Be a Maven and know a Maven

 

Recently I was listening to an audio book “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” by Malcolm Gladwell…In this book the  author mainly talks about how a very small group of key people can trigger a dramatic change in society and why some products or ideas tip but not others. Among all the concepts explained in the book, “Channel Capacity” and “Transactive memory” really strike my mind and I thought of sharing the same with you all…

 

While we are all continuously trying to acquire many new skills in many different areas which are very critical to accomplish many things at work or at home, our human brain have tightest upper bound on the amount of information that it can reliably store, share and apply, which is called the “channel capacity”. I also learned that “On an average our brain is wired to store about 6-7 categories/bits of information before making mistakes in recalling”. So going by this concept we can’t really squeeze in everything we love to.

 

Does that mean we can’t master and benefit from wide spectrum of technology and scores of tools available in the open and liberal world? don’t give up yet….the answer is you don’t need to master everything…..while we continue to master the domains we are good and comfortable with, what if we can rely on our friends or teammate for some of knowledge areas which they have mastered …and know enough about these realms in terms of where and when to apply, how to involve your teammate to resolve or get help from… yes…this is called “Transactive memory”…this is the concept which fascinated me the most, believe me I did a play back on this chapter at least 3 times.

 

I am sure we all knowingly or unknowingly use “Transactive memory” in our daily life either at work or at home or in small social groups, but how effectively we build and use this memory determines how much benefit we get out of it. “Transactive memory is the shared knowledge storage, retrieval and communication of information from different knowledge domains, which often develops in groups and can lead to greater efficiency and effectiveness”. We can call this one as “group memory” which is very essential to establish innovative culture in small groups/teams. In this concept team members relies on other team members’ specialization or knowledge by storing a metadata or metamemory. This metadata is about which team members know what kind of information and how to retrieve that knowledge to maximize cohesion and effectiveness.

 

The ideas/skills learned, discussed and applied in smaller groups with the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts (mavens, connectors and salesmen) triggers a dramatic change in the society and give birth to great ideas and products. So let’s start building our transactive memory by compiling information like…what skill we need to solve a particular problem?, who masters that skill?, how I can involve that person to resolve or learn?, what subjects I can get better at ? How do I broadcast the team about my expertise? How can I underline my credibility?

• A maven is a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others.
• A connector is a person with the ability to span many different worlds, some combination of curiosity, self-confidence, sociability, and energy.
• A salesman is a persuader, charismatic person with powerful negotiation skills.

what do you want to be? A maven or a connector or a salesman? Wear your title BOLD

Bump up your game by involving others

While testing a software application, no matter how thorough you are, there is always a possibility that some bugs manage to hide from you to pop up only later[ unfortunately after the certification ]. These bugs may be just typos in the GUI text,  badly broken flow which you never thought of or even a missing/incomplete functionality from the requirement doc.  Sure you did all the sophisticated planning and rigorous testing to find these bugs early, question is….Did you also include all the stake holders in the testing? What are collaborative strategies you adopted to nip these bugs in the bud and stopping it from popping out with confetti in the release party.

Different functions (ex: business team) of the project team looks at the product in quite different angle and perspective than the development or QA  does.  Idea is to bring all the players into the game…i.e not only use all the brains you(QA) have, but all that you can borrow….

Apart from being more vigilant & doing accurately-precise testing which you always do.. you can be more creative in getting the testing help from the resources outside your own QA team….i.e other stake holders in the project like business owners, Business analysts, Technical/project/product management, developers and in some cases internal partners/users. I always believe in the theory that “More users find more bugs” because “Many Eyes are Better than One Pair”. It does not really make a difference for the product quality whether QA finds the bugs or some one else did… as a QA lead you still win because it was Test strategy and the process which kept the product-under-test peeled & exposed to many others so all the issues were taken care before counting down for the launch.

You can involve other stake holders with the product-under-test in different ways at different stages of the product development life cycle.  Here are some examples….

• Developers: Developers are our close cousins and our technical partners, so feel free to place an increased portion of the testing in the hands of the   developers , always remember to start early in the project, device all possible test scenarios,  put them in a decently presentable document as one-line Test scenarios so it’s easy to grasp. Forecast your test scenarios to developers before or while they are coding.  I am sure they love to address them all to make sure that software is built to weather your tests.
• Internal partners/users: Now that you have the build shielded to counter the your test scenarios…you have less bugs in the build and you spend less time opening and resolving bugs..Once you have a decent build which passes most of your test scenarios..Open your application or interfaces to your internal partners or users to get the quick feedback on the product under test.
• Tech/Project/product Managers:Send out an e-mail to Technical managers, Project/product managers with the entry point(URL or some other means to get to the product) to your application with some test data for different test scenarios. Being stake holders, I am pretty sure they love to use their experience and add value by providing feedback and tips or asking some great questions which may help tune your test strategy and testing.  They may be busy….. leaders loves quality…they always have time for quality.
• Business: And finally the business owners..They are the only people who knows precisely what the business is, and how it operates.They are the most qualified people to check a system to see if it will deliver any benefit to the business or organization. Come out with best UAT plan and test cases to involve them in the testing with well prepared test data.  UAT helps to try the system in the context of the business environment it will operate in and business owners will be able add lot of value by providing the feedback. Also they are the only people who can see if there are reputation or legal risks in the product implementation which we as a QA may not be able to see.

I am sure non-qa teams are busy to get involved in product testing, you must free them up to conduct proper tests on a new system. Because in any product, quality is everybody’s business and desire…Every functions of the project team has quite a players..  getting them to play as a team to deliver the great quality-product is the key..Idea is to make sure that the product meets the business expectation, not only the specifications.  Even if your approach to get them involved  is unscientific or informal,  don’t be shy in asking for help, bump up your game and quality by involving and including others in your testing efforts…. and….. be open to feedback and opinion from others which may differ from that of yours….

Wanna finish strong? you better start early.

If you are working in an under-staffed IT department like mine,  it’s likely that most  of the QA leads work on atleast 3-4 projects/systems and always busy with planning/testing and juggling between project deadlines and priorities. This means skipping some of the design discussions on new projects or the project manager assumes that QA is busy and they tend not to include QA in most of the early project discussions and meetings.

As a result QA end up getting involved in the project real late and will try to do the scanning, thinking, planning when the development is already on the verge of delivering the code. This will make QA process really worse and you might not have everything(even the right test cases or tools) to do QA as a value added service & may delay product certification. In order to meet the deadline, QA may even end up not catching or fixing all the defects/limitations in the product/system and shoot for “Ship it now and fix it later strategy”.

For a qa lead or a manager nothing is important than starting early in the project. Try your best to occupy the center seat in the kick-off, design meetings and project planning/discussions. Don’t be shy or ride in the back seat thinking that QA has no role to play till certification begins. At minimal QA will get benefited by these meetings if not add value during these phases. Being in these meetings will help QA understand the new product/system better, remember “Better knowledge brings better results”.

Don’t forget to Wear your goggles with skeptical view to scan the requirements and add value by providing feedback. QA can challenge requirements by asking good questions, you are the right person to identify requirements that might not be testable.

QA leads involvement during analysis and requirements gathering helps think through the test ideas, test data, planning test environment & tools. Planning early will provides some good time till the certification start to enhance our ideas & test strategy. The other important advantage of having a Software Test Manager involved in early product planning is he/she can forecast time, materials and resources and provide important inputs that are not covered in the specification.

There is definite benefit by involving QA team actively from the onset of a project through maintenance, I generally have found this as very effective from a business prospective. So no matter how busy the QA team is with other things, as a leader make sure you find the QA resource to get involved early in the project. This probably means making sure management sees value in it and fund QA being involved and working with the project manager & team so that QA representation in these meetings is encouraged and appreciated.  Results speaks for themselves when QA is participated from beginning to end…..so it’s an easy mantra to chant  “Start early, catch early and finish strong!!”

We stretched our goals at job, are we stretching our body?

We are all busy in our jobs/business and stretching our goals to reach new altitudes, sure there is nothing wrong in working hard and being career-oriented. Infact every job should feel like a stretch not like a lay-up, but are we stretching our body and pumping our heart enough to stay fit? I am sure most of us want to drop an inch and move up a notch in our health and fitness as well. What I am trying to say is that, while living our busy life & focusing on accomplishing our goals at work we are mostly forgetting or ignoring our health.

Its no secrete that our biggest business asset in life is our health. Being happy is being healthy not wealthy, health is the wealth, with no health there is no happiness period. If we wish to be healthy, we better lead an active life each day.

Some of us may be good in working-out either going to gym or playing some sort of sport. If we can’t do that for what ever reason, do something else like taking a brisk walk, running on thread mill in your basement (I run on carpet in my basement), if these are boring, dance for your favorite music (switch on TV and tune into B4U and dance like no body else is watching). Don’t have time to do all this? try waking up early, I love to be an early bird and these early morning hours are totally mine, so there is no excuse for not to jump-start my day in the right way. It may be hard to wake up early in the beginning, well everything is hard before it gets easy– never give up [I wake up and browse web for 5-10 minutes to get out of my sleepy face].

So let’s move and stretch our body every day, enjoy the benefits like superior energy and high level of stamina which enables us to accomplish our other goals we always care about. By the way never forget your diet, we don’t want to dig our own grave with our own teeth, always eat to WIN. Remember price of discipline is always less than the pain of regret.

 P.S: Nope I am NOT preaching, just sharing my thoughts and reality.

Loyalty and Leadership

Loyalty is very important in every walk of our life, especially in teamwork “loyalty factor” between the team players and leadership decides whether team is going to stay together or fall apart. Great leaders influence & guide their players in the desirable direction and earn their loyalty, even royalty and an huge fan following. At the same time blind loyalty is lethargy or lack of imagination. Ideal leaders must not encourage their players to follow leadership blindly.

In team atmosphere integrity is every ones business, bottom line is to do the right things & things right. This is where the discipline of doing what’s right over what’s easy come into play. Every player must be encouraged to bring in their passion and intensity to the table. If leaders are there to cheer, motivate, help achieve the aligned individual/team goals and build the culture of honestly, transparency & fairness, team will be there with the leadership, willingly offering their support and their contributions and their loyalty. A leader will be restricted by his own limitations if he cannot build a strong network of people with complimentary skills. Leader who wants to “accomplish excellence”[ read WOW ] cannot be a captive of psychological comfort he gets from blind loyalty.

Every team mostly likely to have different kind of players with different levels of energy, class, commitment, attitude and loyalty. It’s the leadership which brings these players and attributes together to channelise, energize and execute, there by increasing the bandwidth to bring in wide spectrum of skill set and energy with minimal noise factor this process can be called as harmonizing energy. We can categorize the team players into 4 different groups based on performance and loyalty. All the 4 categories are listed below along with the leadership opportunities to best use of these categories to get the best for the team/organization.

LOYAL – PERFORMERS
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Cream layer of the team, best thing for leadership.
Opportunity to create WOW & Best in the world.
Appreciate their views and ideas and encourage them to stretch their goals constantly.
Empower them, reward them and offer more goodies.
When it comes to values and work ethics leadership must not award “License to Kill”. Don’t let them bully on others, stars can become monsters only if leadership let them.

LOYAL – NON PERFORMERS
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Responsive, may not be proactive.
Coaching Opportunity here for leaders.
Create a run way(capacity to grow) for these guys.
These guys can be filled into first bucket, if they have potential.
Should not be allowed to use leadership capital, no extra favor for these guys just because they are nice to leadership.
Leaders must not let them be kiss-ups and kick downs, to become parasites using leaders strength, energy and capital, or to be burden on company more importantly on the leadership.
Favorites can become monsters only if leadership let them. good or bad, if leader let them do it, it’s still leader doing it.
Leader must do a favor to these people by not allowing these players to play with an unfair advantage, once they get used to foul play, they will have real difficulty playing the real game in different leagues.

NOT LOYAL – PERFORMERS
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Passion/integrity built in their bones, but disagrees with leadership initiatives.
Opportunity to work with them & influence them.
Bring them into leadership bandwidth, include/involve them.
Increase the leadership bandwidth to accommodate these players, encourage speaking up & appreciate honest communication within the team.
Leverage their brain power and brew them with other loyal performers views/skills.
Increased opportunity to create WOW & Best in the world.
Most often people with good potential are branded as un loyal by some leaders, leaders must use this sub-ordinate potential & energy for the growth of the employee, team, organization and leader him self.
If they continue to be disloyal after exhausting all leadership options to include/involve, they should NOT be given ticket to get into the game.

NOT LOYAL – NON PERFORMERS
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No integrity and passion for nothing
They may need help finding other jobs, if they don’t have the potential or ability to follow the leadership or don’t have an ability to come out with their own initiative for good of the team/organization.