August 13, 2014

CAST 2014 - DAY 2

There were a lot of great talks today. I was really impressed with all of the Per Scholas graduates that I met today. If you work in testing in the New York Tri-State area and need testers, these men and ladies are top notch.  I could talk about the talks that I saw today, and I will. I've decided to do a blog post about each one and have an actionable from each talk that I'll blog about later, but today I just want to talk about the final Keynote.

The Final keynote was by Matt Heusser, and it was about the state of testing.  While I don't agree with every thing he said, his desire to inspire us to go out and address the challenges of spreading the work of good testing was evident. There was an important conversation that happened during open season.  The audience started to talk about where people in testing were going, and why they were leaving the profession. I understand that this is their experience, but it's not mine.

My experience is that passion is infects. If you haven't met me in person yet, I tend to be very passionate about testing and it comes out when I talk about it. Software Testing is my passion, and my carer. I will talk to anyone about it, and every one. I introduce my self as a Professional Software Tester, and I extol the virtues of software being developed with Professional Software Testers involved from design through to delivery.

I've been a Software Tester and a Test Lead for just over 8 years now. This started after I did two degrees, in Software Engineering and Computer Science, and I found that while I could design and develop, I was much better at Testing. Since that time, I have trained many people to be testers and inspired a few to become testers from other roles. All most all of the people that I have worked with in eight years as testers are still in testing. So I ask myself, why? Why when other are seeing attrition have I seen soo little.

I think it boils down to passion. I work hard, I learn hard and I encourage others to do so. I do it with people at work, I do it with members of my testing community. It's why I lead the Saskatoon Testing Discussion Group. I ensure that testers that work with me have mentors and access to opportunities to learn. If all employees had this let alone testers, there would be happier workplaces.

1 comment:

  1. "If you haven't met me in person yet, I tend to be very passionate about testing and it comes out when I talk about it."
    I have, you are, and it does!

    ReplyDelete