Juniors are a critical part of building a high-performing software testing team, and this month’s PLATO Panel Talks is here to explore how to leverage the potential of your whole team and create a thriving environment for growth! Our expert panel, featuring Nicole LeBlanc (Apprentice Manager, PLATO), and Jeff Peters (Chief Delivery Officer, PLATO), discuss the challenges, opportunities, and strategies for successfully integrating juniors into your workforce, including the rewarding experience of mentorship. Plus, special guests offer their unique perspectives on nurturing the next generation of tech professionals.
Transcript:
Mike Hrycyk (00:01):
Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of PLATO Panel Talks. I’m your host, Mike Hrycyk, and today we’re going to talk about leveraging juniors with our panel of testing experts.
So, this is an important topic because we all start as juniors, and one of the common things that you hear out there is people who are just starting out can’t find a job because all of the jobs are asking for people to have experience. But how can you get experience when you have no experience? And from the other side of that, working in a consulting company, well all the time we’re talking to people who, once they want to look at a consultant, they want a senior, they want an expert, they want people with all of the different depth. But this is an issue where we’ve got a unique perspective because we are training juniors on a regular basis. We’re graduating a hundred juniors a year. And so we’re seeing both sides of it. We’re seeing juniors who need experience, and we’re talking to clients who have to figure out how to use juniors. So, I thought that for us to have a discussion about this, we could help some people out there and encourage them to bring juniors on, and then for juniors themselves to see the different perspectives. So, I think it’ll be a very interesting conversation for us to have. So, I’m going to introduce our people who are in the know and can talk about these things. So, I’ll start off and I’ll let you introduce yourself, Nicole.
Nicole LeBlanc (01:20):
Hi, my name is Nicole LeBlanc. My current role is at PLATO as an Apprentice Manager. I’ve been in the IT industry for about 15 years. With the majority of that experience being in QA. I’ve worked in various positions from Junior Tester to Test Lead and everything in between. I’m currently managing a team of 23 Apprentices who are working on various client projects as junior testers.
Mike Hrycyk (01:48):
Well, that’s great. You sound like you’re a great add to this discussion. Jeff, tell us about yourself, please.
Jeff Peters (01:54):
Hello, my name’s Jeff Peters. I’m the Chief Delivery Officer over here at PLATO. My background is in human resources, but I also have been a technical person and three out of the last four places that I worked at before joining PLATO, I had oversight over the Quality Assurance Departments within those organizations. So, I bring with me a lot of experience in overseeing different aspects of businesses and projects. I’m excited to be at PLATO and be able to help out with our delivery of services here. I always like to say that my overall job is sort of leading the Tetris match that is making sure that we get all of the right people into all of the right places so that we’re not only building the careers of our people but also providing world-class services to our customers.
Mike Hrycyk (02:42):
Now I have an image of you spinning our resources around and upside down to Russian music.
Jeff Peters (02:47):
I do whatever I need to do to make sure I get the right person in the right place.
Mike Hrycyk (02:51):
Fabulous. So I mentioned in the intro that I felt that we at PLATO were especially suited to have discussions about juniors. And I’m sure some of our listeners out there aren’t super familiar with PLATO and the program that we have. So, maybe Jeff, you could just give us a brief introduction to why is it that PLATO has a bunch of juniors? Where does that come from?
Jeff Peters (03:13):
Sure. Overall, I’d say that at PLATO, our mission that we quote to everybody is changing our world by building a stronger, more inclusive technology workforce. Our main goal within that is to create diversity in tech jobs in Canada with a focus on IT roles for Indigenous people. And when we set out to hire these people, we found a lack of opportunities for some of these folks to get the necessary training in an affordable way. And where there were programs, they didn’t always guarantee work at the end. So PLATO recognized that if we wanted to hire Indigenous testers, we had to build a program that provided the training and reduced the barriers for people to be able to participate in and be successful in these programs. So, our overall goal is to create a team of a thousand testers, and we realize that the only way that we’d be successful in meeting that goal would be to provide the training and the opportunities ourselves.
Mike Hrycyk (04:12):
So at this point, we’re eight and a half years into the journey. For those of you who aren’t more familiar with PLATO, we have – I think we’re going into about our 35th course starting in the fall. We’ve delivered the training in 11 different centers in Canada, I think. Vancouver, where I am, we’ve had five cohorts in Vancouver and one cohort in Victoria. So, we’re getting pretty experienced at – we’ve graduated something in the range of – or we’ve trained something in the range of 400 Indigenous juniors. And coming out of that, we’ve had to find placements and skills and etc. for that. So, Nicole, you mentioned the Apprenticeship Program. That’s another thing that we’ve been doing in the last year and a half that I’m really proud of, but that also relates directly to juniors. Could you just give us the five-sentence overview of what the Apprenticeship Program is?
Nicole LeBlanc (05:03):
So, when a cohort finishes the five-month in-class training program, they become Apprentices. So as part of the Apprenticeship program, they begin with their internship. They have dedicated Apprentice Managers such as myself. So, we mentor them, we make sure that they have everything that they need to be successful.
Mike Hrycyk (05:25):
So you talked about you being an Apprentice Manager, and I know that in a lot of IT and consulting, managers tend to also have jobs where they have to be hands-on. How has the Apprenticeship Manager position changed our focus around that?
Nicole LeBlanc (05:39):
So for the Apprentice Manager position, the Apprentice Managers are not involved with their own project work. So I am dedicated 100% to whatever the Apprentices need. But in a sense, sometimes it feels like I am on 23 projects because there are many days that they do just need some extra help, mentoring, and coaching through whatever issue they’re working through on their project at the time. Just having that extra time to allocate to people, especially if we start to identify that maybe someone is not developing in an area as quickly as we would like to see or someone’s struggling, we then have the time to sort of take a step back, figure out how we’re going to get them to where we would like to see them.
Paul Hicks (06:40):
I’m Paul Hicks, I am a Senior Consultant at PLATO. The number one reason to bring Junior Testers into your organization or project is to cultivate and develop talent in the field of software testing. Junior Testers bring enthusiasm, a willingness to learn and a fresh perspective to your team. They’re often eager to expand their existing knowledge and skills which can invigorate your team and bring new ideas to the table. Junior Testers are more often more adaptable to new tools, processes and methodologies. They can learn quickly, apply new technologies and attach new frameworks which can be advantageous in fast-paced and evolving projects. They come from diverse backgrounds and have different educational experiences. They bring value to your testing practices. This diversity can bring creative problem-solving and innovative approaches to testing challenges. Overall bringing junior testers to your organization or project allows you to build a skilled and motivated testing team ready to grow and adapt alongside your software development efforts.
Mike Hrycyk (07:14):
And I think that comes back to the statement that I made at the start, how can you get experience when you have no experience? That’s one of the things that people say first is if I bring a junior in that junior is more work, right? It’s they’re a person that doesn’t have any experience, but if you don’t create an opportunity for people to gain experience, then how are they ever going to have that experience? I mean, you’re going to have a dwindling population of old senior testers and not be bringing new people in. So I think that our idea around the Apprenticeship Program, our idea around the Apprentice Managers is to provide a framework around our juniors so that they can get that mentorship from the teams, but wherever there’s a hole or where that’s lacking, that we’re providing that mentorship in other ways. And I think it’s been pretty successful so far. I mean, Nicole, you’ve been at it for about a year and a half now, and you’ve seen a lot of growth, I expect.
Nicole LeBlanc (08:05):
Yes. I was going to say further to your comment about just being sort of, I guess set in our ways with having just senior testers and thinking that the juniors are going to be more work. And there are situations where that happens. I’m sure everyone’s been in a situation where your timeline is completely off on a project, you’re doing your best to meet it, and then suddenly you’re presented with, “Oh, I found so-and-so to pitch in and help you out.” And then on the inside, you’re thinking, oh no. Sometimes training somebody – it’s not helpful. In certain situations, people feel like it’s making more work for them. Part of what we do is try to teach the juniors how to be more resourceful. So, when they’re on projects, knowing where to look for information, and strategies to help them through different situations so that they’re not constantly going back to the seniors on their projects for all of the information all the time.
Mike Hrycyk (09:18):
Excellent. Let’s change our focus a little bit. Let’s say that we are now talking to a bunch of Test Managers out there or some other type of manager, and we’re trying to convince them that juniors are a good idea. What are the benefits of having juniors join a team or your organization? We know there’s some challenges. What are some of the benefits? Start with you, Jeff.
Jeff Peters (09:39):
Sure. I’d say one of the biggest benefits that you’re going to get from juniors is enthusiasm. A lot of the people that PLATO employs are being given an opportunity that might not have been available to them before. So a lot of them come in with a lot of dedication to their roles and a lot of enthusiasm just to try something new and do something that’s sort of different for them. A lot of them have come through our training program, but they’re getting their first practical experience, and a lot of them are just really enthusiastic to be on a project and to be doing something as meaningful as testing. They see a benefit to making things better and making things more usable for other people so they can really connect with the job that they’re doing. And a lot of times if you can give them that opportunity, they’ll reward you with enthusiasm and a willingness to learn that you might not always see from some of the more senior folks that you might bring in.
Mike Hrycyk (10:31):
Great. Nicole, do you have a perspective on that?
Nicole LeBlanc (10:34):
Okay. So the benefit of having a junior join a team, they’re not coming to you with any bad habits. They’re brand new, they’re enthusiastic. You can teach them the way you want something to be done. And now in 2024, things are so much different than they were 10 years ago. If you have a junior tester coming to you, they’re either A) coming from a generation that grew up with technology. They think in different ways than we do; things are easier to them. You don’t really need to start with teaching a lot of the basics. There are going to be a lot of things that you’re going to find that they know more than you do. And B) the other scenario is that we have the juniors that maybe this is a later in life career for them. They’re coming with lots of real world experience from different types of careers, which is also valuable. Which gives them really a unique perspective on testing in general. From my experience, I have found that sometimes you can be trying to explain a concept and people, they’re just not getting it. And then, sometimes, when they can relate it to a real-life analogy, that’s when you know that the light bulb has gone off and they have such an interesting perspective on things just based on things that they’ve done throughout their life.
Danielle Gulliver (12:02):
Hi, I’m Danielle Gulliver. I’m the Apprenticeship Program Manager at PLATO. The reason you would bring juniors into your organization is for the opportunities for mentorship, it can be incredibly rewarding to work with a junior. And also the different perspectives. They don’t have any of the biases that we have from working in this industry for years or decades. For some, they’re coming in with fresh eyes. They’re often from different generations from us, they have had different experiences, and as testers, they’re going to find different things. Things that you and your team didn’t even think of, things that I wouldn’t even consider. It can be nothing but good and will only add value to your end product.
Mike Hrycyk (12:44):
I think that’s a really strong point. Like testers – senior testers have been doing it for a long time, and you can’t step away from the idea that when you do that, you get set into patterns and you get set into ways of thinking. And although testers are better than most at putting their feet in the shoes of the end user, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, right? And, so when you have a fresh perspective, someone who’s never done that before, someone who maybe has relatable life experience, or life experience that just gives them different ideas that can get you some paths through that testing that are unique and different and find really interesting bugs that you go, huh, why would anyone do that? But if a tester is going to do it, then there’s a user out there somewhere who’s going to do it. So, it gives you bugs that you weren’t going to find in other ways. And I think that’s really useful.
And to add that to what you said, Jeff, is I’ve heard from numerous people who’ve worked with us or in my past lives where we worked with co-ops, they [juniors] breathe the enthusiasm, and their perspective breathe a whole new life into the team, a whole new life into the project. It’s coming at it from different ways. It’s shifting the paradigm, and it’s really interesting that way. So, I think that’s really great. So, given your commerce background, Jeff, I thought you were going to come at this from a different way. So I’m going to ask you to comment on cost savings. Do juniors save money?
Jeff Peters (14:09):
Juniors definitely a hundred percent can save money. They usually, well, they always come in at lower rates than you’ll find from intermediates and seniors. But at the same time, especially in a lot of testing, there are a lot of pieces that you need to have done that are – they’re fairly standardized. There’s some imagination that needs to go into finding the right path or the right way to do it. But at the same time, there are certain things that – testing a login, for example, is a fairly standard procedure. And so you can save money by having juniors available to do testing that’s repeatable, that’s everyday occurrences, and really make sure that your seniors or your intermediates are doing the more challenging things or the things that require more experience while having a team of juniors that can also make sure that all of the sort of meat and potatoes – the things that you always need to test and you always need to make sure are working, but sometimes fall to the wayside – you can make sure that those things still get done without having to incur the cost of having a senior that you’re paying extra to do kind of simple actions.
Lee Galanida (15:17):
Hi, I am Lee, an Apprentice Manager at PLATO. What’s the number one reason you would bring juniors into your organization or project? To me, it’s to build future talent. This strategy ensures the development of skilled professionals ready to step into more senior roles as they become available. Building future talent is crucial for career growth and progression. Senior testers often get promoted to managerial positions or are reallocated to projects requiring their expertise. By training juniors we ensure they’re capable individuals who are ready to take over these roles seamlessly. Thus transferring critical knowledge and best practices. It also contributes to cost effectiveness as junior testers are more cost-effective compared to hiring senior testers. This allows for larger testing teams with comparatively lower budgets increasing overall testing coverage.
Jonathan Duncan (16:07):
Hi there. This is Jonathan Duncan from PLATO, responsible for partnerships and alliances at a national level. Over the last 29 years. I’ve had some wonderful opportunities on some very large projects. In the early days, I, too was a junior resource. I never thought much about it, but knowing what I know now, there’s a lot of value that a diverse team, including juniors can bring to a project. On all projects there are tasks which do not require a senior level of experience. Having juniors allows some of the more senior resources time to better be allocated while allowing the junior the valuable experience that they need to become seniors. That experience is critical to have the juniors of today be the seniors of tomorrow and assisting in building and stabilizing the workforce.
Mike Hrycyk (16:54):
And honestly, I mean, I like to talk about PLATO in this because we’re part of PLATO, but this is true at every place I’ve ever worked at where we took co-ops. You get a lot of value, you get this enthusiasm, you get this other stuff, but it’s the cost savings that also really drives it home that it’s a worthwhile spend for the value that you get.
Okay, so what are some of the disadvantages of using juniors and what ways have we come up with to overcome them? Let’s throw this question to you, Jeff.
Jeff Peters (17:27):
Overall, I think you sort of covered it before, but it really is that lack of experience. It’s that sort of the chicken and egg thing where it’s – you need the role to get the experience, but you need the experience to get the role. And that can create challenges. Like our training program is fairly comprehensive, but it can’t create two years, or five years or 10 years of experience. Those are things that you have to obtain by doing it and by putting in the years behind it.
But how to overcome them, I think, was the second half of the question? And the biggest thing that we try to do is build teams around it. If you grab three or four or five juniors and you put them together on a team and you put them by themselves, they don’t have that experience to draw from each other. They don’t sort of have the ability to bounce things off of each other. But if you can pair them with an intermediate or a senior, you can allow them to get that experience through osmosis from working with other people. You can get them to ask the right questions or bring in skill sets.
And that’s where it’s always better if you can bring in that team from PLATO, because we like to employ intermediates and seniors that have worked with our juniors before that sort of understand the challenges that they might be seeing that understand our training programs and know where people might have deficiencies coming out of it. And then they can help boost them up. And we can always do things like bring on seniors or intermediates onto a project in advance of the juniors, get that training, get that onboarding and that knowledge transfer from you, and then they can help to onboard the rest of the juniors onto the project so that it takes away some of the onus from your team on bringing them in but it gives them that experience to draw from the rest of our team that we’ve placed with them.
Mike Hrycyk (19:11):
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that we’ve done – so one of the things is building that team around them, but I think this is another place where why we’ve added Apprentice Managers comes in, right, Nicole? So the challenge of a junior is they don’t always know what they don’t know. They don’t have the experience to draw on to fix a problem or even understand that there is a problem. And when you add a lead, they can see that they can have visibility into that. But again, they [seniors] also have their own jobs. So I think that’s one of the reasons why Apprentice Managers are successful in this, right? They’re building a relationship. It’s easier to ask them for help. Is that what you’re seeing, Nicole?
Nicole LeBlanc (19:48):
Absolutely. And it’s sort of like there are situations that you just don’t know how to handle until it’s happened before, and then the next time it happens, you know what to do. So when you’re a junior, you just haven’t had time for those experiences to happen yet. So, I’m finding that any chance that I have when I’m in team meetings with the whole team, whenever someone’s giving an update in the morning, sometimes it will trigger something with me to say oh, that’s something that happened to me before. So then I’ll say, oh, that reminds me of a time when this happened to me. So, any opportunity that I have, I’m telling them all of these stories of different things that have happened to me hoping that some of it is going to stay with them. And I feel like that does work in a sense. But there are also lots of times – almost daily – that one of them will come to me with: This is what’s going on, and this is what I’m planning to do. Do you think that it’s okay for me to ask this person for this in this way? So most times they know what to do, they just need that extra bit of reassurance that they’re moving in the right direction.
Mike Hrycyk (20:59):
So, when we’re talking to leads and managers from other places and we’re trying to tell them that juniors are a good thing, where do you see the resistance coming from? And then, what do we do to change that opinion?
Jeff Peters (21:12):
And this sort of builds on my answer to the previous question, but I’d say the biggest piece of resistance that we usually get is that they feel it’ll slow the team down. A lot of times you have large projects that are really fast-moving and have really tight timelines and dates, and they see onboarding juniors as something that will slow down the teams that they already have working while they try to bring some of the juniors up to speed. But that’s where, as I mentioned before, building a team with PLATO and allowing us to figure out the right composition to sort of maximize the effectiveness of the team. It’ll enable us to do things like bring on those seniors and intermediates. And like I said, if we can bring them on in advance, we can get them to help do the training. We can help them accelerate things. They can also help to learn the project so that they can figure out what are the pieces that will be sort of easy and repeatable for the juniors to do. Especially at the start, you want to build their confidence, let them see some quick wins, and that enthusiasm will start to carry their speed and will actually improve velocity because you’re adding more people to the team and getting them up to speed as quickly as possible.
Mike Hrycyk (22:20):
And I think that’s an important thing. So there’s this initial hump you have to get over to get agreement and engagement. And then once you’re over the other side, it’s the enthusiasm and the value and the life that they bring to the project that help people really get that value and proceed from there.
Two of the tools I think we have in addition to help build the engagement – so, part of it is getting people to accept and provide the time to see that value. And so two ways that we have – so one way is maybe a little more specific to us, and that’s about social impact and the program that we have and being willing to be part of the program and give back and help our Indigenous Training Program. That’s maybe a little unique for us, but maybe other people can find synergies within that.
But the other part that I try to sell to people is the idea of mentoring. There are mentoring opportunities for every junior you bring on, which means that your intermediates and your senior who are mentoring them are going to improve their own skills. They’re going to grow themselves because there’s so much that you learn in teaching other people things that really will help yourself. I mean, it’s not just the injection of the fresh perspective. It’s also you will understand what you’re doing better because of the fact that you’re teaching it to other people. And, I’m sure that you’ve seen that with your own personal expertise in testing, Nicole, in teaching all of your Apprentices these things. You must be an incredibly better tester at this point, right?
Nicole LeBlanc (23:49):
I would like to hope so. <laughter. Yeah, and I have seen even some of the intermediates at PLATO that have been sort of put into situations that they end up mentoring one of the Apprentices on a project and that maybe that’s a little bit out of their comfort zone, but it ends up working out for the best and you start to see changes in that intermediate as well. So that is something that I’ve seen. And, that is really a big advantage as well.-
Ellery Furlong (24:26):
My name is Ellery Furlong. I’m the Apprentice Manager and Training Instructor for the Ottawa-Gatineau office for PLATO. Knowing what I know about our people, if someone were to ask me, what is the number one reason you would want to bring juniors into your organization, I would say that it is important for us to be bringing in juniors to help us bring fresh perspectives. Having a diverse team with a wide range of experiences and backgrounds can help us to improve the way we do things.
Mike Hrycyk (25:00):
We have one resource who I will not name, but he’s got 20-plus years in the industry. He’s done so many projects, so many things, and I never really expected that he would be a good mentor of juniors just because of his personality. But then we put him onto one of our projects to help our interns learn, and he just became the best mentor ever. He found 10 different ways of explaining each concept, and he’s really patient and he’s willing to do all these things, and I think it’s helped him grow a lot. But it also helped me understand better what he’s capable of, which also, if you think about it, is really important for managers out there to see you being a good mentor to juniors. It helps demonstrate a level of leadership that maybe you haven’t been able to demonstrate before.
Kevin Swaine (25:48):
My name is Kevin Swaine. I’m the Director of Service Delivery in Atlantic Canada for PLATO. The number one reason that I would advise someone to bring juniors into their organization is that I find it very enjoyable working with enthusiastic individuals who are eager to learn and grow their careers. Most of the juniors that I’ve worked with are very eager to learn and be part of a success story. It is also very rewarding to be part of the career growth of a young professional and to see their success over time.
Mike Hrycyk (26:13):
Okay, so let’s shift a little bit. Where should you focus your juniors for the best outcomes? What kind of work? So, I’m a manager. I’m going to bring some juniors in. I’m going to put them on the most complex test cases and doing performance testing, right Nicole?
Nicole LeBlanc (26:30):
I really hope not. <Laughter>. And the Apprentices, when they first start out, they want to hit the ground running, and they’ll say, I want to do automation, or I want to do performance testing. And then I’ll say, so what do you already know about it? And then I’ll get the blank stare. Well, I don’t know. And I’ll say, well, how do you know that that’s what you want to do? You’re getting ahead of yourself.
Sometimes it can be really hard to keep them from getting ahead of themselves. It’s really nice to see them have a chance to put their fundamental skills that they’ve learned in class to use in a natural project environment outside of the classroom. A lot of them are in a hurry to get past that. They want to move on to bigger and better. We really like them to try to get some of their fundamental skills put to use in the beginning.
We want them to be in an environment where they’re going to be supported, where they’re not going to be sitting and stuck with either not enough work to do or not enough resources for when they do run into some issues. And in addition to that, you also want them to be in an environment where you’re slightly pushing them out of their comfort zone just to see what they can do. You want to make sure that they’re having the opportunity to have initiative –
Mike Hrycyk (27:59):
– to be challenged, right? You need them to be challenged.
Nicole LeBlanc (28:02):
Yeah, you want them to be challenged without setting them up for failure.
Mike Hrycyk (28:08):
Right. That’s true, Nicole, and it reminds me of an example that I’ve told over and over again of a person that was in our first cohort. They were a fresh junior and I’d put them onto a project – an e-commerce project with web photo sites. And after two or three sprints, they came to me – it was about three months in, they came to me and they said, “Hey, I know how to do everything now. When do I get my next project?” I’ve heard this in some way numerous times, that it’s that finding new stuff, learning new things becomes a really important drive for people. But what I did was I reassured this person that that’s not really how you gain experience. That gaining experiences by doing similar tasks repeatedly enough such that you get to a comfort level and an understanding level that when something new comes along – when a problem comes along – you have the capability of reacting to it and solving that problem yourself instead of just being blocked. And this worked out really well, I think, because a year later, I moved this person to another client and they came to me – without me prompting it – they came to me and they said, thank you for doing that. I now feel like I’m a better tester. I understand how to do things. I’m less afraid, and I’m more confident. And so, it’s that ability to grow through experience that really helps. And I think layering in challenges, as you sort of said, Nicole is also important to keep people engaged and interested, but it’s sort of a combination of the two. Alright, so Jeff, where do you feel that it’s the best place to leverage juniors?
Jeff Peters (29:37):
I feel like there’s sort of two parts to this or two different places that you can go and one is sort of recognize your teams and figure out which ones are going to do better with juniors. There are certain people that maybe they’re too fast moving, maybe they’re really technical, maybe their project is more difficult or more high level. If you’re looking for the best outcomes, start some of the juniors in a place where you know that they’re going to be able to learn, where they’re going to be able to get quick wins, and they’re going to be able to work with a team that is going to be able to support them and is going to have the time to support them.
And then the other part of it is to really think about the projects that you have and the ones that will give them, as I mentioned, those quick wins. It really is when you’re on your first project or your first five projects, everything is about building confidence, making you feel like you know what you’re doing and you’re able to do it. And, you definitely do want to challenge people, but to get the best outcomes, what you first want to do is build confidence. And then when they get that confidence, then you want to push them into other areas where they can then grow their skillset, learn new things, try new things, and then that will always keep them excited, but they’ll always know that they have those wins under their belt that give them the ability to try something new and not be afraid of running into struggles with it.
Mike Hrycyk (30:54):
I think that’s incredibly important and we hadn’t talked about it until right now, so thanks for that. You have to have a pathway for some wins, some successes, so people are willing to try new things and not be afraid and continue to grow, right? If you came in and you give them something super difficult and you don’t give them enough help, they’re going to become a turtle. They’re going to build a shell around them and be afraid and only do what you specifically tell them to do. And that’s not a good tester. A tester is someone who’s open and willing, thoughtful, and creative. Who still gets the job done, but is also at heart caring about the quality. So that’s really good. Short question, what’s the optimal mix of juniors to more senior people on a team, Nicole?
Nicole LeBlanc (31:36):
I don’t know if there’s a clear answer. I feel like that’s very project-dependent. Depends on the skill sets, and the personalities of the juniors and the seniors. You may have a senior that has very little interest in being a mentor, but is being told that this is what you’re doing. So, maybe having three is too much, but then there could be somebody that is just a natural at being a mentor for juniors that can handle three very easily. Of those three [juniors], two of them could be very, very technical. Maybe one needs a little bit of extra help. It’s really a difficult question. You don’t want to be at the point of the seniors being frustrated and not being able to get their work done, and you don’t want the juniors at the point that they’re sitting and waiting because the seniors don’t have enough time for them. I know you said short question, but I don’t know how to answer that one with that little detail.
Mike Hrycyk (32:41):
That was probably unfair because it also depends on the complexity, whether the test cases already exist, how much mentorship is required to create those. Alright, Jeff, do you have a different answer?
Jeff Peters (32:52):
What I would say is that every project, every situation is unique and what’s most important is that you work with us. Work with PLATO to help us to understand what the project is, what the skill level is, what the team composition that you have right now, how short those timelines are, how important the other people on the project are to meeting any of those timelines, and allow us to work with you. There are some instances where you can find a good senior who can mentor four or five juniors, and they can be successful, but you may find, depending on the complexity of the project or availability of other resources that you might need two or three seniors and intermediates that are going to help a team of two or three juniors and kind of do more of a one-to-one relationship to help bring them along and understand that complexity. So, it’s really just important that you make sure that you understand the teams, the projects, and the people that you have and come up with the best situation to make them all successful.
Mike Hrycyk (33:52):
Both of your answers are correct. They don’t really give me a number that I love to have. But what I am going to say is that I think rather than being able to pinpoint the optimal mix, I think we can agree probably about what the not optimal mix is. So kind of what we’ve said to our people is never put more than four juniors on a project without a lead. Certainly never have ten without a lead, right? So there’s this minimum idea that if you’re trying to put five juniors on a project and there’s not at least one lead who’s experienced with juniors, you’re going to fail. But different projects definitely have different mixes. I can see a really complicated project where your mixes might be one mentor to each junior, and it doesn’t mean the mentor’s a full-time person working with the junior. It just means that they’re available and understand that they have that responsibility.
Shawnee Polchis (34:45):
My name is Shawnee Polchis. I’m an Associate Manager at PLATO. Knowing what I know now, the reasons I’d bring a junior in on a project is because they would have fresh eyes on how a process works. Juniors have lots of clarification questions, and they may ask questions that we never thought of before.
Mike Hrycyk (35:04):
Alright, so a wrap-up question, and based on your last answers, I don’t know if we’re going to have a good answer for this one, but I’m going to ask it anyways. But I think there is an answer in here. What’s the special sauce to make sure that juniors are effective as juniors, but are also on the right path to becoming effective more senior resources?
Jeff Peters (35:25):
Sure. For that, the special sauce is I would say open-mindedness, understanding that anytime you work with a junior in any position from any company, there’s work that you have to do to help bring them along. There’s work that they have to do to maintain their enthusiasm and to be constantly learning and understanding the project. So the special sauce is really just that all parties are open-minded and trying to find solutions to get to the best outcome. Because we’re always confident that we can create the right situation for people to grow and flourish, but we just all have to be on the same page about understanding that we need to listen and learn from each other and put some work into creating the optimal circumstance.
Mike Hrycyk (36:11):
Great. Nicole, do you have a special sauce?
Nicole LeBlanc (36:14):
Giving them support, getting to know them as people, making them feel seen as people and as testers, creating a positive environment for them, pushing them out of their comfort zone and making sure that they have accountability.
Mike Hrycyk (36:31):
Great. I think both of those answers really summarize the last half hour really well for me, and I think that’s fabulous.
Thank you to our panel, Jeff and Nicole, for joining us for this really great discussion about juniors. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. If you have anything you’d like to add to our conversation, we’d love to hear what you think about this. I think that juniors are important. I mean, it’s obvious that if we don’t have juniors, we’re not going to build new seniors. But I think that juniors are important for reasons that we’ve really hit on today. They bring life and a fresh perspective into your project. They give mentoring and learning opportunities to the seniors you have in your project while at the same time helping to save money. That’s something that really makes executive eyes glow.
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