Knowing What’s Right,

Doing What’s Wrong

Sophie Nordhamren

St Jude Medical AB

Knowing What’s Right, Doing What’s Wrong

Sofie Nordhamren

St. Jude Medical AB

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Knowing What’s Right, Doing What’s Wrong

The purpose with this presentation is to give you some

proposals on;

• how to deal with obstacles that prevent you from running

the perfect test project, and get as close as possible to

what’s right

• what, and how, to communicate with the project team and

managers when you can not do the right

• how to deal with the frustration, and motivate yourself and

keep doing a god job when “the going gets tough”

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Knowing What’s Right, Doing What’s Wrong

AGENDA

• Background

• Examples from recent project

• Tips for survival

• Summary

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Knowing What’s Right, Doing What’s Wrong

About myself

• Development dept SJM

since 1997

• Working with test since

2000

• Tester, test leader, project

leader, system engineer…

About SJM

• Headquarters in St Paul,

founded in 1976

• 7900 employees worldwide

• Design, manufacturing and

distribution of medical

devices mainly targeting

heart diseases

• CRMD: 3 000 employees, 4

sites in US, 1 Central

America, 1 in Sweden

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Knowing What’s Right, Doing What’s Wrong

The Project

• Global project to upgrade existing IT-system

• Development & Manufacturing at 6 sites dependent on

system

• ”Same” project team as original implementation

• Little information on external suppliers verification

• ”Clean” upgrade, improvements to be implemented later on

• Lead time 7-8 months

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Knowing What’s Right, Doing What’s Wrong

Requirement Phase

As an ordinary user, I lacked system knowledge

Disagreement on requirement specification content

Requirements were not testable

No-one wanted to discuss test strategy

Requirement specification was updated during verification

Requirements not discussed with supplier

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Knowing What’s Right, Doing What’s Wrong

Creating Test Cases

No user-friendly format for test cases

Disagreement on detail level

Test cases just based on requirements

Not sufficient test case reviews

No information from external supplier on system verification

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Knowing What’s Right, Doing What’s Wrong

Verification

Verification started too early…

Test resource allocation

Requirement coverage

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Knowing What’s Right, Doing What’s Wrong

Project Team, Teamwork & Communication

No face-to-face meetings

Unclear who the key figures were

Too democratic project

Project manager not experienced in test

Things not done within the project did not get done

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Knowing What’s Right, Doing What’s Wrong

How to Survive

Adjust your mindset for the project nature

Think twice before accepting tasks

Do NOT wait for frozen and approved requirements, plans

etc

Be aware of Cultural differences

Do NOT act as if you do not care

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Knowing What’s Right, Doing What’s Wrong

How to Survive (cont’d)

Do NOT give up

Do NOT expect over-night changes

Do NOT use threats

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Knowing What’s Right, Doing What’s Wrong

How to Survive (cont’d)

Make an Active choice

Focus on the Achievable

Celebrate things going well!

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Knowing What’s Right, Doing What’s Wrong

How to Survive (cont’d)

Never assume

Find ways to let some steam off

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Knowing What’s Right, Doing What’s Wrong

Summary

• There are obstacles for a perfect test project in all

organizations

• Our efforts to become more professional are necessary

• Find your ways to survive…

Even if you don’t make it absolutely right, you have made a

difference, and not least – you have learnt a lot!

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Knowing What’s Right, Doing What’s Wrong

Questions

snordhamren@sjm.com

www.sjm.com