Testing reflections: 11 years in

It’s been a while since I’ve written on this blog. And it isn’t due to no/little activity occurring in this time. Writing dropped down the priority list and it shouldn’t have. However, I am back and aim to continue. The domain name has expired but the aims remain the same..

So, the 11 year career anniversary has passed. It even passed me by as I was on annual leave on the actual date. It’s been an interesting one. There has been plenty of change in team personnel and the wider organisation; plenty change in project scope and focus. Some advancements were made in the area of automated testing, but as I work in a hybrid role, work has often taken a backseat in terms of priorities elsewhere. 

Lately I’ve been assuming roles beyond my usual testing remit. I have stepped in as a system admin, a business analyst, a coder (yes – I committed something to the codebase that could be classed as pair programming) and scrum master, helping to nudge things along where necessary. There was no intention to step on anyone’s toes, just get stuff done and help people along the way. 

Along with onboarding internal colleagues, I have liaised with external colleagues as well (in this context – they live/work overseas) which introduced some different ways of working to the team and in particular, more testers to share expertise with. This has been quite nice – and I hope to meet some of these colleagues in person as time goes on.

Team challenges are still an ongoing concern. Speed of delivery is a major bottleneck, along with tech debt, lack of CI and the lack of dedicated team members to work towards these  aims. As good as it has been working in other realms, some things have been sacrificed in order to get projects live and functional. This needs addressing and preparatory steps have been made to work towards these aims. On a side note, meeting colleagues with common interests and motivations is great.

One key event for us was decoupling the automated test suites from the main repository. This makes sense for our future aims because:

• The programming language used isn’t the same as the test suite we’re working on
• We can now set our own criteria for PR reviewing vs asking members of the team that aren’t aware of what’s taking place
• We can now work at our own pace as a result as we become more skilled in what we do

Hopefully this will provide value in our release pipeline soon.

Outside of that, I attended a testing conference in person for the first time this year. Leeds Testing Atelier left me with a lot of food for thought, some good conversations with fellow testers, colleagues and friends. Oh and a new/different way to sketchnote which I’ll expand upon in another post. In addition, the Testbash conference next month will be an invaluable 2 days of learning, experiencing and conversation. And maybe a few casual alcoholic beverages once the talks/workshops are done!

{art of the reason I have resumed writing the blog is that I have been seeking inspiration in many aspects of life, and also looking for ways to improve things. I realised that documenting the career is important to me, hence that I need to seek more material to write about. Experience more and have more to talk about. I have testing material that has been sitting on my desk for years – let’s crack out the POMODORO and get to it!