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Peer-to-Peer Feedback When people work closely together, there's bound to be friction and irritations. Some people find it difficult to bring up these issues directly, so they hint and hope. And when the hint doesn't help, the irritation can grow out of proportion. Team members' ability to give peer-to-peer feedback both about work and interpersonal relationships is critical to developing a highly productive team. Esther Derby tells us about a team torn apart by an unattractive personal habit and offers some advice for talking about touchy interpersonal issues.
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Building Better Test Teams Mustering the best project or test team is key to any project's success. In this column, Johanna Rothman explains her interviewing techniques to help you find the perfect candidate. Find out if your candidates are qualified before they become part of your team. Johanna's methods cover six typical questions that will help you build a better test team.
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Win-Win Delegation If you're a manager, you probably know what it's like to have more work than you can possibly do. However, it's unlikely you'll receive approval to hire another "you." How can you free up some time to focus on the strategic work of management? You may have an untapped resource in your group. Take a look at the career aspirations of your staff: Does anyone want to move up to be a team lead or manager? Delegating a defined chunk of management work can give someone the chance to try on a new role and learn a new skill.
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Skills are Only Half the Equation for Success Managers work hard to hire the right people for the job. Yet sometimes, the work doesn't go as well as we think it should. Was it a bad hire? Has the person developed a bad attitude? Maybe, but before you jump to conclusions, look at the other half of the performance equation.
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Makers and Breakers The industry is full of software makers and software breakers—which are you? Are you a developer or a tester at heart? Not what job do you hold at the moment, but what do you love to do? Harry Robinson offers up a small personality test that might just give you some insight on the question.
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How to Improve Meetings When You're Not in Charge What can you do if you have to attend other people's horrible meetings? Even if you can't stand up and take control, you can nudge the meeting in the right direction from where you sit. Now that you're on the edge of your seat, keep reading!
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First Things First: Emotions in the Workplace What do you do when you're upset about something at home and you know you need to focus on work? Do you try to push your emotions aside and tough it out? Paradoxically, when we ignore our emotional responses they poke back up and get in the way. When emotions are acknowledged, people are better able to focus on the task at hand. Esther Derby offers some advice for dealing with the "human stuff."
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How to Make Risk Conversations More Effective Project managers may be reluctant, even unwilling, to discuss problems that testers discover in a project. In this column, management expert Johanna Rothman gives tips on how best to tell management that "the sky is falling," and how to respond if they don't want to hear about potential problems before they occur.
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Can You Predict Danger? Testers are in a position to see danger coming. Speaking up early about risks that others may not see can save a project. In this article Yogita Sahoo looks at the problem of NOT speaking up, and discusses the unique position of the test team in preventing failures.
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Advice on How to Hire Testers What's the best way to wade through those thousands of resumes you've received for the new testing position? To start, you could ruthlessly weed out those who don't show experience with your organization's particular toolset. But in this column, Johanna Rothman warns against this type of approach to hiring. By not looking at the person beyond the tools, you might be letting a star slip through your fingers.
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