| | October 20158CIOReviewopinionin myour first question might be­why does an Agile Test Man-ager need a vision, strategy, or roadmap? Isn't that the role of the Product Owner, maybe even the Devel-opment Manager, but certainly not the Agile Test Manager? When someone asks me what I do, I say: "I build high performing Agile Test Teams". "I provide the vision, roadmap, and strategy for the test team and remove any roadblocks that are impeding their success." Vision When I talk about vision, I often think of my days as a collegiate basketball player when my coach would bring in sports psychologists. They would teach us how to envision winning the big game and what we could contribute to it: for example, by making the game-winning shot I envision the things I could do to contribute more to my team's success and all the things that need to happen to get us to the point of be-ing high-performing. For those of you who are first time Agile Test Managers, you might not necessarily know what a high-performing test team looks like, so you might challenge me to help you envision it. Characteristics of a high-performing test team from my perspective include: · The test team members are functioning as an equal part of the overall Scrum Team· They are Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in the area of the application. · They are technically competent. · The next five adjectives come from the book by Patrick Lencioni called "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team": the test members are accountable, com-mitted, trust their teammates, driven to results, and don't fear conflict. The bottom line is that you need to figure out what success looks like for your test team and create a vision of how to get there. RoadmapsRoadmaps are my favorite subject with my test man-agers. It helps them define to me what `good' looks like and how they are going to achieve `good' for that quarter. The things that I have found helpful in hav-ing a testing roadmap include:1) Transparency around areas where improvement is needed within test, especially around areas of auto-mation.YHey, Agile Test Manager--Do You have a Vision, Roadmap, Strategy?By Mary Thorn, Director, Software Test Engineering, Ipreo
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