Leading and Collaborating: Presenting a soft skills toolkit for testers

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Leading and Collaborating Presenting a soft
skills toolkit for testers

• Carol Dekkers
• Quality Plus Technologies, Inc.
• dekkers_at_qualityplustech.com
• Florida, USA

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Quality expertsYesterday today

• Philip Crosby
• W. Edwards Deming
• Armand Feigenbaum
• Kaoru Ishikawa
• Joseph Juran
• Robert Pirsig
• Walter Shewhart
• Genichi Taguchi
• Lean six sigma
• Others

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But, today is a whole new world...
Leadership collaboration are key
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Soft skills trump hard skills
Medicare Consumer Focus Groups (Readers Digest
Feb 2007)While 39 of hospital patients
listeddoctor communication skills as a top
concern, just 7 citedpain management.

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How can QA professionals survive?
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Todays specialA soft skills Toolkit !

• Team building
• Self-awareness
• Leadership
• Flexibility
• Creativity
• Perseverance
• Interpersonal (empathy, EI)
• Active listening

• Ethics
• Written verbal skills
• Pressure,stress time mgmt
• Change-readiness
• Public speaking
• Planning organization
• Problem-solving
• Tact diplomacy
• Critical thinking

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Research

• JJ survey Best performersHigh
  self-awareness, self-management, social skills,
  organizational savvy
• HR managers 93 say technical skills easier
  to teach than soft skills
• HR executives 50 say entry workers lack
  writing skills 27 cited deficiencies in
  critical thinking
• NY TimesIt appears young employees are
  writing company e-mails as if they were texting
  cell phone messages with their thumbs
• Source http//www.bettersoftskills.com/research.h
  tm

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RememberIf all you have is a hammer,
everything looks like a nail.A fool with a
tool is still a fool.
Starter Toolkit
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Interpersonal (EI, empathy)
YOU
CO-WORKERS
Maslows hierarchy of needs
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Written verbal communication
DEATH BY POWERPOINT
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email charterwww.emailcharter.org

• 1. Respect recipients' time 2. Short or slow
  is not rude 3. Celebrate clarity 4. Quash
  open-ended questions 5. Slash surplus cc's 6.
  Tighten the thread 7. Attack attachments 8.
  Give these gifts EOM NNTR 9. Cut content less
  responses 10. Disconnect!

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Critical Thinking
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You Soft skills Win / Win / Win
Quality is not accidental quality is emotional
Leadership collaborationare critical
Quality starts between the earsClaus E.
Heinrich, SAP AG2007 SAP Global Quality Day
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Blog ABZs of Communication http//MusingsAboutS
oftwareDevelopment.wordpress.com

• 10 / 20 / 30
• One idea
• Learning styles
• Tuftes big Ideas/ 5 Grand Principles
• Tools ( / - )
• Pre-test
• Live