He will meet accusations that he is not a
team
player
with equanimity. It??™s not his job to be a nice guy and he knows it. A test manager must
have grown out of the need to be loved by his colleagues. His relationship with development and
other teams needs to be purely professional because there will be times when that professionalism
will come under strain.
??? Can
withstand management pressure
: he must have a very tough idea of what must be done and
be prepared to fight for it. He will not compromise on essentials. He will know in advance what
he can afford to sacrifice. Eventually people will learn not to pressure him.
??? Will
back the judgment of his staff
: if staff believe they are liable to be massacred because they??™re
trying to do their job as they see fit, they will either fail or leave.
??? Can
curb enthusiasm in staff
, tactfully: good staff may get carried away by the Very Interesting
Bug they have just found or the Very Wonderful Tool they have just downloaded. It??™s the test
manager??™s job to retain the enthusiasm while pointing out that the feature containing the bug is
about to be removed for other reasons. (Like: it doesn??™t work.) And maybe he agrees that the tester
can experiment with that tool, later, when the heat??™s off.
???
Sees what is in front of his eyes
: when a mass of small human interface errors are being regularly
found, the implication that the entire system may be simply unusable can be hidden from a test
manager locked into day-to-day concerns.
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