超星 - Extended Reading - 查题吧

填空题

Soft Skills for a Software Maintenance ManagerAs a software maintenance and operation professional, you have technical training of some kind, you have a basic knowledge of software management principles, you have technical knowledge of the software you manage, and you have practical experience from years working in the field. These are the hard skills needed to perform your job.However, technical education, training, and knowledge will not give you the skills you need to effectively manage a team of software maintenance professionals. In addition to these hard skills, you need a very particular set of soft skills to excel in your role. If mastered, these skills will lead to greater productivity and efficiency across the software maintenance team.Leadership SkillsTo be a successful maintenance manager, you need to demonstrate leadership ability. You must be self-motivated, organized, trustworthy, empathetic and optimistic. A true leader has a clear vision of where they want the maintenance team to go and they set a positive example that encourages others to follow. To be a successful leader, your motivation and confidence must rub off on the team and create a healthy and productive work environment Leadership is also about getting the job done properly through others. Delegating work to subordinates is an important function of management otherwise nothing ever gets done. Delegation frees up precious time so the manager can focus on high-level, high-value activities. Successful managers foster motivation by giving subordinates autonomy to do the job, by creating a supportive environment, and by giving recognition when the job is done well.Interpersonal SkillsOne of the most important life skills is the ability to communicate clearly and concisely with those around you. Having good interpersonal skills means that other people are more likely to see you as calm, yet assertive and employers tend to promote employees with good interpersonal skills, as they can communicate effectively and maintain good relations with both colleagues and customers. Having excellent interpersonal skills will help you maximize the value of each interaction you have to everyone’s benefit. Software maintenance managers negotiate daily with subordinates, management, suppliers, contractors, machine operators and project managers - so effective excellent interpersonal skills are crucial to their day-to-day jobs.One of the best ways to develop your interpersonal skills is to practice active listening. It’s important to realize that listening is not the same as hearing. When we communicate, 45% of the time should be spent actively listening, which means you’re really paying attention to what is being said and not just waiting for your turn to speak. That way you’re sure to hear other people’s point of view. Good interpersonal skills can be the foundation on which other life skills are built on, so they must be continually improved and refined.Time Management SkillsTime management is the process of organizing and planning how much of your time you spend on each activity in order to provide the greatest value for the organization. As software maintenance managers, you are constantly interrupted and pulled in different directions by conflicting demands, so it can be difficult to plan your time. !Don’t run around trying to get everything done as it comes in!This is inefficient and leads to more stress, missed deadlines, and poor quality of work. Don't confuse activity with achievement. Good time management requires a shift in thinking from getting stuff done to achieving results. It’s about working smarter, not harder. Spend 15 minutes each morning planning your day, stick to meeting schedules and ensure all!You can plan your day, and your software maintenance teams’ day, by prioritizing and scheduling the work. Insist all work requests are submitted through the guest request portal so your hone is not constantly ringing and you can get things done. You can schedule time in your day to review the work request queue. Reserve the phone for issues that could be critical to the business. The most effective software maintenance managers have excellent time management skills and get more done in the same time. It’s a valuable skill that can be learned easily and then honed over time.Teamwork SkillsTeamwork is viewed as the most efficient way to get things done in any organization. The results achieved by the entire team are greater than the sum of the results achieved by the individuals. Why? Well, for one, when individuals work together as a team instead of going it alone they can bounce ideas off each other and arrive at the best solution quicker. Many hands also make for light work, so deadlines get met sooner. Teamwork also often leads to better decisions, products, or services. All of this means that in your role as a software maintenance manager you need to be looking out for and promoting behaviors that lead to effective teamwork. Look for team players who are reliable, respectful, cooperative, flexible, and who show commitment to both the team and the task at hand. Those are the people you want to work with. As a successful maintenance manager, you also need to recognize the different strengths in each individual member of the team and then create teams of people who complement each other and work well together. Putting two type-A personalities together is just asking for trouble. Having the ability to get the most out of the team through teamwork and collaboration is a crucial skill to have and will take you a long way in your career.AdaptabilityThe world is changing fast. Markets evolve quickly, equipment and systems are getting more complex, health and safety is now the highest priority, Co2 emissions are influencing how we manufacture goods and we’re using mobile apps for everything. Organizations must be adaptable to maintain a competitive advantage. The same is true for individuals. In today’s fast paced environments, you cannot be set in your ways or you will get left behind. Change is inevitable, so the ability to adapt to change is a crucial skill for maintenance managers to have. In addition, great leaders also have the ability to facilitate change. The modern maintenance manager must have the ability to adapt quickly in response to changing circumstances and environments. They must be willing to embrace new ideas, new ways of working, and new technologies. The most adaptable individuals thrive on uncertainty and respond positively when their routine changes. To become more adaptable, you must get out of your comfort zone and push the envelope. You must continually grow, improve and try new things. Learn new skills, adopt new technologies and continually reinvent yourself. Challenge the status quo, demonstrate openness to fresh ideas and loose the rigidity. Welcome new ways of doing everyday tasks or ways to make existing work processes more efficient. Being adaptable makes you more approachable and increases your ability to communicate with other people. It also makes you more able to handle change when it happens.Stress ManagementIf stress is allowed to build up over time, it can consume you. As a software maintenance manager, having the ability to handle stress may not be a skill in the strictest sense but it can mean the difference between success and failure. Managing stress doesn’t mean taking a deep breath and just getting on with it, managing stress means controlling the things around you that can lead to stress. When you control the controllable you can reduce the chances you’ll suffer from stress. If you have the skills, you probably handle very little stress on a day-to-day basis. Having the skill to control stress will keep you in good spirits and positively affect those around you.ConclusionIf your goal is to lead a team of software maintenance engineers, then master these skills and you are sure to succeed. If you are already in a position of management, developing and refining these skills will help you get the most out of your team, help you gain greater respect from company executives, and give you more opportunities for career advancement. Many of these skills intersect so improving one will have a big impact on others. Some of these skills will come naturally to you but they all will require additional effort to perfect. They will help you create a healthy work environment where employees look forward to coming to work and taking on more responsibility and exciting new challenges.“Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.” - John C. MaxwellQ1: As a software maintenance manager, how should I make a plan for the work of myself and my maintenance team?________________1_Q2: In software maintenance and operation, which types of results are greater, the results achieved by the entire team, or the sum of the results achieved by the individual team members? Why?2_________________________________

填空题

My Unexpected Journey To Becoming A Software TesterMy journey as a Software Tester started a bit unexpectedly.I appeared for the initial interview rounds assuming it to be a software developer opportunity. To be honest, like every other Computer Science graduate out there, I was a bit skeptical about going ahead with Testing.But finally, I decided to give it a try. Only with a hope that my curious nature will help me in this field. When I appeared for the technical round, I wasn’t prepared for anything more than the basic concept of Software Testing.I joined Zycus as a QA Trainee and was allocated a product on some third or fourth day. It was one of the biggest (was in concept then) and most ambitious products of the company. After settling down for the initial few weeks, there was no turning back for me.We started as a QA team of two and soon after few months I was the only one driving the Testing efforts. In the initial 2 – 2.5 years itself I had logged nearly 3000 defects across different categories such as Functional, Performance, Security, UI, Usability, Multilingual, Multi-Tenancy, etc.The important point I want to highlight here is- All this was from an understanding of testing in practice and not just theory.I have been in the Software Testing field for almost six years now. It has been an amazing journey with so many different experiences and plenty of fruitful learning.Presently, I am working as a Senior QA Manager looking after some 5-6 products and modules. But what gives me real joy and happiness is leading a team of 30+ happy and passionate Testers.Of course, many people have contributed to my learning, but I can still say most of my experience and knowledge has come the hard way (and probably the best way), i.e. Solving it on my own.“Experience is the best teacher.”While I say this, I don’t at all mean to say that you won’t be benefited from learning or following documented theories about Software Testing. What I believe is, this all will surely help but nothing can beat understanding the concept at the core and facing the problems boldly.I believe documented stuff won’t teach you real testing, though it can give you some direction and then you are on your own. At least in my case, there were problems which may be not documented to solve my exact problems or I couldn’t find them in time. My only choice was to understand the problem/situation at the core and react to it with the approach I found right.Examples – How I approached in different situationsLet me explain this with the help of problems/situations I was up against and how I approached them.1) Performing against the odds and in pressureI was working on a product which was/is huge and complex enough to make a team of 30 engineers working continuously for three long years to get it to a sellable level.For most of the initial phase, either I was up (solo) against a team of 15-20 developers ranging from the junior, mid-senior, and senior level or was accompanied by one or couple of other testers. They were all adding new features to product relentlessly, which required equal and parallel attention from the testing side.Being part of requirement meetings, writing cases, executing them, exploratory rounds, maintaining servers, deployments, nothing was optional.By then I wasn’t aware of any methodology, best practice, course or a book which can show me solutions to such problems. Even today I’m not sure if there is anything which can precisely help you fight the ground realities as you face them.What I was rather doing is, aggressive and rapid rounds of exploratory testing (I wasn’t aware of the name by then) on each feature one-by-one and then repeat. This solution works purely on how fast you can shift your thoughts and frame situations/scenarios.Of course, this demanded real fast and aggressive work but it worked for me.What I mean by aggressive round is, you target one thing at a time (Say one element of a form at a time) and test it independently and in association with other linked elements/things.2) When you are up against the ‘unexpected’Which book do you think will suddenly help you with ‘How to’ when you are supposed to do something you have never done before?If we talk specifically then- None.I remember the time when in the absence of our Product lead, I along with few other Junior and mid-senior members were supposed to deploy our application on Demo (was production to us then) instance for the first time. It was very critical for first ever Demo of our product.Well, we did it, but with lots of Trial-and-Error. Reason being, none of us had expertise on Linux and shell scripting. I remember, there were concerns raised by our IT department (all in good faith) to my then Manager about me running wrong commands on Production servers. Maybe this was just a catalyst and shell scripting/Linux was my natural interest, but in a short while after that, I ended up taking responsibility of maintaining and upgrading five to six environments simultaneously.Shell and Linux caught my interest so well, that soon I was the one who started conducting internal training sessions on it.Hope my experience and findings helps you become a better tester or helps you in understanding testing better.Q1: Which is more important for software testers according to the writer, theory or experience? What is his reason?1Q2: What did the writer do when faced with a huge and complex project? Why did the solution work?2_______

1