Have you ever thought about why “being a family” is often emphasized in workplaces? Why do we want to make someone we pay for their work feel like they are part of the family? Although it is obvious that the answer to this is to create a strong and successful team, when we focus on why we want to establish a connection especially through the concept of “family”, the requirements for establishing a successful team will be revealed.
Let’s imagine a nuclear family consisting of a mother, a father, and two children. The success of this institution depends primarily on the parents’ ability to lead the children correctly as a team. Parents who lead as a team that complements and supports each other will create a strong figure in the eyes of children. In addition, the foundation of the relationship between parents and children, who do not see leadership as giving orders to children, but rather guiding them in the process of learning life, guiding children according to their abilities and desires, set an example for children in developing healthy communication skills, accept that children are individuals and respect their opinions, is laid firmly. And the first step of this successful team that is desired to be established in business life is through a successful leader.
1-Leadership
If we continue to move away from the family metaphor, the manifestation of a good leader begins in the team-building process. Since the priority in this process is to form a team rather than selecting a person for a specific position, focusing on the individual achievements of the candidates to be selected for the team may create obstacles in achieving the desired success. Choosing the manual and automation test experts to be recruited to the team with the strongest CV among the applicants and ignoring the employee’s personal characteristics would be one of the most fundamental mistakes to be made. While someone focused on their success may not care about the failures of the team, those who work with team spirit will focus on covering each other’s weaknesses, and bringing these people together is only possible with a good leader. Another important factor that a good leader must create is the workplace culture.
2- Workplace Culture
We can say that the team created represents a small-scale social structure, which leads us to a phenomenon that exists in every society: culture. The most critical part of workplace culture is trust. In an environment where team members are not afraid to express their opinions or make mistakes, there will be no grouping among employees or the need to act independently of the team. However, financial security should not be ignored. It is useful to remind us what has been said for years: Equal pay for equal work. In cases where salary determination is determined according to the job performed, not gender, and is made fairly according to market conditions, there will be no need for a confidentiality clause in employment contracts. It should not be forgotten that “This is not my job.” Such discourses are an indication that alarm bells are ringing in the workplace and that trust in the leader’s ability to manage and financial confidence are beginning to be shaken. Again, in connection with trust, it is impossible not to mention micromanagement, which is an insidious virus in workplaces. Although it is claimed that the reason for this is the perfectionism of the leaders, it would be more realistic to say that it is due to distrust towards the employees. In cases where the trust environment presented to the team is functional not only on paper but also in practice, it will not be possible for managers to make this mistake.
3- Personal Characteristics
When you want to create a test team, the people to be selected for the team must have certain personal characteristics other than their titles, and the first thing to do is to pay attention to details. Apart from this, people’s communication skills are also one of the factors affecting the success of the team. To continue by giving an example from the multicultural structure that is frequently encountered in technology companies, when people with different native languages within the team speak their native language instead of the common language when talking to each other, this causes the team to disconnect from communication. This is where strong communication skills come into play because strong communication skills do not only mean being able to express themselves. Maybe he just asked his colleague where to go for lunch, but asking this in an environment where others cannot understand can be understood as a hostile attitude to keep other teammates away from communication, regardless of the content of the dialogue, and people with strong communication skills avoid engaging in communication scenarios that would harm the team they are a part of in the work environment.
So far we have talked about the general characteristics required to create a successful team. We are good leaders, we have a strong workplace culture and we know how to include people in our team. So how should we create a test suite in practice?
Certain methods come to mind when it comes to the recruitment process, and they are usually like fish swimming in a sea of mistakes. We first open an ad to create a test team, and when people apply with their CVs, the first elimination process and the first mistake begins. A person’s successful educational life does not constitute strong evidence that he will work in harmony within the team we will create. Instead, we can make a more reliable evaluation by automatically sending a test link to people who apply for the ad. Now that we have created a test team, questions can be prepared to test the ability to find errors and details. What is meant here is not to create a test scenario or to ask a technical question, but rather to ask questions that look like normal questions from daily life, so that it can form an idea about the person’s attention and meticulousness. In face-to-face interviews with people who have passed this process, questions such as “Are you prone to teamwork?”, “Can you work under pressure?” Interviews can be conducted through simple situation scenarios rather than useless questions such as these, or interviews can be held with more than one candidate instead of one-on-one interviews via conference calls. As a result, we cannot say that the team formed by the selected people is strong. We can only observe this after the team is assigned a task.
As you can see, establishing a successful testing team is a time-consuming, labor-intensive, and costly process. Another method that requires time and effort but may be more successful is to select recruits through training. In the training, where tasks are given similar to the process in business life, you do not eliminate the process, only those who can adapt continue and complete the training, in short, “survival of the fittest”.