How to Use Lean Coffee and a Skills Matrix to Evaluate Your Software Engineering Team’s Testing Maturity
Testing is an essential part of the software development process. However, it can be difficult to know how to evaluate your team’s testing maturity. In this blog post, we will discuss how to use Lean Coffee and a skills matrix to assess your team’s testing maturity.
What is Lean Coffee?
Lean Coffee is a meeting format for agile teams. It is a quick and easy way to get everyone on the team involved in setting the agenda and discussing important topics.
To run a Lean Coffee meeting, you will need:
- A whiteboard
- Post-it notes
- A timer
First, everyone on the team writes down as many testing methods as they can think of on post-it notes. These can be any type of testing method, such as unit testing, integration testing, or system testing.
Next, everyone puts their post-it notes on the whiteboard. Once everyone has put their post-it notes on the whiteboard, the team votes on the top three methods. These top three methods will be the focus of the meeting.
How to Use a Skills Matrix
A skills matrix is a tool that can be used to assess the skills and experience of a software engineering team. It can also be used to identify areas where the team needs additional training or development.
To use a skills matrix, you will need:
- A list of the key skills required for effective testing
- A way to assess the team’s level of proficiency in each skill
Once you have identified the key skills and a way to assess the team’s level of proficiency, you can create a skills matrix. A skills matrix is a table that lists the key skills in one column and the team members in the other column. For each skill, you can indicate the team member’s level of proficiency using a scale from 0 to 4, where:
- 0 = No capability
- 1 = Basic capability
- 2 = Intermediate capability
- 3 = Advanced capability
How to Turn This Into Your Test Strategy
Now that you know where your team thinks your testing gaps are (they are usually right) and if you have the skill in the team to fill those gaps (if not, where you need to invest in either training or hiring), you can turn this into your test strategy.
Your test strategy should include:
- The key testing methods that you will use
- The tools that you will use
- The training that you will need to provide
- The hiring that you will need to do
By following these steps, you can use Lean Coffee and a skills matrix to evaluate your software engineering team’s testing maturity and develop a test strategy that meets your team’s needs.