Interesting Days Ahead!

On Monday, it was announced that the Dell Software Group is going to be acquired. The sale isn't final until a shareholder vote next month, so we have at least a few more months as Dell employees. After that, we don't have a lot of answers yet! The future is uncertain.

But that's true of every single day of our lives.

Most days are "normal" -- we go to work, we run errands, we love our families and friends.

Then there are those life-changing, incredibly un-normal days. A surgery, a diagnosis, a natural disaster, any day we get one of those unexpected phone calls.

We don't know when these days will happen or if they will happen at all.

Uncertainty is very much a part of our lives - we can approach this with fear or we can approach it with preparedness and a sense of adventure.

When Dell acquired us (StatSoft) in 2014, it was a great team-building exercise for my coworkers and me. We weren't sure what was going to happen, but we were going through it together. We have this shared experience and we still have conversations about those early days of transitioning to Dell. This experience made memories for all of us.

So through this uncertainty, I will do the things that we always should be doing, even on "normal" days.

Learn: Grow some new neural pathways. Get better at programming. Keep reading what is going on in the testing community and building some relationships with people I can learn from and some I can teach. Explore new testing frameworks.

Self-Care: We can't be employed ANYWHERE if we die from a heart attack. Get exercise, do the things that minimize stress. Build a community of family and friends who you can help when you're feeling strong and can draw strength from if you're down.

Stay Positive: Be a person you'd want to work with. Software testers definitely need to spend time looking at the *software* through a negative lens...but we can still actively search for good things and be vocal about them as well. Be a subtle cheerleader when your team needs it.

A Tester's Code

"When devising a strategy, she needs to take into account how well the developers test their code so she can concentrate on covering the less tested parts. She consistently checks the feedback cycle to see where it can be reduced. She looks at the length of the automated test runs and thinks of ways to reduce it; where to invest in integration tests, which give better confidence but are more costly to set up and debug; and how much manual testing is needed based on the number of automated tests."

-Gil Zilberfeld, Testing Economics, Stickyminds

Basically, be awesome.  Quick and stealthy like a ninja.  Anticipate needs and risk. Always know what your top priorities are and proactively ask the next person above you in the food chain if it's not clear. Make the product better.  Make the lives of everyone around you easier.  Be honest.  Be brave.  Be kind. 

Active Thread on the "The Abysmal State of Testing"

The abysmal state of ‘testing’ in 2016 - and what can we do about it? published by Rosie Sherry of the Software Testing Club. 

This thread has gotten a number of responses - Generally my takeaway is that we need to match our discussion with action and figure out a way to evangelize the benefits of a strong testing team.  I know there is a lot of activity in this area, but each of us testers needs a succinct, inspiring summary about what we do and why development and customers should care.

Reminds me of the excellent talk "Telling our Testing Stories" by Isabel Evans that I had the pleasure of watching on the STAREAST 2016 live stream.

It's up to us to prove our value. And to be our best (alert, curious, educated, assertive, team-player) selves so that we actually *are* of value. 

Ten Year Plaque!

Like most major milestones of my life, it's a time of reflection.

I was hired by StatSoft in April, 2006. I was so nervous for the interview and so thrilled to get the call late on a Friday afternoon that I had been offered a position.  Statistics + software + getting paid = My dream job.  It has been challenging, fun, and almost never boring.

Dell acquired StatSoft in 2014, and happily they credited us with our years of service from StatSoft for purposes of vacation time and apparently nifty plaques.

In the words of President Bartlet, "What's next?" Well, I'm glad you asked.

• Stay up to date with current trends and conversations in the software industry
• Advocate within the organization and to anyone else who will listen about software quality and strategies for achieving and maintaining quality. 
• Become proficient in Python 
• Read, read, read.  Become knowledgeable enough to have opinions and to back them up with data or examples. 
• Be proactive.  Speak up to make sure stakeholders know the relevant bits of information and my overall assessment of the status of product.  When important conversations about the product are being held, making sure I'm in the room so that I have all the information I need to make good decisions about where to focus my time. 
• Attend a software testing conference.  It will never be convenient to miss work or to be out of town, but short-term sacrifices are sometimes needed for long-term growth. 

Tulsa Agile Practitioners Meetup

Last week, I made it a priority to attend a meetup group that I had been wanting to visit for a while: 
Tulsa Agile Practitioners (TAP)

It was conducted in an Open Space format - with several topics on the wall with a person willing to lead a discussion.  Pick a topic, find a chair, sit down, listen, and talk.

The conversation could have lasted hours or days, however long the donated Chick-Fil-A supply sustained us. 

My group didn't talk directly about Agile.  We talked about software quality, approaches to advocate for the craft of constructing software, approaches to adding value that can't be automated or easily outsourced...It was nice to find a group of folks in town where Uncle Bob is mentioned casually like he's an actual relative, you overhear things like "Clean Code changed my life", and people crack wise about using Agile principles to put the meeting room tables and chairs back together to their original state. 

A+, will attend again.

UX checklist for desktop applications - Microsoft MSDN

Found this to be a fun, if perhaps overly nit-picky read.  I will cite it in the future if I need to justify a preference I have about a dialog or other UX element. 

UX checklist for desktop applications

I won!

I'm a frequent attendee of RBCS webinars.  There was a presentation on Monday titled "Why Does Software Quality Still Suck" which I listened in on (video here).  Rex Black fired another shot in the testing standards war, which I'm looking forward to hearing some context-driven responses on.
For each of Rex's webinars, an attendee is chosen by drawing to receive a free e-learning course. I won!! That's two exclamation points, indeed. So for the next three months, I'm going to immerse myself in the ISTQB Certified Tester Advanced Technical Test Analyst E-Learning training course.