Ask Me Anything: Talking Testing With Stakeholders

[sarah1 (Sarah Deery)]

Last Thursday, we were joined by @deament for a useful and practical Ask Me Anything session all about talking to stakeholders.

If you missed the live session, a recording will be available on the Ministry of Testing website for pro MoT members once we’ve edited it and added captions.

Resources

Here are the resources mentioned during the session:

• Should We Just... Delete It? - João Proença | Ministry of Testing

• The Economics of Software Testing: The Law of Diminishing Returns - Nicola Lindgren

• Doubt Builds Trust - Elizabeth Zagroba | Ministry of Testing

• Four Pillars of Success To Make Millions - Steven Bartlett | Erika Taught Me

• Introducing New Test Approaches to your Team - Nicola Lindgren | YouTube

• Project Management Triangle | Wikipedia

Unanswered Questions:

Here are the two unanswered questions we didn’t get to.

1. Can you share an instance where understanding the “starting point” of a stakeholder significantly changed the outcome of your conversation about testing? - MoT
2. What resources or materials do you often rely on or recommend when prepping for stakeholder conversations about testing?? - MoT

Nicola will try to answer these questions as soon as possible over the coming days. But can you help with any unanswered questions from the session?

If I missed any resources or you thought of a question you’d like to ask on this topic, why not add it to this thread?

[deament (Nicola Lindgren)]

@sarah1

Can you share an instance where understanding the “starting point” of a stakeholder significantly changed the outcome of your conversation about testing? - MoT

At a previous place of work, I realised that they tied different means to terms like “testing”, “exploratory testing”, and so on. I shared what they meant to me, and then talked about how I wanted to introduce teams to exploratory testing. Previously, their association with exploratory testing was (what I define as) adhoc testing.

A clear thing I wanted to highlight was that I phrased things in such a way that “this is what I mean when I talk about X” as opposed to “your understanding of X is wrong, this is what X actually is”

@sarah1

What resources or materials do you often rely on or recommend when prepping for stakeholder conversations about testing?? - MoT

Crucial conversations hands down.
Never split the difference can also be useful when some negotiating is required.
But seriously, read Crucial Conversations if you haven’t already.