In sports teams it is the captain, who sets the mood for successful teams, not the superstar player, who gets the public exposure. It is often the captain who allows the superstar to play to her/his ability. Research in physical education has shown that captains of successful teams share a set of common behavioural traits that distinguishes them from unsuccessful team captains.
In this talk I will give an overview of these behavioural traits including some well-known examples from the world of sports. In addition I will relate the examples presented to the situations that we are familiar with in software development teams. Furthermore I will show opportunities for testers to help their teams become better and advance the whole team to a new level. I will show the parallels betweens sports and software development teams in this area and provide some real world examples where I encountered the behavioural traits before.Speech at the Testing United Conference Online, 5 November 2020