As a test leader to take over a new business, what should I do?

The original text was published by Mr. Zero in the TesterHome community. Click the link to the original text to communicate with the author online.

When you take over a new business as a test leader, you may face these two core problems

• How to ensure product quality?
• How to build a QA team?

These two issues seem to be one functional direction and the other business direction, but in essence the two complement each other. In this article I will share some ideas from the practice process. The overall idea is as follows

1. Integrate into the environment

 核心原则：将自己全身心投入到一线项目，做一个好的沟通者、观察者和记录者

Don't let "new officials" take office as "three fires", and integrating into the environment is the first priority. There are many factors in the environment, and we should grasp the two core elements of "people" and "things" .
People: All members of the team, build a bridge of mutual understanding and cognition, covering every role in the team: development, product, testing, operation and maintenance, design, interaction, etc.
How to do it? At work: sprint the front-line business (of course, this is not necessarily responsible for the quality assurance of a specific project), interact with different roles in the entire R&D activities, and establish mutual understanding. In daily life: Eating together and playing ball are good interpersonal lubricants.
Matter: Product R&D delivery requires a deep understanding of the current team's R&D process and operation mode. In the early stage, we need to be a communicator, observer and recorder . Don’t “point the country” as soon as you come up, because “expert experience” will always let us discover the quality and efficiency problems in this R&D model, but it may only be partial and one-sided. of.

2. Sort out the business

 核心原则：梳理出你所负责业务的业务图谱和产品矩阵，知边界，抓重点，做一个好的学习者

Maintain a good learning attitude, be a good learner, focus on business, and the members of the team are the objects of learning, and ask them for business advice. Prioritize business communication within the QA team, and then extend to other role members (development, product, etc.). The general approach is:

• Communicate effectively with the corresponding project test owner. While understanding the business, you can also understand the owner's ability to understand the business and the system.
• Effectively communicate with the corresponding project R&D owners and products, focusing on supplementing business knowledge through multi-role descriptions
• Sort out the business map and product matrix that you understand, communicate with the R&D person in charge, and clarify business boundaries and key product guarantees

Know the boundaries and focus on the key points: With the boundaries and key points of the product, limited resources can be invested to solve the core problems first.

3. Sort out the team

 核心原则：立足团队和个人两个视角盘点当前的状态

1) About the team <br>A good QA team, from experience, should do the following 3 things:

• Product Quality Assurance (Fundamental)
• Team Gradient Construction (Momentum)
• Team Influence (Development)

In practice, such a target matrix can be used to measure the current state of the team (this is a comprehensive qualitative evaluation). Of course, this is not a result of a slap in the head, it needs effective cases and data support to illustrate. For example, if the product quality assurance evaluation is qualified, its evaluation decision may be based on the following situation: the test is currently mainly based on functional testing, the online quality basically meets the standard, the automation coverage is low, and continuous integration is not carried out.

How do you view the relationship between the three, which comes first? Which is heavier or lighter? In fact, product quality assurance is the "fundamental" of the QA team's foothold, the team's gradient capability is the "motivation" of the guarantee, and the team's influence is the embodiment of the sustainable development of the team. For the business and the team, our key goals are product quality assurance under the goal orientation, and team influence and team gradient capabilities are important factors to help achieve the goal.

This goes back to the two questions mentioned at the beginning: how to do product quality assurance? How to build a QA team?

2) About members <br>The purpose of the inventory of team members is to understand each member of your team, and to understand their characteristics, skill levels and demands. Establishing a good sense of trust and identity with them is the guarantee of whether the next job is handy. Through multi-directional upward and downward communication, analyze the situation of each member, and make corresponding records (to facilitate the follow-up goal setting and personal improvement plan formulation), or through the talent inventory Jiugongge to have a global understanding, sort out the team's People gradients for better decisions about whether the right people are doing the right thing.

4. Analyze the problem

 核心原则：立足业务目标，对标成熟的质量体系，通过沟通与量化的手段找到核心问题

Practical principles:

• Communicate and quantify with team members and list TOPx issues
• Find common solutions in the industry item by item and review them publicly
• Find the right solution for your team
• With process specifications, adhere to the implementation until the essential problem is solved

for example:
【Based on business goals】

【Combing the current business situation】

【Find the core problem】

5. Set goals

 核心原则：立足业务目标，制定合理的、可衡量的团队关键目标

To set goals, you need to answer these questions
1) Where do the goals of a team come from?

 团队目标应该从上一级目标拆解而来，服务和支撑于上一级目标

 【举个例子】
业务大团队目标：XX产品要做到集团设备覆盖安装90%
目标拆解分析：在做快速增长的时候，功能质量、稳定性及用户体验会给用户是否有意愿安装使用带来较大的摩擦
关键目标制定（相对值和绝对值）：
2021年线上缺陷率从3.5%降低到2.0%（相对值）
2021年业务系统可用率达到99.95%（绝对值）

2) How to test the rationality of team goals?

• Whether the candidate target is consistent with the upper-level target
• Who has ownership of the goal, our team or other teams
• Is this goal measurable?
• Whether the main force in accomplishing this goal is the team manager or the team members

【for example】

standard	illustrate	case
Whether the candidate target is consistent with the upper-level target	If not, give up decisively	A very important cornerstone for the achievement of the installation rate is the quality of the product line
Who has ownership of the goal, our team or other teams	Your team should have ownership of the goal	Leading the QA team to promote the overall product development
Is this goal measurable?	try to be measurable	The online defect rate was reduced from 3.5% to 2.0%
Whether the main force in accomplishing this goal is the team manager or the team members	If a goal relies too much on the team manager, team members can easily lose interest in that goal	First-line project test students

3) How are the goals formulated, implemented, and evaluated?

【for example】
Key target: reduce online defect rate from 3.5% to 2.0% in 2021

Code of Conduct	Practical action (list an example of an action)
Grasp the key: which aspects are most critical to achieving this goal	Build a unified and effective R&D process specification and delivery standard, do a good job in the quality check points of each link, and improve the quality of delivery
Benchmarking: What are the best practices for achieving such goals, both inside and outside the team	Supported by the platform, to achieve process standardization, delivery standardization, vertical capability, and improve delivery quality
Breaking the Barriers: What are the barriers for the team to achieve this goal? How to break through?	Lack of quality awareness among team members, implement norms and standards, and carry out quality built-in activities
Seek innovation: Is there a better way to achieve this	Introduce accurate testing and provide effective feedback on test coverage through forward traceability, which facilitates test supplementation and improves coverage

6. Implement the plan

 核心原则：以目标为核心，结合问题，制定解决思路和规划

【for example】
Team A needs to upgrade from qualified to excellent at the level of "product quality assurance"

【Make plans】

7. Continue to follow up

 核心原则：数据驱动，持续跟进

Usually, the smallest unit of target assessment is quarterly assessment, so the results of the target need to be tracked and controlled through procedural follow-up, so as to identify risks in advance and make adjustments.

8. "Product" Iteration

 核心原则：将“质量体系”看作一个产品，持续迭代优化

For a test person in charge, he generally has his own set of quality system. When a new business is involved, whether this quality system is copied and put on the shelves directly, or it should be adjusted according to local conditions. From another perspective, the quality system can be regarded as a product, then the corresponding requirement is "guarantee product quality and improve R&D efficiency" . It is necessary to continuously iterate this product in different businesses and teams to ensure the solution to the current business. question.

Ask a question, can a mature product necessarily be able to solve the needs of any business? The answer is no. In many cases, the X product meets the needs of the A business, and then the B business may derive a lot of customization requirements and new functional module requirements.

The same is true for products, and so is the "quality system". For example, this quality system serves a middle-end project. If it is applied to a client-side project, it needs corresponding iterations and needs to supplement the construction of client-related testing capabilities. This is "Additional Demand". Another is "demand improvement" and "technology optimization". Give an example, such as accurate testing, in your quality system, only incremental code coverage statistical analysis (forward traceability, test case -> code feedback) was done, and impact analysis was added in iterations to recommend execution Use cases (reverse traceback, code -> test cases), this is requirement perfection.

Finally, put a picture of the current architecture design of my "product"

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The original text was published by Mr. Zero in the TesterHome community. Click the link to the original text to communicate with the author online.