When you think of a bounty, do you think of Dog the Bounty Hunter, a reality series featuring a biker dude with a bad mullet, or maybe Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino’s latest film about a slave-turned-bounty-hunter? Shaun Bradshaw doesn’t have a mullet and isn’t a movie star, but he has witnessed his fair share of bounty-style incentives used to motivate test teams to find more bugs, in hopes of improving software quality. But bounties can backfire—commonly referred to as the Cobra Effect—and create tension within a development organization without improving software quality. Join Shaun as he discusses alternate merit-based methods that can add a fresh take on incentivized testing and productivity. Learn why you should keep bonuses a surprise. Start to reward collaboration rather than competition. Understand how to use both subjective and objective measurements in your favor, and implement a rewards system that is “safe to fail.” Shaun explains these concepts and more in “The Bounty Conundrum.”

1. K5
Keynote
10/3/2013 4:15:00 PM
"The Bounty Conundrum:
Incentives for Testing"
Presented by:
Shaun Bradshaw
Zenergy Technologies
Brought to you by:
340 Corporate Way, Suite 300, Orange Park, FL 32073
888-268-8770 ∙ 904-278-0524 ∙ sqeinfo@sqe.com ∙ www.sqe.com

2. Shaun Bradshaw
Zenergy Technologies, Inc.
For the past fifteen years Shaun Bradshaw has helped clients improve the quality of their
software by advising, instructing, and mentoring them in QA and test process improvement. His
focus on effective testing and test management techniques, as well as practical metric
implementations, creates demand for him as a consultant and frequent speaker at major QA
and testing conferences. Shaun is well known for his topics on test metrics, the S-Curve, and
the Zero Bug Bounce.

3. The Bounty Conundrum:
Incentives for Testing
Shaun Bradshaw
shaun.bradshaw@zenergytechnologies.com
What is a bounty incentive?
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4. The Cobra Effect
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Rat Tails for Ca$h
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5. Solving traffic congestion in Mexico?
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Google offers a bounty!
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6. Mozilla does too!
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NOT what we want to incentivize…
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7. A better approach for incentivizing teams
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Here’s how it works…
Each team member has “virtual
tokens” to give their teammates
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8. All tokens must be given away and track who
gets the tokens each week
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At the end of the month/iteration, announce
the winner
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9. Perform a retrospective and improve the system
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Experimented with one of our teams
Iteration 1: Tokens can be given for any reason
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10. Iteration 2: Team gave tokens based on
contributions to client success
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Software Peace Of Mind In Action
Iteration 3: Team gave tokens based on
preparing for new team members
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11. Iteration 4: Team gave tokens based on
collaboration
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6 Rules for Rewards
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12. Questions?
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References
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Adams, S. Search.dilbert.com. 2004. Minivan on Dilbert.com.
[online] Available at: http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Minivan
[Accessed: 16 Aug 2013].
Appelo, J. 2013. Merit Money. [online] Available at:
http://www.management30.com/workout/merit-money/ [Accessed:
16 Aug 2013].
Dubner, S. 2012. The Cobra Effect, Freakonomics Radio Podcast.
[podcast] October 11. Available at:
http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/10/11/the-cobra-effect-a-newfreakonomics-radio-podcast/ [Accessed: 10/17/2012].
Kirk, J. InfoWorld. 2013. Bug bounty programs provide strong value
for Google, Mozilla. [online] Available at:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/security/bug-bounty-programs-providestrong-value-google-mozilla-222373 [Accessed: 16 Aug 2013].
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