I still have this exciting feeling even if CAST 2011 is over. What a conference!
My sort of preparation for the CAST 2011 was "You don't know what you don't know." I wanted to talk to as many test engineers as possible and learn from them. Also I wanted to absorb what those speakers are trying convey in the sessions.
If I have to summarize the conference in one word, it will be PASSION. I could feel the passion about software testing from everyone I talked to and everyone who spoke during the session. Everyone believed that software testing is a unique craft and everyone was proud of that. I was able to refresh myself from the flood of people who are just enjoy talking about and arguing about software testing. I personally thought I was a quite passionate software tester, but I was just nothing compared to them.
Here are some personal lessons which I took from CAST 2011.
1. Being a critical thinker. It is crucial part of being a good software test engineer. In any phase of software development life cycle, a tester should ask herself what is that she is doing in terms of testing. Testers should not follow the process without thinking about it. Why am I executing these test cases? Why is this testing process the most efficient and reliable? Why does this testing process take too long? Do not bear with the situation or process but try to understand why testing has to be done this way or that way. This, "being a critical thinker", reminds my early years of software testing career. I did what I was told. I did not speak up even though I hear something does not make sense to me. I preferred compromise than discussing or arguing. Never challenged senior testers about testing process or strategy. Now I hate to see people just follow the process or work without thinking about why and how.
2. Credibility. Credibility is everything for a tester. This is something we, testers, earn from project team. I think James Bach mentioned that when a tester is credible, people do not care about the metrics. I heard that a lot of companies are still checking the metrics like number of test cases or number of bugs found to measure the progress of the testing. If a tester is consider very credible for his/her testing work, would metrics like number of bugs or number of test cases become less important? If I say, "I'm confident about this application (whatever I'm testing)", would people around me (project team) take that seriously? Would other project team members want me to be in the project because my testing work is credible? I do have personal opinions about our devs and PMs. They would have the opinions about testers in our group. Yes, credibility is everything!
3. People over process. This lesson might go with critical thinking part as well. Interestingly enough, people do write test plans, document test cases, enter each test cases to test case management tools, and etc. Even for agile process, people come to daily meetings, write story cards, move sticky notes, go to retrospective meetings and etc. How many people would ask why they're doing what they are doing? It's quite a challenge when you introduce new ideas or improvement to the current process if your team has been finishing projects quite successfully. I've worked on multiple projects, sometimes worked on several projects in parallel. I believe I've never asked myself why I'm following this process. It's not a question whether the process is right or wrong. It's about a question, "why are we having this process for our testing?" Even for the test automation, why I've always believe that high percentage automation is the way we want to go? People should control the process, not the other way around.
4. Self learning/improving. What I felt from CAST 2011 self learning is not about the job hunting or staying in the job securely. It's true eager for learning to be a better test engineers. Keeping up with the technology and skills might help me being a good tester. But in my mind, self learning should come from your pure desire to be better test engineer. I noticed James Bach, Michael Bolton and others coming up with some weird buzz words for their theories or strategies on software testing. What really touched me was not those buzz words but their eagerness to learn and improve their thoughts and practice. I totally got this. There is no limit to be a better tester.
5. Care your project. Care your application. I don't think I talked about this with anybody during the conference. It just hit my mind. Caring is some sort of emotional attachment. I call application I tested as my baby. Even if I did not implement the application, I tested it. This emotional attachment is helpful for better testing. Small strange application behaviors catches your attention. Why? Because you care about it. This is just my self-thinking in the conference toilet.
OK.. I'll post context driven testing lesson for the next blog.
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