Personal Communication & Presentation Skills for Test Engineers


ComTst - Version:1
Description
This workshop brings into awareness to test engineers and test team leaders/managers the skills they need in order to succeed as professionals in today's multicultural, out-sourcing, agile world. The daily work of a testing professional includes working with a lot of different channels such as: developers (engineers and team leaders), system administration, technical support, testing managers, product engineers and managers, quality assurance, customers, etc. Including different cultures and distributed teams - this pose a challenge on how to act, how to communicate, how to share knowledge and how to manage. The workshop covers real life situations from communication with testing members and development members, and drill down with enhanced discussions on the communication challenges. During the workshop participants shall discuss the quality of being assertive, getting/giving feedback, how to prepare and give powerful presentations that influence people, and what types of negotiators should we become, selling testing dailyThrough presentation, discussion, debate, simulation, brainstorming and questioning, we shall go through communication skills needed for a tester, and aspects of communication within an Agile team (for a tester). We shall discuss how to communicate as testers (also within Agile Teams), and how to be productive and efficient within our working environments. The workshop may be enhanced to include additional topics such as: the evaluation meeting, giving feedback to employees, managing your career, etc. – and be given to an audience of team leaders/managers in a 3 days format.
Intended audience
Testers, testing team leaders and test managers that would like to know how to better communicate with peers and managers in order to be more relevant, efficient, effective and productive in their work. Communication skills are amplified in recent years as testers are working closely with peers in small and intimate Agile Teams.
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  • Introduction
    • Our day to day communication Channels
    • Qualities categorized under “good test engineer”
    • Good Communication – what is it all about?
    • Give me a good reason why? (presentation exercise)
    • Simulation exercise #1 – Testing Team
    • Introduction
      • Our day to day communication Channels
      • Qualities categorized under “good test engineer”
      • Good Communication – what is it all about?
      • Give me a good reason why? (presentation exercise)
      • Simulation exercise #1 – Testing Team
  • Project Communication
    • Understand communication in your project environment (exercise)
    • Be more convincing in negotiation – influencing others
    • Presenting our position (discussion)
    • How NOT to convince others
    • The 6 paradigms for personal interaction
    • Simulation exercise #2 – Development Team
  • Being Assertive
    • The Scale
    • The effective NO
    • Simulation exercise #3 – Testing Team
    • The Assertive Formula
    • Simulation exercise #4 – Development Team
  • Giving others feedback
    • How to give a feedback
    • Why do people abstain from giving feedback?
    • Why do people have difficulties in giving feedback?
    • How do people react to feedback?
    • How to learn from a Feedback?
  • Simulation exercise #5 – Development Team (if time permits)
  • Good presentation skills overview
  • Retrospective
    • Your "take-away" for improvement
    • Closing discussion
  • Be familiar with the test engineer or testing team leader daily work.
  • Be open to absorb different ideas and views, and consider changing the way he/she work in order to obtain results
  • Understand what is communication, good communication, and daily communication in the life of testers
  • Realize how good communication can help the tester in his daily job with other professional group.
  • Review 6 paradigms of personalities, and know how to recognize them.
  • Understand assertiveness, what it means and how should it reflect in our work.
  • Practice daily scenarios of communication through simulations.
  • Understand view points and how to look on others view points.
  • Discuss guidelines for a good presentation.
  • Understand where can we implement good communication skills along testing life cycle
  • Discuss body language, and other soft-skills for good presentation
  • Discuss how to negotiate, and what is a good negotiator approach
  • Discuss increasing your personal abilities