Interview about the activities of the Squash TM ProFessional Services (PFS)
Here is a summary of an interview with Matthieu Lambrou, Head of Squash TM Professional Services at Henix. In this interview, conducted in August 2022, he talks about the missions of the Squash PFS team since his arrival in this department two years ago to support Henix customers in the implementation and use of Squash TM.
Could you start by introducing yourself and telling us how you reached your position as Squash TM Professional Services Manager?
I don’t come from the testing world. I went to a business school (HEC Montreal) and then worked in communications and project management in the media industry. I finally chose to retrain at the EQL (Ecole de la Qualité Logicielle) to become a Software Quality Consultant.
When I left this training, in 2018, I started a two and a half year mission in which I had the opportunity to act in various positions: tester then team leader before becoming the manager of a test and support department.
Once this mission was over, I was offered the responsibility of the PFS department which already existed in dotted line within Henix, but where there were difficulties to make a manager permanent.
I therefore started as full-time Manager of Professional Services Squash TM from December 2020. I specify Squash TM because there is also a PFS team dedicated to Squash AUTOM-DEVOPS.
Helping test teams in the implementation of Squash, then accompanying them in maintaining good testing practices over time.
What is the objective of PFS and how does it differ depending on the customer context?
The goal of PFS is to help test teams to implement Squash and then to support them in maintaining good testing practices over time. This is of course translated differently depending on the level of maturity of the organisation we are working with: we can work with people who are new to testing, people who have 20 years of experience and whose test cases are specified in Excel, or teams who are up to date with the state of the art and are looking to industrialize their testing activity.
My goal is always the same: to make sure that Squash is the best possible answer to the problems of the person who asks me for help. But even if Squash is only a tool, it induces a certain methodology in the way of testing. My intervention can therefore cover the tool, the testing methodology used, the organization in place…
In short, for novices, we will propose training sessions to acquire the theoretical bases of testing and discover the use of Squash. For more mature teams, we will provide more personalized training to adapt the state of the art to specific contexts.
How long has the PFS offer been available?
Even if Henix has been assisting its customers in the use of Squash TM since the birth of the Squash project, at least via the support team, the industrialization of the Squash TM PFS activities accelerated with my arrival at the end of 2020.
How is the PFS Squash TM division structured today?
We are three consultants working full time for the team. In addition to this “core” team, I am lucky enough to be able to call on other Henix consultants (developers, system administrators, support team, etc.). Since my arrival, we have had about ten people regularly providing their expertise on various missions.
Personally, my time is divided between operational missions where I intervene at the customer’s request as a test consultant and activities of piloting/coordinating PFS resources, which I carry out as manager of the Pole.
Most of our contacts are French, but we also offer our services in English.
And are the services of PFS Squash TM offered only in France?
The majority of our contacts are French, but we have also exchanged with people in Belgium, Monaco and Switzerland and we also offer our services in English. I am currently coaching an English team that has just subscribed to Squash.
Have you ever kept in touch with clients who have used your expertise?
Yes, of course. It happens frequently that teams contact me again after a workshop or a training. It’s impossible to cover all the topics in one or two days, so I try to show them as much as possible about the possibilities of using Squash. But when they have to implement the best practices on their own, they may encounter unexpected difficulties, which is completely normal!
So I remain available by email, or through short workshops, to make sure that Squash continues to meet the expectations of the testers.
As soon as a client adopts Squash, increases its skills or industrializes its practices, the PFS is there to support and accompany it.
Support seems to be at the heart of all your missions.
Yes, even within a migration mission, we don’t limit ourselves to simply transferring data from one tool to another. In addition to mapping the source and target data, there is also a change management aspect: we have to explain to the various project stakeholders how their data transferred over, explain the choices that were made during the migration, and ensure that they can transpose their uses into Squash.
We therefore often have to sequence our interventions: first the deployment of the tool, then the implementation and maintenance of good testing practices, before eventually handing over to the Squash AUTOM PFS for test automation, or even the integration of Squash in a CI/CD platform.
To put it simply, each time a customer adopts Squash, increases its skills or industrializes its practices, the PFS are there to support and accompany it.
Has a customer ever taken a package with all the services offered by Squash PFS?
Yes, this was the case with a large company that has a Squash license for more than 4,000 users and that had to be accompanied for 3 years to migrate from HP ALM/QC to Squash with training, support, help with upgrades, etc. The feedback from the customer was positive and, even today, we send new consultants to them.
This example wasn’t directly under the PFS responsibility, since the needs were so large that we had to send full-time consultants. But it does fit in with everything we offer at PFS. Our mission with this client as the PFS team was to capitalize (another facet of our activity) to be able to reproduce this success with other clients.
Is it possible to contact you directly for questions related to Squash PFS?
Anyone can reach the PFS team by going to the Contact section of the squashtest.com website and then clicking on “Make an appointment with a Squash Expert”. On this page, you can directly book a 30-minutes appointment in my agenda or in the one of someone from the team. During this half-hour, you can ask questions about your Squash usage or testing practices.
If you are a Squash customer and you have needs that go beyond Squash Support, you can also call your sales representative who will put you in touch with me to set up a specific workshop (which can be done according to the commercial terms defined with the business engineers).
Can all services offered by PFS be done remotely?
Yes, including training and installation of Squash. I personally have no problem with providing remote training. The most important thing is that the audience shows an eagerness to learn. If this is not the case, it is still preferable to keep the session face-to-face to reinforce the interactions.
All PFS assignments can be completed remotely.
So Covid was not a hindrance?
Not at all. We were able to carry out all the PFS missions remotely.
In conclusion, do you have any PFS missions in mind that have particularly marked you or that has been particularly long?
Among the various services offered, it is often the migrations that take the longest because they involve many players on both the Henix and client sides. For example, I was involved in the migration strategy for a government department, which took two of us about two weeks. Since then, we have scheduled migration shoots every three months with resources allocated on an ad hoc basis. So you can end up organizing migrations for several years.
Another example that stands out for me: I animated a team coaching session with a Henix customer where there were about 40 testers. Issues had been identified in the design of test cases, partly due to a lack of knowledge of the methodology, but also of possibilities offered by Squash. I was given carte blanche for 20 days to analyze their test repository, to draw conclusions, and to interview the decision-makers and managers of the different testing departments. I was thus able to define the expected use of Squash and the testing methodology, analyze the gap between the target and the findings, and build a training program to help the teams progress through regular workshops. It was very rewarding.
If you want to know more about PFS services:
You can contact Matthieu and his team directly:
