Skip to main content

Challenging yourself?



I saw this recently on an internet site I visit and it got me thinking about just how true it is...

In order to achieve our goals, we more often than not have to step outside of our comfort zone in order to achieve them.

What do you do to challenge yourself within QA?

I take on things that I don't know much about, and learn about them as I find the best way for me to learn is by doing. A good recent example of this is working with Espresso, a new API from Google for automating tests on android devices. I didn't know anything about this before I started looking at it, and whilst I'm not a pro at it, I have experience of it, I know how to use it, and I know how to write tests using it, which is what I aimed to achieve when I picked it up at first.

I'm lucky to be in a position where I can find things that challenge me on a regular basis, however I have to say, that if it ever came that I wasn't being challenged, then I would look for somewhere that was challenging me.

So, to re-ask the question, what do you do to challenge yourself with QA?




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Testers: Be more like a Super-Villain!

Who doesn't love a Super Hero? Talk to my son, and he'll tell you how much he loves them, talk to many adults and they'll say the same! Deep down, we all love to be the Super Hero, we all want to save the day! However, I want to talk about the flip side of Super Heroes, the Super Villains... I often play Imaginext with my son, and I (unfortunately?) am nearly always the Super Villain! Be it Lex Luthor, Joker, Two Face, Mr Freeze or The Riddler! These are all great characters and great Super Villains, but why would I want to write about Super Villains? A while ago where I worked, we had a few Super Heroes, people who would be able to come in and "fix" things that had broken and help deliver projects on time. We then shifted, we decided to do away with the Super Hero culture and try and prevent from being in that position in the first place, whilst we didn't go as far as wanting to hire Super Villains, it's definitely a story that has stuck with me and t...

QA is Awesome!

No real point to this post other than I have had the song stuck in my head and figured I could change it slightly and quite easily make QA is Awesome! Oh and I haven't even seen the movie all the way through! But for some reason that song is incredibly catchy! Not much point to this post in fact, just thought I'd put it out there :)

Measuring QA Key Skills and Competencies

I have been thinking about how I can help encourage self improvement within my team, as I understand it, everyone wants to improve, it's just that often there are a number of things that hold people back. I believe one of these things that hold people back are around identifying skills that they are perhaps weak in or that they could/should improve on. So I thought about how I can help tackle that problem. One solution that I want to try with people is to identify the key skills for a QA, what key skills should every QA have, or at least what key skills make up a good QA? If I can identify these then I can start helping people identify if they are lacking in an area. Sure there is a competency matrix that we have, but it has things like "An excellent understanding of XXX", it's often very difficult to quantify what an excellent understanding actually is. So I sat down and came up with the following key skills: OOP Test Documentation Manual Testing Automated...