Thoughts on test process improvment - Ownership and Commitment

Remember my list from a couple of weeks ago?

• Know where you are (Current situation)
• Know where you are going (Target situation)
• How to eat an elephant
• Learning
• Ownership and commitment
• Process first, then tools

Today: Ownership and commitment

Any successful process improvement is as I see it almost 100% depending on whether the people who has to “live with” the process  takes ownership, participates in the definition and implementation of the process and acts as ambassadors of the process for the remaining part of the organization

Here I would like to point you in the direction of the ADKAR  model (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement), created by Jeff Hiatt. The model is a goal-oriented change management model which was developed to guide activities during the change process.

 

(ref. http://www.change-management.com/tutorial-adkar-overview.htm)

• Awareness of the need to change (culture, process)
• Desire to participate in the change and support it
• Knowledge of how to change
• Ability to implement the change within the day to day work
• Reinforcement to ensure that the change is kept in place

I like to use a combination of Ambassadors who can champion the process, super users who can support the implementation of process and tools, guilds and knowledge networks to create a forum for knowledge sharing and functioning as sparring partners and early feedback, and of course retrospectives on a regular basis to ensure that feedback from the projects are gathered and used to the continuous improvement of the process.

So here it is; my keywords and focus areas when I am a part of test process improvements... or process improvement in general. Focus on the people and on doing this as an iterative process.