Please see my StickyMinds Blog for a new post inspired by Jeff Patton’s recent presentation to our Agile Denver user group. The Whole Team Approach isn’t just for developing the software! We need to really think Whole Company. Comments welcome!
I’ll be speaking at the Norwegian Developer Conference June 16 – 18 in Oslo. The conference puts out a free magazine which includ
es my article about Learning for Testers, along with lots of great articles from other speakers such as Jurgen Appelo, Roy Osherove and Chris Sells. The speaker lineup includes lots more exciting practitioners and experts: Mike Cohn, Brett Schuchert, Uncle Bob Martin to just name a few. If you plan to attend, please let me know, I’d love to see old friends and meet new people there!
The Software Quality Association of Denver held a workshop May 7 to share ideas about why testers need to learn, what they need to learn, and how they can learn all of that. I facilitated an enthusiastic crowd of about 80 people. The room wasn’t set up in a suitable way, but participants found creative ways to work. And creative they were. I’d like to summarize some of the outcomes.
We started by dividing into small groups to brainstorm the reasons why testers need to learn. Beyond the obvious “stay employed” and “do your job better”, some fascinating reasons came out: “To stay interested and sharp”, “self-esteem”, “curiousity”, “freedom” – I’ve always thought that job security is in your mind. If you believe you have valuable skills, you’ll know you can get a job no matter what happens. Now, that’s freedom!
Group Brainstorming Activity
Other reasons that I might not have thought of included: Help others learn, keep up with changing environments and be more flexible and adaptable, spawn new ideas. “Challenge yourself”, “Be a better contributor” – this is the attitude I want in my peers! There were several comments on the theme, “avoid reinventing the wheel” – find out what works and what doesn’t, build on previous learning and trials, make work easier and more efficient.
Another theme was “prevent stagnation”: keep your brain young, become more well-rounded, balance working hard with getting help when needed, be ready for the next opportunity, job satisfaction, and one of my favorites: “It’s fun to learn”. Well, yeah!
Our second group activity was to think of all the things we need to learn. I was gratified to see a lot of what some people call “soft skills”, what Diana Larson and Jim Shore call “essential skills”: negotiation skills, listening skills, stress management, leadership skills, management skills, team mentality, how to motivate people, conflict resolution, creative problem solving, how to work with developers, communicate without jargon, simplify concepts, how to think like a customer, politics, team dynamics. An especially intriguing item was “Who tells the truth?” It’s critical to know that, right?
Creative Use of Body and Chair for Brainstorming Surface
Flexibility and versatility were a theme here. Design patterns, programming/scripting languages, platforms, levels of abstraction, being able to speak the developers’ language were important outcomes. “Keep your brain in good learning shape” is something essential that hadn’t occurred to me before. One group noted the importance of learning estimating and planning skills. Long lists of test tools, processes, methodologies and other technical skills were also popular items on the “What to learn” lists.
This all sounds wonderful, but how do we learn all those diverse skills? Where do we find time to gain that experience? In our third group activity, the SQuAD groups came up with lots of innovative ways to learn.
One theme was trial and error. Learn from mistakes – what worked, what didn’t. Retrospectives are one way to do this. Experiment, do pilot projects, and importantly, build slack into the system so you have time to do this. A learning culture where mistakes are tolerated is a prerequisite for innovation and creativity.
Mentoring was another common theme, but a twist on this was not only to get a mentor, but to be a mentor. Mentor the tester next to you! Learn by teaching.
Collaborating within and across teams is another learning method that several groups came up with, but again with different ideas. Creating a shared space and being able to sit with people that have different skills is a great way to learn. Using wikis for collaboration is another. Pairing with other testers and with developers was suggested. Getting feedback from coworkers is another simple but effective idea. Our peers are a great resource.
If the sticky notes won't stick, brainstorm on the floor!
Participants had a lot of interest in learning about their business, learning the domain. To do this, they suggested brown bag lunches with Subject Matter Experts, using the product like a customer would, talk to experts, observe. One of my favorite ideas was “Write a manual!”
Some outcomes built on our existing skills that already help us be good testers. We’re good at asking questions, so ask! Ask followup questions. Learn about the product with exploratory testing. Do compoarison testing. Evaluate tools to learn more about them.
There are obvious online sources of information, such as webinars, podcasts, blogs and white papers. I was surprised how many groups listed “Google” and online searching as a way to learn (though it shouldn’t be surprising – we all do that all the time!) Social networking also came up a lot as a good way to get information and benefit from others’ experiences. In addition to mailing lists, we have many online communities at our disposal, such as Software Testing Club and Weekend Testing.
One group suggested applying principles from non-related areas. Our reading and learning shouldn’t be limited to testing or even software development. Inspire yourself by attending (in person or virtually) conferences such as TED: Ideas Worth Spreading.
I was gratified to see several groups suggest that we learn by doing. “Practice!” The best way to learn is just go ahead and try something.
Outcomes on Door
You can see the groups at work, and their ideas, on my Picasa site. Please take a look and think about what you will do today to learn something new.
I have LOTS to write about StarEast, but I’d like to start with the conference-within-a-conference that a group of us planned on our own. Well, I didn’t do much planning, but Matt Heusser took the lead and lots of other folks including Justin Hunter planned a couple of fun and enlightening events.
We were self-titled the “Rebel Alliance”. I don’t think we were rebelling against anything, there are just a lot of Star Wars fans in the group. (Though there was a good lightning talk suggesting good things we do rebel against). I was going to be a Bantha until someone reminded me of a gruesome scene involving one.
But I digress. We had dinner one evening, at which we even got t-shirts with a star fighter on it. So much fun to get to know people such as Yvette Francino, Shmuel Gershon, Lanette Creamer, Selena Delisie to name just a few (and how great to have lots of women!) I’ve known Adam Goucher awhile and met him at Agile 2009 (if not before), but it was great to see him and his fellow editor of Beautiful Testing, Tim Riley (who did a great keynote at the conference).
Shmuel Gershon's lightning talk
The next evening our group had our own lightning talks, which were as intriguing and creative (maybe more) than anything at the conference. Adam talked about pirates, and Lanette talked about herding cats. This photo of Shmuel presenting a new session testing tool he wrote shows how much energy the speakers had.
Jon Bach had surprising and thought-provoking exercises, as always. These are just a few examples.
At the Rebel Alliance Lightning Talks
Selena and Dan took lots of videos, I hope those will show up someplace. David Gilbert provided his own tasty home brew – what a treat! He did a good talk too, on what we’re rebelling against, and for – learning vs. pass/fail, programmer’s best pal vs. quality police.
Conferences always get my brain buzzing, just being around such smart and creative testing professionals. But being a part of this terrific group was amazing. From old friends like Janet Gregory to more recent friends such as Sean Stolberg and Dawn Cannan, to people I only knew on Twitter up to now, such as Alex Kell, to people I didn’t know at all before, like Mark Vasco - it was almost overwhelming! I wanted to talk to everyone at once!
After this experience, I suggest you consider this at your next conference: get a group of like-minded people together and plan an evening ahead of time. You’ll look forward to the conference that much more, and take exponentially more ideas home with you. And you’ll be part of a small community that hopefully will live on past the conference.
Agile testing practitioner and coach
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