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How to Energize Your Test Team
By Jamie Tischart
Summary: You're waist deep in your third month of late nights, weekends, and shipping stress; you can see and
feel your team's energy waning. The goal is in sight but still far off, and you need the very best from everyone to
reach the goal. How are you going to motivate and energize your team to reach the finish line? In this week's
column, Jamie Tischart explores the major issues test team leaders face: keeping a team motivated and knowing
when it needs to be energized. From Tischart's experience, he has drawn that being proactive and planning for
these events--basically having a strategy in place--helps test team leaders deal with these issues. As you
implement these or any ideas, know that you, too, will also be energized.
You're waist deep in your third month of late nights, weekends, and shipping stress; you can see and feel your
team's energy waning. The goal is in sight but still far off, and you need the very best from everyone to reach the
goal. How are you going to motivate and energize your team to reach the finish line?
I'm sure that every testing team leader can relate to this situation and has struggled with this problem. There are
many reasons teams demoralize, so how can you energize your team on tight schedules, even tighter budgets,
and in uncertain economic climates? I'd like to share several methods I've used over the years to get the best
from the testers I lead.
Motivation
Leaders are expected to motivate, energize, react, and refocus colleagues when it seems that all hope is lost.
This is your time to shine! Be the leader you always envisioned, not in an Orwellian "Big Brother" role, but in an
inspirational, Nute Rockne, "Win One for the Gipper!" role.
"The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet."
-- Theodore M. Hesburgh
One of your major functions as a test leader is to energize your team, and to accomplish this you must be