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The Quality Coach's Handbook Course

Mastering the Quality Coach Role in Organisations

The Quality Coach's Handbook Course

Anne-Marie Charrett

The Quality Coach's Handbook course is the training you need to shift to a model where the whole team owns quality, and in particular where software engineers design, build, test and support software.

This course includes nearly three hours of exclusive video interviews with the author, covering questions related to the course.

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About

About

About the Course

The course explains the quality coach role and how to perform it, including workshops with instructions and templates that guide you. If you are a director of quality engineering or test manager tasked with rolling out an operating model, there are frameworks and guidelines around job descriptions and career paths.

Categories

Computers and ProgrammingSoftware EngineeringEngineering ManagementTestingAutomated Software TestingLeadershipQuality ManagementStrategy

Price

Course Price

Minimum price

$129.00

$179.00

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$179.00

Author earns

$143.20
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3
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Instructor

About the Instructor

Anne-Marie Charrett

Anne-Marie is the lead advocate for quality engineering, navigating change, and ensuring quality remains top of mind for everyone. Her years of experience as Director of Engineering at Culture Amp, Head of Engineering at Tyro Payments, as a quality engineering consultant, and as a test automation engineer stand her in good stead. Anne-Marie is currently working at Telstra, where she is the principal of test automation tooling.

An adjunct lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney, and instructor of BBST, Anne-Marie has extensive experience teaching and coaching software professionals and product teams.

Anne-Marie’s technical background as an Electronic Engineer has enabled her to speak to technical and product expertise. Anne-Marie is an international keynote speaker who has spoken at multiple international conferences

Leanpub Podcast

Episode 316

An Interview with Anne-Marie Charrett

Material

Course Material

  • About this course

  • Preface

  • Why I wrote this course

  • Intended Audience

  • How to read this course

  • Describing the Quality Coach Role

  • How the Quality Coach Role came about

  • Exercise 1

  • What is a Quality Coach ?

  • Why do we need a Quality Coach?

  • The Quality Coach Role

  • Quality Coach Activities

  • Quality Coach Skills

  • I do all these things, but I don’t call myself Quality Coach

  • Downsides to the quality coach role?

  • Adopting the Quality Coach Model

  • Download the Quality Coach Descriptor

  • Exercise 2

  • Managing Expectations

  • Quality Coach Circle of Control

  • Quality Coach Circle of Influence

  • Quality Coach Circle of Concern

  • Create your Quality Coach Circle of Control

  • Exercise 3

  • Diversity in the Quality Coach Role

  • Identify strengths

  • How do I know I’m a Quality Coach?

  • Test Lead versus Quality Coach

  • Shifting to a Quality Coach Role

  • Exercise 4

  • Moving to a Quality Coach Role

  • Help! I’m now a Quality Coach

  • Quality Coaching or Quality Coach Role?

  • Working across multiple teams

  • Consider the Team

  • Tips & Tricks when moving to a quality coach role

  • Pairing with team members

  • Dealing with Objections

  • Perform a self-reflection

  • Collect Data

  • Cheatsheets & Blueprints

  • Awareness of Quality Coaching

  • Experiment

  • Hold Sessions

  • Improving Testing Know-how

  • Not a whole team responsibility; it’s a whole organisation responsibility

  • Exercise 5

  • 13 Low Cost Ideas to start Quality Coaching right away

  • Exercise 6

  • Quality Coach Role & Responsibilities

  • Example: Principal Quality Coach

  • What You Will Do

  • How You Will Do It

  • Example: Quality Assistance Coach

  • What you’ll do

  • What you’ll need

  • Exercise 7

  • Quiz 1

    3 attempts allowed

  • The Quality Coach Model

  • Quality Coaching Dynamics Model

  • Team

  • Quality Coach

  • Context

  • Team Behaviours Driven by Tasks

  • Energy & Trust

  • Exercise 8

  • When to Coach, Mentor or Train

  • Coaching, Mentoring, Training

  • Benefits of Coaching, Training and Mentoring

  • Exercise 9

  • Team Motivation & Ability

  • Situational Quality Coaching

  • Low Ability, High Motivation

  • Low Ability, Low Motivation

  • High Ability, High Motivation

  • High Ability, Low Motivation

  • A Word on Team Motivation

  • Check your bias

  • Quality Coach Dynamics

  • Exercise 10

  • Delivery Process for Quality Coaching

  • Quality Assistance model?

  • QA Kickoff

  • QA Demo

  • Tips and Tricks

  • Ownership of testing

  • Testing Types

  • Manage the test data and environments

  • Quality Coach not gatekeeper

  • Training Sessions

  • “DOT”ING

  • What to measure

  • Make your own model

  • Exercise 11

  • Quiz 2

    3 attempts allowed

  • Techniques for Team Coaching

  • Running team-based quality coaching sessions

  • Challenges in Coaching

  • Planning a Coaching Session

  • Running a Coaching Session

  • Running the discussion section

  • Post-session work

  • Exercise 12

  • Follow the energy

  • Why is driving change in quality so hard?

  • Internal and External factors impacting low motivation

  • Internal Factors

  • External Factors

  • Exercise 13

  • Energy across teams

  • Finding the energy

  • Evidence of energy

  • Verwondering

  • When to suggest ideas

  • Leaving energy alone

  • Further Reading

  • Exercise 14

  • Focusing on Frictionless

  • The inner game

  • Improving Product Quality

  • External & Internal Interference

  • Shaping the Path

  • Persuading the elephant

  • Shape the path, then work on the elephant

  • Now work on the elephant

  • Exercise 15

  • Experiments in Quality Coaching

  • What is an experiment?

  • Learning opportunities

  • Benefits of Experiments

  • Scaling Experimentation

  • Case Study on Experimentation

  • Tips on using experiments

  • Exercise 16

  • Habits in Quality

  • Waiting for motivation

  • Creating Habits in Quality Coaching

  • Exercise 17

  • Teachable moments in Quality Coaching

  • Intro

  • Quality Coaching

  • Teachable moments

  • Winning hearts and minds

  • Don’t confuse speed with progress

  • Show, don’t tell

  • Communications

  • Times where I identify teachable moments

  • Some quality coaching phrases and ideas I use

  • What do you/we want to be different?

  • What can we do?

  • What’s the problem we’re trying to solve?

  • Would the roof cave in if we stopped doing this work altogether?

  • Conclusion

  • Exercise 18

  • Pair Testing

  • Tip for Pairing

  • Exercise 19

  • Shu Ha Ri in Quality Coaching

  • Be curious and ask questions

  • Adopting Shu Ha Ri in Quality Coaching

  • Shu in Quality Coaching

  • Ha in Quality Coaching

  • Ri in Quality Coaching

  • Exercise 20

  • Coaching Upwards

  • The Elephant and Rider Analogy

  • Influencing Upwards

  • Allies

  • Research is key

  • Reframe your idea

  • Dealing with Resistance

  • Collecting Objections

  • Should I Counter-argue?

  • Dealing with Rejection

  • Back Up with Data

  • Exercise 21

  • Five Quality Coaching Tips (when coaching 10+ teams)

  • 45 Engineers and 1 Quality Coach - How do you make it work?

  • Top 5 Quality Coaching Tips

  • Encourage everyone to test from the start

  • Write, write, write

  • Help with the refinement of the more significant, more complex features

  • Pair Testing

  • Talk, listen and support

  • Exercise 22

  • Maturity Models and North Stars

  • Exercise 23

  • Change Management

  • Imposing Change

  • ADKAR Model

  • Awareness

  • Desirability

  • Knowledge and Skill

  • Repeat

  • Exercise 24

  • Quiz 3

    3 attempts allowed

  • Ideas & Approaches to Quality

  • What is Quality?

  • Definition of Quality

  • What is Value?

  • Good Enough Quality

  • Exercise 25

  • Emergent Quality

  • Exercise 26

  • A mix of ideas on Contemporary Quality Engineering

  • Gating in traditional quality engineering

  • Gating in contemporary quality engineering

  • Engineering Ownership

  • Services not Products

  • Business Outcomes over Features Done

  • Modern Engineering Quality Attributes

  • New Consumer-facing Quality Attributes

  • Balancing Stability & Throughput

  • Making Quality Visible

  • And Software Testing?

  • Test Automation

  • Exploratory Testing

  • Cost of Software Testing

  • Whole team approach

  • Exercise 27

  • Quality is a black hole

  • Too big a risk

  • Exercise 28

  • Prevent, Detect, Recover

  • Quality != Testing

  • Is too much prevention a bad thing?

  • Over-indexing on Recoverability

  • When to discuss PDR

  • PIR’s & Retros

  • Planning

  • PDR for senior management

  • Prevention Tasks

  • Detection Tasks

  • Recovery Tasks

  • Prevention requires persistence

  • Exercise 29

  • 3 Hats

  • Modern Engineering Practices

  • Whole Team Quality

  • Software as a Service

  • 3 Hats

  • Bug Prevention

  • Bug Detection

  • Bug Recovery

  • What about the Testers?

  • Challenges with 3 Hats

  • Exercise 30

  • Using AI in Quality Coaching

  • Problem, Experiment, Observe, Evaluate

  • Identify the Problem you want AI to help solve

  • Experiment with AI in small slices

  • Observe the outcome - What did you learn about AI?

  • Evaluate the AI experiment

  • Research and company policy

  • Use the opportunity with AI to build collaboration

  • Principles of Responsible AI

  • Exercise 31

  • The Software Mechanic

  • Exercise 32

  • Kent Beck’s 3X Model and Quality (a quality coach perspective)

  • Quality Strategy for Explore

  • Recommended Quality Strategies in Explore

  • Quality Strategies to consider in Explore

  • Quality Strategies to avoid in Explore

  • Quality Strategy in Expand

  • Recommended Quality Strategies in Expand

  • Quality Strategies to consider in Expand

  • Quality Strategies to Avoid in Expand

  • Quality Strategy in Extract

  • Recommended Quality Strategy for Extract Phase

  • Quality Strategy to Avoid Extract Phase

  • Where does Quality Coaching fit in?

  • Exercise 33

  • Cost of Change in SaaS

  • A history of the cost of change

  • SaaS and the Cost of Change

  • The rise of recoverability

  • The Rise of Big Data

  • Increased security concerns

  • Privacy

  • Reputation

  • A New Cost of Change Curve

  • Reducing dependency on pre-production environments

  • Non Prod or not: you decide

  • Sacred Cows

  • Further reading

  • Exercise 34

  • Quiz 4

    3 attempts allowed

  • Leading Quality

  • Who is accountable for Quality?

  • Responsibility versus Accountability

  • Accountability in Quality

  • Using RACI

  • An alternative approach without RACI

  • Exercise 35

  • Boost your engineering capability with this growth-focused framework

  • How can this framework help?

  • Exploring the framework in more detail

  • ?️ Understanding the context you work in

  • ?️ Know what good might look like for you and the next step for improvement

  • Where to Start

  • ?️ A systematic engineering-wide mechanism to pull in the skills you need and the support for growth and sharing

  • ? Understanding the needs of others

  • ? Celebrate your success

  • Where should you start?

  • What’s in it for you and your team?

  • Frameworks are great, but what matters is you

  • Exercise 36

  • Why the Quality Coach model could fail

  • Ensuring Success

  • Engineering Leadership Own Quality

  • Software Engineers Who Test

  • Enabling Teams

  • Modern Engineering practices

  • Context Matters

  • Exercise 37

  • How different roles play a part in quality

  • Further Reading

  • Exercise 38

  • Quiz 5

    3 attempts allowed

  • Organisation Structures

  • 3 Lens Quality Coach Model

  • Organisation Structures

  • Company Process

  • Interacting with Teams/Practices

  • Quality Practice Structure

  • Exercise 39

  • Exploratory Testing in Team Topologies

  • Flow of Work in Team Topologies

  • Interaction Modes in Team Topologies

  • Cognitive Load in Team Topologies

  • Optimal Topology for good quality

  • Quality & Team Topologies

  • Software Testing is Germane Load

  • Exploratory Testing is about being distracted

  • Where Exploratory Testing sits in Team Topologies

  • Exploratory Testing in the engineer’s flow of work

  • Exploratory Testing in a team’s flow of value

  • Exploratory Testing in Production

  • Best Approach for your Organisation

  • Background Reading

  • Exercise 40

  • Quality Coach Career Paths

  • Quality Coach Role Levels

  • Why no Quality Coach Tier 1 or Tier 2?

  • Why no Tier 6 Quality Coach?

  • Quality Coach Career Tiers

  • Quality Coach Factors

  • Sphere of influence

  • Coaching Focus

  • Flow of Delivery

  • Coaching Ability

  • Context matters

  • Own your Career

  • Exercise 41

  • Hiring Quality Coaches

  • Tips on hiring quality coaches

  • Exercise 42

  • Quality Coach Team Operating Model

  • The Hub

  • The Spoke

  • Missions

  • Canva Template

  • Exercise 43

  • Quality Coach Reporting Structures

  • Reporting Lines

  • Exercise 44

  • Quiz 6

    3 attempts allowed

  • Quality Coach Workshops

  • Workshop Preparation

  • Workshop Durations

  • Practice New Workshops

  • What is Quality?

  • Exercise 45

  • ⛵Quality Coach Sailboat Workshop

  • Purpose of the Workshop

  • Outcome of Workshop

  • Sailboat analogy

  • A note on Engineering objectives

  • Quality Coach Sailboat Workshop Preparation

  • Quality Coach Sailboat Workshop Instructions

  • Tips on the workshop

  • Exercise 46

  • Quality Coach: a team approach to mapping “the work”

  • Collaborating on Testing

  • Mapping the Delivery Workflow

  • Delivery Workflow Workshop

  • Preparation

  • Workflow Mapping Session One

  • Workflow Mapping: Session Two

  • Session Two

  • Finalising the roadmap

  • Implementing change within the team

  • A comment on the “flow of work.”

  • Exercise 47

  • Team Exploratory Testing Session

  • What to Test?

  • Planning an Exploratory Testing Team Session

  • Planning your session

  • Pairing people

  • Plan how to allocate the work

  • Have a schedule

  • Create Cheat Sheets

  • Pre-session Information

  • Pointers for Team Exploratory Testing Sessions

  • Prep Work for Exploratory Testing an In-house System

  • Exercise 48

  • Quality Coach: a team approach to mapping “the work”

  • Collaborating on Testing

  • Mapping the Delivery Workflow

  • Delivery Workflow Workshop

  • Preparation

  • Workflow Mapping Session One

  • Workflow Mapping: Session Two

  • Session Two

  • Finalising the roadmap

  • Implementing change within the team

  • A comment on the “flow of work.”

  • Exercise 49

  • Improve Your Sprint Planning with the Story Impact Checklist

  • What is an SIC?

  • Improve organization and consistency

  • Get all team members involved in discussing items that could impact story completion

  • Keep It Simple

  • Iterate, get feedback, repeat!

  • What does it look like?

  • How My SIC Matured

  • Version 1

  • Version 2

  • Version 3

  • Testing

  • Coding

  • Monitoring/Alerting

  • Releasing

  • Version 4

  • Exercise 50

  • Example Mapping for Quality Coaches

  • Reviewing Requirements

  • Discovery Workshops

  • Example Mapping

  • Example Mapping for Quality Coaches Structure

  • Discussion & Self-reflection

  • Discussion & Self Reflection Questions

  • Exercise 51

  • Team Test Strategy Workshop for Quality Coaches

  • Team Test Strategy

  • Benefits of Team-Based Test Strategies

  • Who owns the test strategy?

  • Team Test Strategy Workshop

  • Plan the Test Strategy workshop

  • Feature/Epic for the workshop

  • Timing Considerations

  • Meeting invite

  • Test Strategy Workshop Preparation

  • Workshop Structure

  • Team Test Strategy Information Pack

  • FAQ on this workshop

  • Final words

  • Exercise 52

  • Create a Team Test Automation Strategy

  • Test Automation Workshop

  • ?Tips and Tricks

  • Tackling Imposter Syndrome

  • Ground the discussion

  • Software Testing and Test Automation

  • Test Coverage

  • Tooling

  • Pressure of delivery

  • Keep it simple

  • The fine line of coaching

  • Test Automation Model References

  • Exercise 53

  • Build a culture of learning by amplifying team wins

  • What is it?

  • Why might you need it?

  • How to run a workshop

  • Identify what the team is great at (Technical & Process)

  • Identify where they can share it (From the Team to the world!)

  • Decide which, and how, key suggestions will be shared

  • Categorising the ‘wins’ to support an improvement program

  • Make it your own

  • Exercise 54

  • Accelerate your quality culture by identifying your engineering capability needs

  • Why you might want to tailor your model

  • Creating your Quality Culture Transition Guide

  • Creating the whole model versus concentrating on similar slices

  • Building the whole model first

  • Working on similar slices

  • Working on each category at a time

  • Building a shared understanding

  • Completing the corners of Beginning & Optimising

  • Beginning

  • Optimising

  • Deciding where you are and defining what you do next

  • Repeat for each category

  • The first experiment & sharing past success

  • It’s about the journey

  • Leadership support

  • Nothing’s perfect

  • Exercise 55

  • Quality Opportunity Solution Tree

  • Quality is an ecosystem

  • Silver Bullets Ahoy

  • Not all silver bullets are equal

  • Silver bullets come with a price tag

  • Diversify your strategy

  • The “How else” Framework

  • Workshop Material

  • Lessons learned

  • Footnotes

  • Exercise 56

  • Gap analysis in Devops

  • How to Start a Gap Analysis

  • Context Matters

  • Mine the Gap!

  • Ongoing efforts

  • Implementing Gap Analysis

  • Measuring Success in Gap Analysis

  • It’s a journey

  • Exercise 57

  • Quality Health Checks

  • Is your quality ecosystem thriving?

  • How do we measure?

  • Each lens will yield a traffic light result. Green, Amber or Red based on

  • Create the criteria that are tailored to your team

  • Examples of Quality Health Checks

  • Experience and key learnings:

  • Take the long view

  • Where to start:

  • Exercise 58

  • Building Cross-Functional expertise in a team

  • Cross-Functional Requirements Workshop

  • List CFR’s

  • Define the terms

  • Prioritising Cross-Functional Requirements

  • Reuse the CFR Prompts

  • Exercise 59

  • Create a Quality Coach Job Description

  • Know your company values

  • Existing Job Descriptions

  • Testing Task Workshop

  • Quality Coach Job Description

  • Exercise 60

  • Quiz 7

    3 attempts allowed

  • Acknowledgements

  • Additional Materials

  • QR Codes for Templates

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