not that kind of politics, I thought I’d drop a few comments on office politics.

Too often, people see “politics” as the evil underbelly of the corporate world, and that competency in office politics requires that you can backstab your coworkers with no remorse, find a variety of ways to undermine your colleagues, and take credit for the work of anyone who won’t fight your claims. This definition from dictionary.com covers it well:

to deal with people in an opportunistic, manipulative, or devious way, as for job advancement.

But to me, that’s a cynical, shallow, and completely unhelpful view of what politics really are in the workplace. However, I do like the first four words – “To Deal With People” – in my happy rose colored view, that’s the part of the politic game that everyone has to play. I think that long term success in any workplace requires that you can deal with people. If you want influence, you’re going to need to have allies. If you attempt a difficult change, you may also annoy or disappoint some people. That’s all fine, as long as you find a way to talk, listen, or do whatever it takes to keep the wheels moving. I’m not saying that you have to kiss everyone’s ass, but if you want to be a leader – someone who can influence people to change, improve, or flat out take a chance on something that you want to do, you’re going to need to find a way to deal with them.

There may be people in the world that you don’t like or respect. That’s ok –we all know those people. Those of you who are politically savvy know that you probably still need to be able to communicate with them occasionally, so you don’t burn bridges. Who knows – you may need those people as an ally someday, and if you flipped the bit on them (and told them that you flipped the bit as well), all I can say is good luck getting that next “big idea” to fly.

More importantly, you need to be able to influence the people who can help you. Chances are good that you have more great ideas than you can take care of yourself. That’s ok, because great leaders take pride in making those around them better, and your great ideas are probably the thing that will make all of your colleagues better.

As long as they’ll listen to you.

And they will listen to you, as long as you are worth listening to. So build credibility, help them in their own projects, give them credit, and raise them up any way you can. In other words, use politics (the good kind) to get your way…and become a leader.

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Posted in Leadership

Are you a game changer?

May 18th, 2010

I took an internal training course last week where we heard lectures from a bunch of MS execs (I don’t do it justice – it was far more interesting than I anticipated and something I’d do again in a heartbeat).

Anyway, one of the lecturers was talking about software markets and showed a diagram that looked something like this:

The basic concept was that there’s a base set of functionality or features that a product has to have to compete, as well as areas where it needs to be better than (or at least as good as) competitors. “Hot” products also have something unique – a “game changer” that helps drive adoption.

With the iPhone for example, the foundation was that it had to make phone calls and play music.The touch controls, the camera and photo viewing and some of the other similar features made the iPhone competitive.

The apps, the appstore, and the “there’s an app for that” wildness is huge – I know dozens of people who use an iPhone only for the apps. That is a game changer.

Of course, this is a lot like Kano – same idea, different names.

Kano has “must-haves” – the features you, well – must have. The “one-dimensional” properties in Kano are kind of like the differentiators in the chart above, and the “attractive” needs in Kano are sort of the game changers.

The thing I like about Kano is the way you plot the data. For each feature you’re considering, you ask customers (a focus group works great for this) the functional and dysfunctional form of their thoughts. For example, “How would you think of shimmery blue menus”, and “How would you feel if we didn’t have shimmery blue menus”. Their responses help you plot out where on the chart the particular feature lives.

Then it’s up to the decision makers to use the data and come up with the right mix of features that will satisfy customer needs – and give them enough “oomph” that they’ll want to give you money.

That’s all sort of interesting (or not), but I sat down here to write about something else. I’ve known about Kano for years, but when I saw the triangle version last week I had an insight.

The triangle also describes your career

If you want to be successful, at the very least you have to be able to do your job – that’s the foundation. Lot’s of people do just this and get by just fine. The next level (differentiation) is where you get good at your job – possibly even excel. There are a lot of people here too – these are your typical “great” performers. In many companies, these are the cream of the crop – and they should be.

Then, you have the game changers. There aren’t many of these, but they kick ass. They always have …something – something that only they bring to the table. These are the people that innovate and come up with the ideas that the differentiators use to get ahead (building, of course, on their execution and foundation of knowledge). Many people want to be game changers – some even proclaim they are game changers, but this level is reserved for people who earn it through great ideas and insanely hard work.

So how about you – do you want to be a game changer?

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Posted in General, Leadership

Network and influence

May 13th, 2010

I gave a short talk to an internal MS community this week. The topic of the day was “influence”, and I thought it was appropriate to talk about the value of building (and maintaining!) an informal network – and the impact of that network on influence. The advice to have an informal network isn’t new – I bet it’s mentioned in the majority of books on leadership, but I don’t think enough people who want to be leaders (or be influential) take the point seriously enough. Your network is a resource for discovering new information as much sounding board,for ideas you want to share.

Your network is also an opportunity for you to build credibility. I know people who claim to be leaders. Sometimes they claim to be a leader because they’re in a position of authority. Other times, their “leadership” is just a self proclaimed act. In my world, you aren’t a leader until other people say you’re a leader. You don’t get it any other way than building credibility and trust among those you want to lead – and your network is a great place to build that credibility and trust across people who don’t have to listen to you if they don’t want to.

There are other values of a network. In HWTSAM, I talked about the Test Architect Group (TAG) at Microsoft. TAG is a collection of senior testers who meet regularly to talk about a variety of testing topics.

The value of having Microsoft’s most senior testers regularly review, brainstorm, and dissect solutions for complex test problems is immeasurable. In recent years, TAG has become something of a sounding board for new thinking, new methods, or new tools in testing. Presentations and demonstrations of ideas and implementations from test groups spanning every Microsoft division fill many of the meeting agendas. The value and depth of the feedback that the TAG provides is respected and sought after. A few meetings a year are reserved for “TAG business,” which includes discussions about company-wide initiatives driven by TAG
and other projects where TAG is a significant contributor (such as the MSDN Tester Center).

Perhaps the largest benefit of the regular meetings is in the value of networking. The extensive peer discussions and the view into the variety of work done across the company that is presented give TAG members much of the knowledge and information they need to make strategic decisions that affect the entire company.

I’ll say it again because it’s huge – the value of this particular tester community is the network. The fact that we talk to each other about what we’re working on gives us a small-world network – a huge reduction in degrees of separation between just about any testing knowledge in the company.

Yet – many people don’t take advantage of their opportunities to build their network. They don’t have the time – they think their day job is more important, or have something else to do they think is more important. It’s hard – last week I was in a great “hallway conversation”, but I found my mind wandering as I wondered if I should really be back in my office doing “real work” (I didn’t, now I’m behind, but it was worth it). Alas, some people who do consistently prioritize their commitment to building their network find that their superiors don’t share the priority and look down on work spent “outside of their core job” (my advice for these people is to find a new job).

I was asked once whether it was leaders who built great networks, or if people who built great networks became leaders. My old answer was that it was a toss up. Today, as I think about this more, I realize that there are a great number of leaders who got there because of their effort to build, maintain, and nurture a huge network of informal relationships. I’ve also seen leaders (including exec level leaders) fail because they thought that their position was enough, and didn’t work to build their network, credibility, and trust.

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Posted in HWTSAM, Leadership

Checking in on the new gig

March 22nd, 2010

Today was my 14th (business) day on the communicator team. I’m into sort of a groove and having a good time. My job today is so drastically different than what I was doing just a few months ago that I thought I’d share a few things so everyone would know what I’m up to.

I’ve managed to initiate a few cool projects and get myself injected into a few more. One thing I really love about this team is the amount of trust my manager and teammates have in me and my ideas. Last week, for example, I was pointing out some perceived flaws in one of our processes – along with my ideas of how the processes should work.Thinking out loud, I said, “it would be cool to do a case study and gather some data on this.” I already have the details and participants lined up and should have the study done in the next week or so. It’s really exciting to see things more so fast.

Another principal sdet on the team and I are starting a program that will enable testers on the team to step away from the bulk of their day jobs for up to 4 weeks. This will enable testers to work on projects they may not get a chance to otherwise – and, of course, some work gets done that wouldn’t get done otherwise.

I’m also giving a series of brown bag talks on various testing topics. You all know that I’m a fan of the five orders of ignorance and this is a great opportunity for me to help people learn what they don’t know. I’m also heavily involved in the interviews for new team members – it’s fun to interview people for testing positions (in EE, I interviewed people to be teachers and advocates for test).

And finally, as a big proponent of test code quality, I’m unleashing a boatload of static analysis tools on the test tree. This is a nice project because it gives me a chance to do a cursory review of all of the test code in the tree – the end result will be higher quality tests and tools – tests and tools that can be trusted to provide accurate results. The topic of static analysis is worth another post someday – but I’ll wait until I’m done with this little project first.

I think that covers it – so far so good!

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Posted in Communicator, Leadership, Software Testing

Don’t like something – fix it

December 6th, 2009

Perhaps it’s just the nature of the tester, but I’ve seen a lot of complaints from testers recently. “Managers do the wrong thing”, “Testers need to do more ‘x’”, “Testing isn’t taken seriously”, “These people don’t understand what I do”, gripe, mumble, etc. Of course, it’s easy for me to tell you to quit your griping and fix it (in fact, I’m sure I’ve done that in previous posts), but solving problems is much bigger than that.

Let’s say, for example, that you want to make a change in your organization (I’ll leave the exercise on how to change the world) for another post. Just for fun, let’s say you would like to do a lot more Exploratory Testing in your organization (bad joke removed – should have picked a different example).

What do you do first?

The number one answer I expect (and I’m usually right) is that you need to convince management that ET is great (or that you should do more of it), and they’ll make a top down decree, and everything will be unicorns and rainbows(tm).

Bzzzt!

Management is one faction, but there are more. What if the rest of the testers on the team don’t see the value in ET? What if they don’t know how to do it? What if your customer demands that you only deliver automation results (or something else silly). What other factions can you identify? You need to think about everyone with an interest in the results – then take time to understand where they’re coming from and how the change impacts they’re thinking. With any change, you have gains and losses. What do you gain by doing more ET (note: also define “more”). What do you potentially lose by doing more ET? Top down edicts rarely work, so if you want a chance of success, don’t start there. Identify your factions, and come up with a strategy for working with each of them.

The important thing to remember is that you don’t change the process, you change the people. If you don’t think about how change impacts people, you will probably fail. Whenever I’m dealing with a performance gap, the six boxes model helps me think about how change happens.

Environmental and Team Factors

Expectations and Feedback

· Roles and performance expectations are defined; employees are given relevant feedback.

· Work is linked to business goals.

· Performance management system guides employee performance and development.

Tools and Processes

· Materials, tools and time needed to do the job are present.

· Processes and procedures are clearly defined and enhance individual performance.

· Work environment contributes to improved performance.

Consequences and Incentives

· Financial and non-financial incentives are present

· Measurement and reward systems reinforce positive performance.

· Overall work environment is positive, employees believe they have an opportunity to succeed; career development opportunities are present.

Individual Factors

Knowledge and Skills

· Employees have the necessary knowledge, experience and skills to do desired behaviors.

· Employees are cross-trained to understand each other’s roles.

Capacity

· Employees have the ability to learn and do what is needed to perform successfully.

· Employees are recruited and selected to match the realities of the work situation.

Motivation

· Motives of employees are aligned with the work.

· Employees desire to perform the required jobs.

The six boxes model (sort of based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) is a model to help think about all of the factors that go into change.

Box 1 is where management can help. Defining the expectations and feedback loop for the change helps people understand what they need to do.

Box 2 pertains to tools (e.g. sysinternals.com tools), and resources (including computers, a quiet place to work, etc.).

Box 3 is where most change efforts fall short. This is the “what’s in it for me” category. Prizes, bonuses and other material rewards fall into this category, but it can also (and often more effectively) be some other type of reward. The points awarded on xbox live or on stackoverflow are a form of box 3 reward. Done really well, box 3 can be satisfied by making the job more fun and interesting, and creating higher quality software.

Box 4 deals with the skill gap. For our example, it is the plan for how to teach or demonstrate necessary skills for ET, and may include instruction, reading material, coaching, etc.

Box 5 is about the people on the job. Are they capable of carrying out the necessary tasks? If not, you probably won’t be successful.

Box 6 is dependent on the other boxes. Binder says that if the other boxes are positive then this one is positive. My view on box 6 is that box 6 is free will – and you don’t mess with free will. Sure – keep box 6 in mind, but don’t f with it.

Now that you’ve thought of your factions, and mapped out the human element of the change, you’re just about ready to go. Before you start, remind yourself that while you have a plan, and you’ve anticipated as much as you can, things will change. You need to adjust your plan (revisit the motivations of your factions, examine your six boxes evaluation as you learn more information – hey – this sounds like “exploratory leadership)). Organizational change is often a moving target and being ready for that will help you be successful.

If all of this sounds like too much work, there’s always plan b – quit and go shopping.

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Posted in Leadership