What is a Principal Tester? with Jitesh Gosai

For Wednesday of TestBash Manchester week, we’re exploring job titles and their definitions with @jitgo :mag:

Have you considered becoming a principal tester?

We’ll use this thread to ask questions and share resources from the talk. Remember that liking any questions already asked will increase the chances of them being answered live in the talk :wink:

Resources mentioned during the talk

The Brighton podcast that Jit featured on

Jit’s blog

Google’s Aristotle Project

Link to other talks

Have you found, during lockdown, the “troubleshooter,” dropping into problem areas sort of role is a little more difficult? With colocation, obviously, you can go and sit with people.

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Yes, because it seems so obvious why you’re there. But over time I’ve found that having a relationship with the team to be really beneficial as you’re already there when issues start to crop up.

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Elaborate on the difference between test leads and test managers in BBC?

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What resources would you recommend for people who want to learn more about testability?

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Do you see principal tester as a promotion from test lead or sideways step?

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Would you say all test teams should have senior and principle testers?

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If you’re a lone tester, how can you get experience of mentoring or coaching other testers?

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If I understood it correctly, you don’t consider Quailty Engineers to be Coaches, because they do not have the coaching background. Are there any other reasons (because I feel this role would be called Quality Coach in other contexts)?

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To me it sounds like the Quality Engineer works on things that could also be seen as responsibility of Scrum Masters / Agile Coaches or Senior Roles / Leads.
How would you see the realtionship between those roles?

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Do you see it as part of the prinicpal testers role to help engineering teams tackle more socio-political issues that may be affecting testability at project levels? e.g. clarity of information coming to teams, deadline culture, lack of connection between delivery teams and key stakeholders…

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You said the the Expert could do tasks of Junior Testers to Senior Testers in a team. This sounds a bit like a fireman. How long does a Principal Tester (Expert) typically stay with a team?

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As a quality engineer do you need to develop a “sixth sense” when working across teams as to where to spend your time?

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Hello from Brazil :slight_smile:
Since you are not so focused in daily hands on, How do you find yourself catching up with new technologies and continuously being the expert of the group?
Thanks, great presentation!

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yes, I can identify with the principal tester role.
Hanging out in the tech discussions is good.
Reviewing automation architecture also is something which I would see as part of this role

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How are principle testers usually involved in reporting quality metrics to stakeholders who make decisions whether to promote a release candidate build to production or not? E.g are they often people who report that we should pull a hand-brake on a release because we have found bugs which prevent us from releasing the build or is it more of the job of the test manager?

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If you are aware of the Test Coach roles - would that compare to a Principal Testers work (besides the promotional element)?

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How many teams does a Quality Engineer typically work with in your context?

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