Every week in software testing brings new lessons, challenges, and wins!
– Sydney Goodjoines.
I like how Sydney (@sydneygoodjoines) designed their weekly report. Check it out!
Do you capture your week in testing in visual form? How about audio or video? What creative ways do you reflect on lessons, challenges and wins? What could you try that you haven’t done so already?
As you know, we take daily text notes using Tana, which I love.
I’ve been thinking about what we could do more openly and with the community in an async way. I wonder if a weekly forum thread here for anyone to quickly share thoughts during their week, or snippets they’ve found elsewhere. Or would that be too intense? 
Since we went fully remote in 2020, my knee jerk reaction without thinking too much about it was for the team to post every morning in slack what they’re doing today so we can all be aware what everyone is up to. So it was meant to be a short term output so we stayed in touch.
That still goes on today but its grown into a more collaborative thing, where people say what they’re up to and others can jump in with “can I pair up with that”, “I can help with that if you want”, “that’d be great to share to the wider team” etc.
We don’t really do a weekly catch up, but we do a monthly team meeting. Sounds old school I know, but again that has evolved to an event that is 100% about sharing knowledge. No more stuffy reports from the Test Manager, its actually lead by the team and they add to the agenda which is either “Demo” or “Debate”. I have to give the odd stuffy update, I leave it until the end and keep it brief.
Sometimes we record the meeting if people are away, but maybe we should record it and share it with the wider team? Or invite in dev and product people into these meetings. Maybe open up slack posts? Maybe I’ve grown up ensuring that QA had a “safe space” to be open about any frustrations…but thinking about it, I don’t think that’s a thing anymore
Good topic @simon_tomes , it has got me thinking 
I know for my sanity, I write a “What I did today” post-it at the end of the day. Some days, it can feel like I accomplished nothing, but when I think about it, and write it down, I realize what I did do! Then, I write a second post-it titled “What to do tomorrow” and list where I left off. It helps keep me focused at the start of the day and I don’t feel like I have to catch up from whatever task I was on from the day before.
I feel bad that I can’t remember exactly who did this. Is it you @karentestsstuff? However, someone would occasionally post on LinkedIn what their wins were for the past week and invite the audience to share their wins. I loved this. Would love to do something like this as a community.
Hey @jmosley5,
Might that be @melissafisher’s #WinsOfTheWeek posts you’re referring to? For example.
Yes, that’s who it is! Apologies on the confusion.
I prefer Notion daily, earlier I used to write it in a notebook, but it was hard to carry everywhere.
As Notion supports almost everything it’s easy to maintain their daily logs and attach any file or screenshot as a reference if required.
From learning to testing, Notion has always been my favorite tool for my daily activities, simple UI with many features, and I can easily share it with anyone in multiple formats.
I use color to denote what is done and what was supposed to be done but not done yet.
Screenshots and screen-recording of my testing are stored in the drive provided by my organization, when the screen-recording is too large we prefer to keep it locally.
Lastly, since we use Team, so on Friday evening I review my team default calendar to see how much time I spend in meetings, and which of those meetings I can avoid in the future to save time.
I’m unfamiliar with Tana but I’ll look into it.
I don’t think it’ll be intense, I think it could be a fun way to connect and see what others do throughout the week (a week in the life). It’s motivational and inspiring, I say go for it!
I love this! I can see that you truly value your team and everyone’s time. I appreciate how you give your team various options - when there isn’t too much pressure or emphasis on “what are we working on” or having long, drawn-out meetings, it really helps with morale.
Monthly meetings with an agenda are perfectly reasonable, as they help communicate goals and areas for improvement for the team as a whole. I like how you’ve mentioned changing the formal reports format to instead emphasize the team and allow them to lead - this sounds like a team I would definitely want to be part of.
In my opinion, you don’t necessarily need to record these meetings for the wider team unless the notes would impact those who weren’t present. Occasionally, I would suggest extending an invitation to the dev and product people, with the goal of having them share insights that would benefit everyone. Just be sure to inform your team in advance so they know what to expect. You could even invite others to join for the last 30 minutes, allowing your regular meeting to flow normally while dedicating that final portion to team building, project goals, and similar collaborative discussions.
I believe the concept of a “safe space” is definitely still relevant, even if not everyone values it the same way. While some may not see it as important anymore, I feel it remains very necessary.
Yes I do exactly what you do! I write it on a long note though and then transfer for it to something cute as motivation but I don’t always make cute graphics. It definitely helps when you write things down to help jog memory in the morning.
I love the wins for the week, I think I’m going to do that next week since it’s the last week of February. Keep your eyes peeled for the post, I’d love to know your wins for this month.
I believe we talked about this on Linkedin, I’m definitely checking out Notion and I think when I clicked the link to Rahul’s Toolkit from the live event yesterday it was on Notion and looked so cool! Thanks for the feedback!
Agree 100%! I try to create todo list documents of all the tasks that I need to do during the day. Somedays JIRA is enough to manage my tasks and I don’t create a todo list to check mark. For whatever reason those days I feel I haven’t accomplished anything, however when the todo list is there as visual confirmation of all the tasks completed I actually get the feedback that I did something! Visual feedback of progress is masively important.