I had to put together a test team which made me think about the types of people required and their roles. It’s hard to judge how a candidate will behave in a team during an interview. In future, I will require candidates to take a test to gain insight into their personalities.
It can be very easy in a mad rush to fill seats on a test project and to lose sight of the fact that people’s characters can be used as tools for optimum performance. I,ve found that with a little patience and many more interviews, there is always someone better suited than the last person.
Disclaimer: I write from personal experience, I’m not formally educated in social, behavioural or human sciences. I will use the words character, nature and personality interchangeably without consideration for the finer differences, as described by above-mentioned fields of study.
Personality types
There are a number of schools of thought concerned with the study and analysis of the human spirit. Listed are the ones I know about.
Types A and B personalities
Type A
Type B
The letters DISC represent 4 quadrants. A subject is not classified as 1 of the types, but has weighted values for each, with 1 being dominant. The 4 profiles are:
Stemming from the Hippocratic theory, Greek gods and ancient Greco-Roman medicine, the 4 temperaments are:
The Belbin classification identifies 9 team roles:
Jenkins Activity Survey - Used for determining Type A behaviour
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator - A questionnaire designed to determine types as identified by Carl Jung
Gallup Organisation’s Clifton Strengths Finder - A fascinating concept, classifying people according to their top 5 strengths out of a possible 34. Some of the strengths are:
Personal DNA - a silly test that is free and has potential to add value.
Online Humanmetrics Jung Typology Test - free online test. It takes a bit of text processing to get value.
This can be applied to any worker. They are A, B or C-class testers. This is an over-arching classification and all the personality types can exist in any of the classes.
A-class tester
The empirical description of an A-class tester is someone with a passion for testing. They are self-driven, motivated, and do everything they can to further their understanding of testing. They will stick with trusted industry practices when there is chaos, simply because they have experience of the practice adding value. They will try new things in an attempt to better their work. An A-class tester may be driven by career aspirations or a real, consuming interest in testing. They deliver A-class work.
B-class tester
A B-class tester doesn’t have the passion of the A-class tester, but he delivers nonetheless. They are competent, reliable team members, with value to add, and a genuine interest in what they do. With the correct leadership they can be inspired into A-class testerhood.
C-class tester
This group is often in testing by accident, or because of career growth decisions within an organisation. Coming into testing from a business super-user function, soon to leave testing for a middle management position, or to become a business analyst. The description for these individuals is just-passing-through. It takes extreme commitment and a strong will for this class of tester to become A-class testers.
I want to refer to an article by Lloyd Roden of Grove Consultants. Lloyd discussed 4 types of testers, knowing your team in this framework, and how to get the best out of your team. Included in the article is a test questionnaire to help classify team members. It is done after the style of the DISC profile.
Cem Kaner presented a tutorial on the recruiting of testers at STAR West 2000. The presentation is detailed, including an array of tips, examples and a sample skills matrix for candidates.
At STAR East 1999, Jack Cook presented a paper entitled Building a Responsive Test Team. It’s available from Stickyminds.
Leonard DiMaggio published an article on IBM Developerworks entitled High-performance software testing teams: A guide for managers and team leaders in which he defines his own classification system of characters.
In 2005 Johanna Rothman wrote an article entitled Detecting Great Testers Before the In-person Interview. It is focused on finding good candidates while sifting through resumés. She also wrote an outstanding piece on the classes of testers that I discussed. She has more interesting resources on her blog, including a very clever interview question for testers. Johanna authored a book entitled Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets & Science Of Hiring Technical People.
Things like integrity, honesty and responsibility cannot be determined by any of these tests. It’s likely that no person will fall a 100 % into any pigeonhole. There are grey areas, borderline cases and overlaps. If you keep these profiles in mind while selecting team members, know what you are looking for and do some sort of test, the difference in results can be remarkable.
Walter Kruse
Walter Kruse is a testing consultant at IndigoCube. He can be contacted at walterk@indigocube.co.za.
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