How To Be a Good Team Mentor, Coach and a True Team-Defender in an Agile Testing World?

By Vijay

By Vijay

I'm Vijay, and I've been working on this blog for the past 20+ years! I’ve been in the IT industry for more than 20 years now. I completed my graduation in B.E. Computer Science from a reputed Pune university and then started my career in…

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Updated October 3, 2024

Get to know how to be a good Mentor to inspire growth and foster excellence in your dev team. Transform your leadership skills and cultivate the next generation of talent in this massive tech world:

You must be impressed with the ‘Idea’ AD and this time it is back with the ‘Walk when you talk’ idea.

Abhishek Bacchan, appears as a doctor in ‘Walk When You Talk’ AD, and this is definitely out of an ordinary AD, but then, I wouldn’t expect anything else from the “Idea” AD; I love to see the AD and it’s one of my favorite AD since it’s placed in line with my emotion and I hope with some of your emotion as well.

Is it just an AD to change the health and mindset of people or an AD to increase mobile connection sales?

Unlock the Secrets of Effective Mentorship

How To Be a Good Team Mentor in an Agile Team

I’m not even sure whether you would call it just another AD or maybe a hidden message for doctors or traditional seasoned managers, whom I have correlated it with after seeing this AD. The context of the roles is different but the conscious prescription is the same: ‘Practice what you preach’ – ‘Walk when you talk’

So, would I like to be classified under ‘walk and talk’ or ‘talk and talk’?

I certainly do not want to die yet another ‘talk and talk’ – preach and preach supervisor under any context.

I have realized in Germany that I do not want to be a great tester, best supervisor, or best test analyst but I do wish eagerly to be a ‘team-defender’, so that I can preach to the team members what I have learned from my mistakes for several years by being a tester and on the deeper domain.

I also do not want to create and possess the best method of personal growth and make my profile very impressive on LinkedIn – yet I do want to keep my passion for testing skills alive in my profile. I don’t want to be treated as just another resource for the billable, but more to do with how valued I will be for the team.

I don’t like to create a bit of suspicion of skip-level meetings amongst the team members, but I would like to be fairly judged by the team in writing and have no known name or identity of the team members.

I don’t want to prove myself as an accomplished supervisor by showing sizeable numbers of direct reports under my belt, but I’d like to be the single point of contact for my team’s fear. I don’t want to be called an Excel expert manager, who worries about numbers or percentages of work done, but I’d like to be part of a self-management team.

I don’t want to be a clever supervisor, but I would like to be a fair and clear ‘Team-Defender’.

Now, please don’t think of this as a highly intellectual statement, I belong to the same class of individuals classified as tester, test lead, or test manager.

I know the importance and have the knowledge of test operation, and test management as well as the painstaking, backbreaking, mind-numbing effort that goes into making those pretty-looking presentations in PPT and updating the spreadsheets every minute.

However, it is like one of those moments when some severity 1 and priority 1 defects fall in place from production and create panic at all levels of management and you have to celebrate it by announcing to the management that ‘We have verified the defect on-time’

The inner mind of my boss would have said “Hooo…the team has saved my butt, lucky by chance” and hence, here I’m a step closer to the blessed state of knowingly doing what I’m supposed to do with my team members – ‘walk when you talk’

Well said by the great Sir Ji, chief architect of India (CAI):

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching

You must be thinking, who the heck is great Sir Ji, CAI? Yes, you’re right!

About the Author: This is a guest article by “Kajal Das

” – a tester working for LHS Ericsson in Germany as a senior test expert and having practical telecoms CRM domain testing knowledge. He acts as a point of contact between various telecom service provider customers in determining all aspects of CRM testing being done in a practical and useful way.

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30 thoughts on “How To Be a Good Team Mentor, Coach and a True Team-Defender in an Agile Testing World?”

  1. WOW!! Nicely written each word has meaning in it.
    But, to practice such principles you need a matured team, individuals, process. Which acts as a bottleneck for most of us.
    But I appreciate the way article has been written.

    Reply
  2. This was very nice article .
    Recently we have started implementing agile methodology . I have few questions …
    1) From the user story the development team creates the task and QA start writing test cases . Here should the QA write test cases based on the user story or Tasks?
    2) Once the TASK is completed by development team the dev team notifies that the task is ready for QA . Here should the development team create a separate QA task once the task is ready for testing ?
    3) When should the user story be closed ?
    4)Who should close the user story QA or dev?

    We are using TFS 2010 tool for our projects .

    Plz can any one share the best parctices followed in agile testing.Since project has already been started it would be help ful if any one can reply asp

    Reply
  3. Hi There,
    I’m looking for sample Agile Test plan, Templates. What is the approach taken? One master test plan created for entire program and test plan for each sprint? Please share sample test plans.
    Thank you.

    Reply
  4. Hello Kaja Das

    Your article is really good one. It has been put up in a very nice way….
    The thoughtof being with your team is good.
    I liked the way you have brought the Ad ‘Talk while you walk’ in your article. Content of the article is simple and understandble.
    I am a Test Engg woking for Mobile Testing.

    Reply
  5. I really appreciate the thought process you have been through while writing this.
    I would love to have you on my team to continuosly save my bu..

    But mind you, as years progress you will move away from this role and things will change.
    For now you are doing great.

    Good work.

    Reply
  6. Dear Ms.Kajal Das (Article Author),

    1. Very clean and neat explanation.
    2. Pristine article covering valid qualities.
    3. The isolated points made us better understanding.
    4. Really worth reading this article.
    5. Appreciate your time and effort that you spent and
    spending for this article.
    6. Instead of making the article a lengthy one, The way
    you planned made this article “CONCISE”.
    7. Your article shows your “Art” that must be highly
    prized for its beauty or perfection.

    I was overwhelmed with gratitude for your help/effort.

    Thanks,Thanks,Thanks….

    Regards,
    Govardhan Reddy M,
    Software Test Engineer,
    “Value has a value only if its value is valued”

    Reply
  7. Aishwariya,
    This is an excellent article to read. It has mentioned all important aspects of Agile. I also working with Agile methodology and involved in testing with ecommerce domain. This is quite helpful. There is lot important factor, practical aspects you mentioned which infact a learning curve for anyone involve in testing and specially in agile cylce. Thanks a lot for same and hope to hear lot ahead.
    Regards

    Reply
  8. Hi Friends

    Few details abt my self

    Yrs of Exp : 4.5yrs
    Skill : Manual Testing (certified in QTP & QC)
    Location : Bangalore
    Current
    company : Accenture (3yrs)
    Level : SSE

    I am looking for change …So guys request you all lemme know if there are any openings for Manual testers in your company..
    Plz send me the mail @ psrn@ymail.com

    Reply
  9. i have completed my engineering from e&tc i want to make career in software testing , i am from non IT background so can i make a career in software testing ?
    what should i focus on to testing my career?

    Reply
  10. Reading: Challenges in Agile TestingTweet this Post

    In this tough environment more and more companies are beginning to explore how “agile, with different flavors can help their companies deliver reliable application quickly and iteratively. The role of testing professionals increasingly important in the application of Agile Projects. Innovations are increasingly driven by the needs of society in general check. But the paper more difficult to change to agile development is the role of Tester. That is because the agile development contradicts plenty of things to plenty of testers have been taught is “best practice”.

    As the global crisis hit hard, more and more worries about how it will impact in the field of information technology. The companies to be more cautious and sometimes reluctant to give application business. Some customers of the withdrawal of its long-term projects, while others use the possibilities of renegotiating the contracts and lower price quote. Recent scandals also add fuel to the fire, and consequently the levels of customer satisfaction and plenty of projects will fall over expected and cost over expected. And all this happens while the client wants to accomplish better business processes for application vendors to increase customer satisfaction and save more funds.

    So what are the challenges faced by testers when working with agile development teams and how they can meet the challenges?

    In an agile development environment can not expect things to happen. You must be proactive. This is true for all team members, but is true for Testers. Members of the quality control team can not let anything get in the way of proof. Failure to follow the requirements they require to speak with the owner of the product for clarification. If you are unsure of how developers are going to implement the new code, they require to discuss how the code will execute with the developer. Must be self-directed experts in removing obstacles that prevent them from testing.

    Recently, shipping through Application Testing Help I found an interesting article:

    Tips to be more innovative in the era of Agile Testing \., written by JB Rajkumar – experienced trainer, quality manager, a frequent speaker for colleges, universities and international conferences.

    In his long face Agile Testers of the problems when working with agile development team. And they must be able to apply root cause analysis when you find serious errors so that probably won’t happen again. While Agile has different tastes, Scrum is a process for implementing Agile. A quantity of the rules scrum challenge to be followed by all individuals are:

    – Get Number of hours of commitment Up Front
    – Gather requirements / Estimates Up Front
    – Introduction of the actual hours and estimated hours daily.
    – Construction Daily
    – Keep meetings short daily Scrum
    – Code Inspections are critical

    In order to meet the challenges, an agile testers require to be innovative with the tools they have. And here are some important keys to innovation:

    – A lovely Agile Tester has to be creative in trying to cope up with the speed of development or release. For a tester, being creative is more important than being critical.
    – Proof must be professional talent and strives more for learning and innovation of new ideas. Testers talent are seldom satisfied with what they have achieved and always strives to find errors unimaginable value and high priority.
    – An Agile check should not be afraid to look at the code a developer and if necessary, and in extreme cases, to correct it.
    – Must have a comprehensive view of customer expectations and delivering lovely product.
    – Must be authorized to work in pairs. He will participate in pair programming so that the script shorter, better designs and finding more errors.
    – Tester must be passionate and brings something distinctive that can be in terms of their innovative ideas or how to take the day to day.

    Finally, Agile Tester must have multiple skills, and, Manual, functional performance tests of skills and soft skills such as leadership skills, communication skills etc, in this new world of professional testing focused on adding value to business and application development life cycle and act in a new and elevated position where the combination of structured-driven approach, creativity and ability to articulate and define quality criteria and testing new models will be critical for the success of the business application of technology.

    Reply
  11. me too pleased with this read. nice inspiration
    no matter you are at what stage of your career you should always be a good team defender.

    Reply

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