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- Let's talk about the
skills a tester needs

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for a new agile adventure and the skills

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that agile teams need
to succeed with testing.

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The T-Shaped skill metaphor
is a great metaphor

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to describe the abilities
of an agile team member.

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In agile development we value skills

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and competencies over roles.

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We may do many different
activities on the team.

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So that horizontal bar is
what allows us to collaborate

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across disciplines and apply
knowledge in other areas.

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For example, because I have
some coding experience,

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that helps me pair with
developers to automate tests.

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And my database knowledge
helps me collaborate

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with a database administrator.

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I know enough about security testing

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to be able to help with that.

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So those are my broad skills.

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I know a little bit about a lot of things.

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This is true of a lot
of agile team members.

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Then we have our vertical
skill, our deep skill.

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The thing that we're
most passionate about.

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For example, my deep skill is being able

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to quickly learn business domains.

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I love learning how the business operates,

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how people do their jobs, what
makes a business successful.

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So that's how I can add
the most value to my team.

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All team members should
be pro-actively learning

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more about testing.

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We'll talk about some of the
skills that are important

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later in this lesson.

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We need a diverse set
of skills on the team

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to succeed with testing.

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It takes a lot of different
skills and experience levels.

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A few years ago Adam
Knight wrote a guest post

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on Rob Lambert's blog taking
this T-shaped metaphor

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and extending it into
this square-shaped team

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as he called it.

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The teams made up of people
with various T-shaped skills

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become a square-shaped team.

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They have skills, some of
them are good at coding.

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Some of them are good at
continuous integrations.

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Some are good at database.

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And they have all the
thinking skills they need

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to succeed with testing activities.

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So diversity is really key.

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We need these multiple
viewpoints to help us

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overcome our cognitive
biases and see beyond

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what we expected to see.

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The square-shaped teams
are ready to learn.

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We're not afraid to fail,
because failing is learning.

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So let's look at some
of the specific skills

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that we are likely to need
to succeed with testing.

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Let's talk about some thinking skills.

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Most people call these soft
skills, or maybe people skills.

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That makes it sound kind of easy.

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We prefer thinking skills
because you have to

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put some work into learning these skills.

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Testers are great information providers,

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but let's face it, not
everyone wants to hear

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what we have to say because
sometimes it's bad news.

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So let's find some good ways
to deliver that information.

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The thinking skills help
us learn how to collaborate

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with other team members.

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So we learn the languages of the business,

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and the languages of the technical team.

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We can bring all these people together

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for conversations when
we need to understand

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how the system should behave.

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Listening skills are really key,

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something I work on all the time.

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Watch for hidden assumptions.

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The business may assume
that the delivery team

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knows how a certain feature should work,

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and in fact they have the wrong idea.

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So become a thinking tester and work

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on your thinking skills.

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In or experience we don't feel
testers need to be coders.

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We already have coders on the team.

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Our developers can do things
like help automate tests.

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However, some technical
skills help us collaborate

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with the technical members of our team.

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For example, knowing that
high-level system architecture

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helps us work with the
team to consider risks.

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I find it really helpful to
draw the system architecture

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on the whiteboard and talk
with the rest of the team

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members about what areas
of that architecture

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are potentially risky or fragile.

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Where could problems occur?

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Knowing basic programming
concepts and design patterns,

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knowing how to use an integrated
development environment

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the rest of the team uses.

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Knowing how to use our
source control system

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helps us pair with developers
and other members of our team.

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Knowing the database
helps us identify risks

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on the data side, helps
us set up test data.

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These days, big data, data warehouse,

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we're having a lot more
challenges with testing data.

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So those kind of skills can help us a lot.

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Understanding our continuous integration,

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how our automated tests run,

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how our builds are done.

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Knowing when and where
a build is deployed,

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and a lot of times being able to deploy

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a particular build so
that we know exactly what

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we are testing in a
particular test environment.

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Those are all technical
skills that really help us,

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so build your technical awareness.

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Another area of technical awareness,

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again, this is my favorite area,

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is domain knowledge.

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I really feel like this
is one of the areas

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where testers are strong
and add a lot of value.

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Of course other members of
the team can do this too.

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So we focus our testing on the business.

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What's going to achieve business goals.

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What's going to make
the business successful

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and bring value to our
customers and end-users.

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So really, everyone on the team should

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invest time in learning the domain.

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It really helps us solve the
business problems better,

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but we find that testers,
business analysts,

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product owners, product managers,

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they tend to accel at the business domain.

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So do learn how your users do their jobs.

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Sit with them, watch them work.

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It really can help you help them

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with automating tasks that might be

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difficult or error prone for them.

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Customer support is
another great resource.

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If you don't do customer support yourself,

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go and seek out your
customer support people.

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Ask them where have a
lot of problems occurred.

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Are there areas of the application

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that seem to be more error prone?

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Maybe we need to focus
more testing on those,

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or more regression testing.