Test Manager - posted by Sylvia

It's been a very strange week at work. On Tuesday there were announcements about extension to the project deadline. Most people I realise now thought this meant that they were to be extended. However, some of the Managers on the project were to go and so were a number of the staff that had been around for nearly two years. The reality is we had to remain within the budget despite the movement of the timeframe so there were some key cuts to make to expensive resources and replacement with cheaper resources. There are also some people who have to take up multiple roles. I'm one of them. I am now Business Implementation Manager, it means I already have the Business Analysis/Requirements definition plus input into the change/training component (input only as we generally have a change manager as well). The crappiest things I've had to do in that aspect of the role is rolling out software snd hardware updates to our users. I hate dealing with CSC, it's one of the banes of my existence. Anyway, I am also now the Test Manager, I normally do look after User Acceptance Testing when it's just the normal bring in some business users to verify they are happy with the proposed solution and they run some very light testing BUT this project has been inverted and what the users think is way more important then what a team of system testers think. Needless, to say I am going to have a very busy four months until September Go Live. It was also a bit of an uncomfortable week for me because it really felt like I had participated in a coup as the exiting Test Manager had no idea she was going. I was worried about the reaction of the Test Manager and the leads to the news. I was involved in telling the leads the news and had re-planning sessions for the remainder of the week to realign them to the new timeframes and new appproach. There was a lot of buy-in from about half and resistance from the other half. I'm keeping lines of communication open with all the leads to try to make them feel as comfortable as possible. My problem is that I am still reading and revising some business requirements as well. I'm sure this will settle down by end of June. Wish me luck. It's my last weekend of freedom for a while.