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A good test manager has a number of key attributes. I tend to think that the best managers are like good, professional sports coaches. They have played "the game", at the highest levels, they know what is required to be successful and achieve the results you are after. Translated, they should be a great tester themselves and be able to test hands on if ...

My perspective is - This question is more related to identifying charter / vision for the team based on current state of the Team You have to assess your current test process, tools, bugs, automation, product quality to arrive at areas of improvements Your proposal for roadmap would cover below aspects Roadmap for Team Team should have a roadmap to ...

I think your question assumes the positions are mutually exclusive, but I've worked places where we had a per-project lead and a cross-project manager. I think the tradeoffs are the same as between a dev manager and a dev lead. You need leaders in a team for mentoring, more difficult work, and technical direction. Somewhere in the organization you need a ...

My personal preference is to share resources across features and even products. While working on a single feature or product does increase specializing, that in itself has some associated cons: If the person specializing in a feature has missed something important and everyone else is not familiar enough with what they are doing to notice it, that could ...

Both can work, and as you point out, both have pros and cons. I am currently in a situation where we have insufficient people to be able to dedicate them to any project(s). The juggling between projects is constant, and starting to wear me down. Each day seems like "so which projects do I have to disappoint today?" If the projects themselves can be ...

I designed and developed training for MS for about 10 years. The most successful approach I found was to Perform a business needs analysis - many businesses have required compentencies or skills for people in different job functions at different stages in their careers. Even smaller companies likely have a set of expectations, and expected level of ...

I envy those organizations! First, I'd think a testing manager would need to have experience working with a testing group - not necessarily as a manager, but certainly with some level of administrative experience. I'd look for familiarity with a range of software development methodologies, particularly how the methodologies impact testers. Willingness ...

I would look for a leader rather than a manager. A leader who can inspire me and others on my team by sheer weight of his knowledge and work. I agree with whatever has been said by Bruce and probably some of points below might look like rephrased sentences (still I would give it a shot) One who enables the team to realize its potential by providing the ...

One option is to have a Hackathon day between the different test teams. Hackathons come in many flavours and have different meanings to different people, so your test teams will need to figure out what does it mean to them? Ideally at the end of the Hackathon day, the different test teams should present (and share) their hackathon idea(s) to the other test ...

Have you considered less competitive approaches to achieve your goals? Your teams may learn practical skills using deliberate techniques. I'm not sure how that increases morale (or team spirit), though. Note that for a deliberate technique to be effective, it must be: demanding targeted at improving specific areas of performance (so you must exactly know ...

The competition will not yield the results you are looking for. If you want to use it to increase bug count, you will get more bugs (and more "not a real bug" resolutions), for example. My previous experiences with in-house team competitions is that they are counter-productive and if the organization is smart, they are discontinued after a month or two ...

This is a big subject, too big to be satisfactorily answered in an Internet forum. Of course this is relevant to testing, but it is not specific to testing. In fact, aspects of this problem are not specific to global teams. Any time you ask geographically dispersed teams to work together -- whether they are across town or across the ocean -- you will face ...

The syllabus should first introduce the trainees to all the core concepts involved with interesting examples/analogy so that they can relate to them and remember easily. After that, get them hands-on with some fun exercises to do. Have 50% theory and 50% practicals. Also design challenging quiz/exercises to do outside the training class as a homework to get ...

My personal experience is that a manager as you describe it is often not a good person to actually take the lead of a test team. They do not know enough and are (certainly less experienced ones) to easily convinced by nice powerpoints and smooth talkers instead of sound technical statements. This becomes very important at the point where you have to decide ...

As there are many responses that present the perspective on the role of a lead vs. a manager, I am editing my answer to, hopefully, better answer your question Pros and cons of direct reporting: Direct report to manager is beneficial when .. a manager is considerably involved in the project, is aware of requirements, due dates and can be a part of team ...