presentation – Mike W. Lyles

Take my Testing Survey today!

If you are in software testing – please take my testing survey. It’s very short – just a few questions and mostly multiple choice!

I am compiling responses to this survey to share in an upcoming conference presentation in a few months.

Please share this blog/link with your friends in testing and ask them to take the survey as well.

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE SURVEY

PLEASE COMMENT: Leadership – What Does It Mean To You?

I’m working on a presentation about leading the next generation. And I want to get your inputs for this presentation.

Think of a leader that you have known in your life. This leader can be a boss, someone at your school, someone you know, a president, a great speaker, someone from history…. basically anyone that you have witnessed as a great leader.

Now, think of what made them a great leader. What were the 1-2 things that they did that stood out to you that made them great? How did they interact with their followers? How did they tell their stories and talk to the people?

I have just one request – please share your thoughts as comments to this blog. I’d like to take your input and build it into my presentation as inputs from the community.

Thanks in advance for your inputs and comments!

What the 80’s Taught Me About Software Testing – the Presentation!

Back in April 2014, I had the privilege of getting to present a keynote at STPCon in New Orleans, LA called “What the 80’s Taught Me About Software Testing”. This was one of my most favorite presentations, and the research, the work involved in gathering all of the data to make this come to life was thrilling! I had so much material that I could have talked for a whole day on the subject, but since it was a one hour presentation, I condensed it.

My question to you, readers, is this….if I were to put all of this into an e-book, would you consider buying it? If so, please comment and let me know. I think we could add at ton more material than even was in the presentation.

But for now, I wanted to share with you the presentation, which, thanks to the Software Test Professionals team, is housed on their website for you to view the slides and listen to the audio file. I hope you enjoy listening to it and following along as I did putting it together. If you were actually THERE, there is still room to learn something new each time you listen to it!

Thanks for following and check out this link for the presentation:

http://www.softwaretestpro.com/Item/5929/Keynote-Address-What-the-80’s-Taught-Me-About-Testing/Testing-Trends

NOTE: You will need an account with STP to view the link. However, there is a free version if you wanted to try it out first.

Recording: Building a Successful Test Center of Excellence – STPCon 2013

I am happy to share with you a link to a recorded session of a 75 minute presentation i did for STPCon in Phoenix, AZ in October 2013.

This presentation was one of many that I had with the conference, and it covered “Building a Sucessful Test Center of Excellence”.

I would love your feedback on this presentaiton and any inputs you have on it. But I hope it helps you in your testing roles.

The link can be found at the STP site below:

http://www.softwaretestpro.com/Item/5872/Session-503-Building-a-Successful-Test-Center-of-Excellence/Quality-Assurance-Teams-Management-Software-Test-Professionals-Conference

Thanks to all of my followers for keeping up with me on this site!

A Day In the Life of a Test Manager

NOTE: Please review the last of this post if you are interested in an upcoming e-book.

During the last 4 months, I conducted a research project for an area I felt would be a great conference presentation on test managers. My goal was to do the following:

Interview experts and practitioners in the field on three discussion questions
Create a 50 question survey
Initiate discussions on my blog regarding test managers and test management
Initiate discussions on multiple LinkedIn sites for test managers and test management

Through the four months, I was able to gather input, quotes, and feedback from over 10 experts and practitioners in the field. I received an enormous outpouring of support and notes through the blog sites and LinkedIn groups. I was amazed at the amount of valuable data that was provided throughout the course of this research.

The most awesome part of the research project and data gathering was that my survey resulted in 275 survey takers, and the most revealing part of this was the three discussion questions at the end of my survey which were:

Why did you want to be a Test Manager? (173 out of 275 gave detailed responses)
What 3 to 5 things would you do differently if you had the authority to choose how your day would look? (148 out of 275 gave detailed responses)
Which topics within your organization do you feel there is a lack of alignment or agreement? (136 out of 275 gave detailed responses)

I was able to condense the overflowing data into a 75 min presentation, which I shared at the Software Test Professionals Conference (STPCon) on April 23, 2013. You can see the presentation on YouTube (see below)

My next step is to compile all of the interviews, responses, survey notes, and other valuable data into a detailed e-book on the subject, and once published, I will share with everyone for a very affordable price. If you are interested in this e-book and would like to be notified when it is ready you can do one of the following:

Add your email to the blog (over on the right) to be notified when I add new blog updates/posts (least favorable, probably)
Post a comment on this post with your email I can use to notify you of updates to the e-book
Email me at mikewlyles@gmail.com and let me know you’d like to be notified when the e-book is ready

I want to thank everyone who contributed to the survey, to the experts that gave their time and quotable material, to all those who posted on my blog, to those who joined in on conversations in LinkedIn, and also to Software Test Professionals for giving me the opportunity to share the information with a very large attending group at the conference! Without you guys, none of this would have been possible!

Best Regards,

Mike

Staying Relevant in the Testing World

I have been so fortunate to be a speaker at two conferences in the last two weeks. I was in Chicago at QUEST2013 to speak on “Building a Successful Test Center of Excellence” on April 16-18, and at the time of this writing, I am in San Diego at STPCon (A Software Test Professionals conference), where I am speaking on multiple topics:

“A Day In the Life of a Test Manager“
Pre-Conference Workshop segment: “Test Metrics: A Case Study“
“Gambling with your Test Estimates“
“Building A Successful Test Center of Excellence“

I have been able to connect to some of the luminaries in the testing community these past two weeks, and to be part of their circles, communicate new ideas, share our thoughts on testing and the future of testing, and to think beyond the boundaries of imagination for what we can accomplish together…..well that is simply mind blasting!

So, to all the readers who are coming to this site – this may be your first time. You may have just heard me stand up and present to you for an hour or two. If so, hopefully you were impressed – not with my abilities at public speaking, my wit, my communication skills – but hopefully with the keen obviousness of the passion I have to help others grow and my ability to share, with everyone that I meet, something that they can take with them and use.

If you have attended my conference presentations, I would love to hear feedback and inputs. If you have not, keep looking… I may be coming to your town next!

In closing, I made a commitment to my conference attendees – and that was for two things on my blog by the first of next week:

Links & Materials: A blog posting for sites and reading materials which can help every test professional grow and increase their knowledge in the real world. I plan to have this posting up so that you can have a one-stop location (my site!) to get you started on your vast travels through the world of testing.
A Day In the Life of a Test Manager: I spent almost four months compiling data, interviewing test professionals and well known names in the field, creating a 50 question survey (that was taken by 275 people), compiling notes from blogs, linkedIn discussions, and other avenues, and created a presentation which was shared with the testing community on Tuesday, April 23. My presentation was 1 hour 15 mins, therefore, the immense amount of data that I had compiled for this research was much more than could be shared in that short amount of time. I shared highlights and touched on what is in the complete paper, and I plan to post a link on my site which will provide everyone the ability to get their hands on the detailed book of information that was gathered.

Please keep visiting the site. I plan to dedicate a lot of time to getting these two posts up in the next week. And I solicit your inputs and comments and request that you click the button to “Follow by Blog via Email“. You have no idea how much interaction with each of you excites me. It was my purpose in life to share with you things which can help both of us grow. Let’s grow together!

Sincerely,

Mike