This is an easy question, but the answer is not short.
I recently read a tweet or short notice about what makes a good tester.
1. he smiles when working
2. he adds to the community
I can’t remeber the source. If anyone reads this and remembers, please tell me, I really want to give credit and state this correct.
Smiling is something that is hard to achieve at the moment, but this will come back some day, I’m sure.
So we still have the community. Since I changed companies by the end of last year, I have won a little bit of time every day in the commuter train. And I like to read all the blogs and articles, tweets and comments of the testing community.
My new job as a QA lead makes me think a lot about different aspects of testing, which is absolutley fantastic. I haven’t added much to my tester knowledge since my ISTQB Test Manager course late in 2005 and a two-day seminar from Hans Schäfer about risk-based test management in summer of 2006. I was working as a test manager from 2008 until end of last year. So I got mainly project management training. But my new job brings me back into the tester role. So I have to learn testing methods, techniques and all that stuff again. And I see now, that I haven’t learned much in my time as a tester from 2003 until 2007.
Reading / Learning / Thinking about all the testing stuff is great, and I enjoy it every day. And I want to give back to the community and share my testing experience with those who are willing to read it.
Plus, one benefit from writing about it is, that I rethink a topic more often and come to a better conclusion for myself.
For my new company I created a test strategy for the product I’m the responsible QA lead for. And I wrote over a period of two weeks on the set of slides while improving them bit by bit. I discussed it with my test manager and with a test specialist from another product/project and improved it further. But I was still missing the big questions, testing my strategy.
These questions finally came in the presentation. And I had a rather good answer for all of them, because I was prepared in every little bit of my strategy, why I want to do it this way, and why other ways are not as good. I’m really proud of this strategy. I flipped through the pages yesterday, about 2 months after the presentation and said, “yes, that’s still the right way”.
To summarize, why I started this blog. I want to add to the community, I want to have the chance to think more about certain topics by writing about them, and I want to discuss those topics with you. So please, use the comments to challenge my statements. I’m glad for every constructive feedback I can get.
Patrick
Test Pappy 