The project is being outsourced, hey-ho, never mind, not sure it is a good idea, in fact I am sure it isn’t but that is what is going to happen and nothing I do or say is going to change that.  But, this blog entry isn’t about outsourcing and the pluses and minuses, this entry is about recruiting your successor.  

It is a strange experience trying to recruit someone who will be doing your job and when they do you will be out of a job.  Now, now, put those hankies away, I have been expecting this for over a year, I am a contract test manager so expect to have periods of unemployment, it goes with the territory.

I have been trying to recruit my replacement for some months now and it is proving to be extremely difficult.  Here are the difficulties I have had:

·          The quality of test managers in the favoured country for outsourcing has been incredibly poor.  

·          The problem I have with rejecting people is that it could be seen as me finding fault so that I keep my job.  This is simply not true as I am a professional and will behave professionally at all times, regardless of personal thoughts.  Besides, I know I know am leaving so I want to have the best person I can find to take over from me.  I have made sure that for every interview I have had a senior permanent member of staff in the interview who can verify that I have been fair in my questions and answers and that my decision is a purely professional one. 

·          It is very difficult to interview someone over the phone and that being the only interview you can have and then you have to make a decision based on the telephone interview, but that is the process.

·          Despite being professional, see second point, I have a real affection for this project and the test team, most of whom I recruited and I want someone who has the drive, intelligence, testing skills and people skills that will enable the team to progress and not regress.  I have to ask myself “Am I too picky?”  I don’t think so, but I keep asking myself that question.

So why are the test managers in the favoured country so poor?  Obviously, I have not interviewed EVERY test manager in the country, so maybe my sample was just bad.  Here are some of the problems I encountered with them:

·          Poor grasp of English.  As the customer is English and does not speak favoured country language, English has to be good, not just adequate.  This role requires considerable customer facing skills.

·          Poor grasp of testing.  I expect a test manager to at least understand the concepts of testing and I want someone who has a good understanding of testing.  Not everyone agrees with me, some people say if you can manage one thing, then you can manage anything.  There is something in that, but on this project the test manager NEEDS to know a lot about testing.

·          Poor people skills.  Maybe it’s the culture of favoured country, although having managed a number of people from the country for some time I don’t think so.  I expect any manager to have decent people skills, it is part of the job.

·          A lack of understanding of what the test management role is.  These people are being put forward to me as experienced test managers and they do not understand some of the basics of what a test manager does, e.g. managing bug statistics.  I find that incredible.

So, recruiting your successor is not easy, I have found one good candidate so far out of many put forward, hopefully he will turn out OK.

And to sign off, this is the priceless statement one interviewee made “System Testing is a dumb task, you need no skill for it.  The real skills are in User Acceptance testing.”  My fellow interviewer said afterwards “Fortunate it was a telephone interview, I think you would have killed him had it been face-to-face”. 

Oh, and just on the of-chance that anyone was wondering where I have been for the last 3 months since my last blog entry, the project has been taking all of my time.  I am still up to my neck in muck and bullets, but I will try to keep on blogging when I get a spare few minutes