This is a presentation that I gave earlier this year to group of new testers, hoping to guide them on how to gave a great testing career.
To help, give something back to the community, I recently gave a presentation at the 2011 ignite software testing conference in Sydney. Here is an updated version of that presentation.
The Testing Stax Control Grabber is now available for download from Codeplex.
What is this thing ?
This is a generator that tries to fast track the creation of your stax control classes. To use, open internet explorer at the page you want to capture, enter a namespace and drag the cursor onto the page. You will be prompted to save the CS file to disk. The source code for the grabber will also soon be available as well on the Codeplex site under tools.
The first, and early release of testing stax is now available, very much a work in progress, The Parking calculator sample is a full end-to-end stack which uses to drive an Australianised version of parkcalc.
Full walk though video to come shortly. You can download the sample from codeplex here.
The act of changing jobs is interesting. It makes you stop and think what, at it’s core, your career is all about.
I thought that my career was all about testing.
It is, but it is about something more profound than that as well.
It’s about change. Working as a testing consultant, it was pretty obvious that you were performing one of two roles. Putting a bum on a seat, and filling a headcount that was required to do a task, or you are there to effect change.
Now nobody calls it that, they call it process improvement, or implementing a methodology, but the type of work that I have done in the past is all about implementing change.
- Changing from crappy commercial testing tools to better, open source or home grown ones.
- Changing the way that people report on their testing.
- Changing developers minds so that they understand that letting testers review EVERY check in actually makes life EASIER.
- Changing the start of a project from a waste of time creating plans are never used or followed to something that adds value.
- Changing customers minds about fixing a really trivial bug so that they can actually hit their ship date.
- Changing young pliable minds so they understand that there IS a career in software testing in Australia, and it is full of great like minded people.
So as I see it, there are two things that can change. Either YOU can change to follow the way a company operates, or you can act as an agent of change to improve the way that things are done to produce better outcomes.
You don’t need expensive tools. You don’t need management approval. You don’t need some complex testing process.
All it takes is some knowledge, chutzpa and passion for your craft.
Are YOU ready, to be an agent of change?