Testing the Waterhouse

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...

We can all become better testers, only some of us lack motivation, or some of us have the motivation but just tend to lose interest... One way we can tackle this, is by attempting to become a better tester one day at a time. It's much easier to tackle each day, and do something each day that makes you a better tester, than it is to say in 1 month I want to be a better tester.  Firstly, it's hard to define how you can become a better tester, but for me, one thing that would make me a better tester is to read more blogs and learn from experiences of others. With this in mind, I've made it a challenge to read at least 2 blogs a day from a testing blog feed. This is far easier than if I had set a goal to read 60 blogs a month for instance, it's also more manageable. If I don't do it one day, it's not the end of the world, but it's important to not lose heart. Also, I find it good to establish a daily habit, I like to read 2 blogs en route to work on a mo...

In light of another flop at a major championship for an English national team (Under 21s European Championship), and reading the following article on sports psychology and what sports professionals can do to be at the top of their game, it got me thinking what can a tester do to stay at the top of their game? What type of mindset is important for a tester? I find that all too often, people in testing just glide through without trying to further themselves and improve themselves. In the article above it highlights 6 ways that a sports professional can maximise their potential through the right mental attitude, I will take these and adapt them so that they can apply to a tester: Focus on success Focus on releasing successful software, (if that is the goal of the project), in fact we can make that broader by saying that we should focus on a successful project, and to be a part of that success and try and do everything you can to achieve said success.  Try not to get drawn in...