Playing Around With Risks / Situational Leadership Styles on Test Approaches

In this special edition EuroSTAR Conference eBook, you will find two papers received to accompany speaker presentations, one given by Jurgen Cleuren, and the second co-presented by Wim Decoutere & Michael Pilaten at the 19th annual EuroSTAR Conference, which took place from 21 -24 November 2011 in Manchester.

eBook 1: Playing around with risks by Jurgen Cleuren

Dealing with risks is not something that is exclusive for the testing world. Other business segments also have their way of doing risks management. A trader on Wall Street for example, or a Fireman, who is about to enter a building in flames. Dealing with risks is even not only something professionals do; some people do it for fun.
They play serious or less serious board or card games where you need to handle risk management. And every type has its own risk management system. But there is a common starting ground. You have a world with incomplete information or parameters that can change over time and you need to find the best way of dealing with those uncertainties. In this paper, we will look at some games and their winning tactics in order to translate these tactics into lessons for our testing world. Maybe we can learn a thing or two, in any case it’s worth the risk.
eBook 2: Situational Leadership Styles on Test Approaches by Wim Decoutere & Michael Pilaeten

David Kolb describes four learning styles: experiment, discovery, observation and planning. Hersey and Blanchard have provided us a model to describe how we can guide others. In this presentation, we’ll dive into both theories to find out why a certain (test) approach might or might not work for you, and if there exists a best management approach for each test style. Can we draw any lines between David Kolb’s learning cycle and the different test approaches? What is the role of the test manager in all this? Can we influence the testing style of our testers by changing the way we guide them, using Hersey and Blanchard’s model of leadership and guiding? And what guidance fits which testing approach best?