First I started spending time with individual testers to understand their workflow. I was doing an informal Value Stream Map in my head. If I remember correctly, it’s because I felt that even if people tell me what the process is, it probably wouldn’t reflect reality. I explained that I was trying to understand how they interacted with each other, not monitor them doing their work. My questions were more around who asked them to do a task and who was the next person in the chain or whether they knew why things were done that way.

When I initially started sitting with folks, I knew it would make some of them uncomfortable to have their manager watching how they were working. Their previous manager had quit and his manager, the director had been let go so it was not surprising to hear that people were concerned about losing their jobs. I handled this by patiently waiting for folks to volunteer to walk me through what they did. In the meantime I’d tell them stories I read about in books I was reading by having presentations for the whole QA team or individual teams such as a book review on Leading Lean Software Development: Results Are Not the Point I also did presentations showing all the little things people did, emphasizing that it was very very little that they did and that was the goal, we were going to take small steps.

Another reason for sitting with them virtually or in-person is to get a sense of where they are on the innovation curve. If you’re familiar with the law of diffusion of innovation, I was basically waiting for the innovators. Folks who are excited about change will be only too happy to tell you all their ideas. I’d just listen them, I didn’t have to start implementing everything right away but it was worthwhile listening, I would learn about them. Then I’d ask them to recommend people I should reach out to after they had socialised the new improvements to them. This is important, I waited for the early adopters to go be the ambassadors and convince others before I approached them.