read at least one tester book (I have ordered James Bachās Lessons Learned in Software Testing: A Context-Driven Approach)
attend as many of the Belfast Minstry of Testing meetups as I can
improve my business knowledge a LOT (I just moved jobs so am learning lots about the new business)
bring more technical testing into the business as we have very little right now (automated functional testing and API testing are definitely required)
persuade the business to hire more testers as otherwise I as the sole tester will just be swamped with manual functional testing and wonāt have time for to any automation
act as mentor to any tester new hires who are at a more junior level
upskill on accessibility testing as the business has a gap there and I have very little knowledge of it right now
Think thatāll do me and Iāll be lucky if I get a majority of it done
Ditto, actually! This is something Iām doing at work though which is why I left it off my original list above. Iām looking forward to the accessibility power hourā¦
For this year I want to improve my coding and test automation skills.
Plan for the next year is to learn more about AppSec and DevOps, maybe transition to some junior DevOps position if all goes well.
After three and a half years in my first job as a tester, Iām moving to a new company. Iāll be going from working with one other tester, to a test team of 50 plus people! Plus Iām moving from the public to the private sector. So itāll be a massive change for me.
Short to medium term goals:
Gain as much knowledge as possible about the business Iāll be working for.
Improve C#, PowerShell and SQL skills.
Learn how to use Docker.
Learn more about Azure.
Get stuck into as much exploratory testing as possible.
Long term goals:
Gain experience of mentoring and managing junior testers.
@tester007 About 10 months ago, I became Head of my QA department. In an uncharacteristically bold move for me, as they were looking at hiring one, and theyād asked me to interview new QA candidates, I asked if it could be me. Iāve been lucky in that the one junior tester I recruited hasnāt needed much mentoring, and heās become a much loved and respected member of the company, which is something that makes me immensely proud (hopefully youāll get to experience that). Heading up a team can be both satisfying and stressful, but itās been more the former than the latter for me. I wish you all the luck in attaining that mentoring and recruiting role.
The James Bach et al book I mentionewd above is really, REALLY helpful. Itās exactly the kind of book I like: can read it in bite size chunks, it challenges you to think, it is relevant, it is practical.
I think Iām going to commit to reading another ā¦ probably something āagileyā.
Hope everyone else is making progress. I think this is the key point as the next 12m will happen fast, so making progress on the career goals day-to-day or week-to-week is so important.
Never read that one, but will add it to my shortlist, thanks! I once knew a guy who had ā¦ he loved saying about everything we presented to him (he was my manager), how can we make that simpler as āitās making me thinkā, i.e. we need to improve what we produced to make it more like the book.
I completed my PERSONAL goal of reading the James Bach book and endeavouring to get my company to embrace some of its ideas so we can improve software testing and off the back of that, our quality. However, in terms of my BUSINESS goals, no such joy! Itās not easy to encourage change in a business unless it wants to change, itās a bit of a chicken vs egg situation. Per the advice in Lisa Crispinās book āAgile Testingā (the reading of which is another PERSONAL goal I achieved), sometimes you have to let them (i.e. the organization) feel the pain. I think that will be a goal for this year: to point out quality issues and costs to try to get the idea to be embraced that there is a solution to this: upping the amount of and quality of the software testing we perform as opposed to trying to get stuff to production as quickly as possible.