2017 on Heather Reid's Blog

When you try to stop testing…..you end up testing anyway

Sun, 10 Dec 2017 21:16:17 +0000

This blog was originally posted on Medium.

You can’t really escape technology nowadays without a pretty big conscious effort to do so, well, not in my line of work anyway. I take notions sometimes to cut down on tech, some days I switch off my phone and avoid the TV for the day. Other days I avoid pieces of technology that are linked to my job and instead try to focus more on ones that allow me to connect with my friends e.g. use Snapchat over Slack, Facebook over Twitter.

On one particular weekend I decided to try this, I ended up really frustrated with the world around me for not testing or thinking about their users and the stuff they put out there.

Culprit Number 1 #

I had ordered a Christmas present for my niece. I received an email from the company I ordered it from that contained this:

Tracking link out of service 🤔

This was the only information contained in an email from a “donotreply@seller.com” email address. This is pretty useless information considering it’s the only email I received containing tracking information about my parcel. Do people not test their notification emails?

This isn’t the first email of its type that I’ve received. It became a bit of an obsession with me in my last job to check all of the email notifications we were sending customers and 9 times out of 10 I would find an issue like the one above.

Culprit Number 2 #

While I was in my emails, I decided I’d do a bit of de-cluttering. I had an email from Farrow and Ball (never signed up to them but there you go). When I clicked “Unsubscribe” I was taken to this page:

Why is this not secure?

Strange, it’s not secured and it didn’t have my email recognised (not my first time to unsubscribe from stuff). It wasn’t consistent with my expectations of what an unsubscribe option should do….so I tested it:

Beautiful error message isn’t it?

and then I stopped because that hurt my eyes. Instead I marked the email as spam for future so I can delete en masse.

I know as marketers, you probably don’t want people to unsubscribe from your mailing list but it is going to happen. Whatever chance you had of that person coming back to you is limited when you further anger them with a bad experience.

Culprit Number 3 #

We decided to spend the day at the Giant’s Causeway and check out the Dark Hedges on the way back. Some of you may have heard the recent news that the road the Dark Hedges are on has been closed to traffic. Not knowing exactly where it was, not having a great phone signal in the area and Google maps not really liking those small roads, we accidentally turned on to the road.

About 100 yards down it we came to a sign.

Ref: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/traffic-signs

which also had a sign under it about exceptions (I believe it said “Except for access”). This was the only indication that we had accidentally turned on to a closed road. There was nothing before you turned to say it was closed. Given that the large proportion of visitors to this area are tourists, it seemed to me to be an odd location for a sign to say you weren’t meant to be on the road. We hightailed it off the road only to return on foot and see a huge tour bus parked right in the middle of the hedges, I guess they didn’t see the signs either?

Afterwards I discussed this with one of my previous managers who lives in the area. I thought about the different user types that might be visiting this location. Imagine being an American tourist for example. You’re driving on a different side of the road. You probably haven’t experienced roads this narrow before. Then you get to the location and the signage is confusing. It’s no wonder that other cars made the same mistake we did.

Culprit Number 4 #

This wasn’t as bad as some of the others. It was more of an oddity really from Netflix. When we got home from the trip to the Causeway we thought we’d watch a film. I searched for The BFG…..Netflix’s top suggestion for things similar to the BFG was Breaking Bad.

So according to Netflix: Breaking Bad is similar to The BFG 🤔
— Heather Reid (@heather_reiduff) November 18, 2017

It’s obviously something to do with their algorithms but it’s a bit of a strange one. I’d like to hope that if you were searching in the “Kids” user group, you wouldn’t get the same suggestion. I decided to test this too. I got “James and the Giant Peach” and “Matilda” as suggestions, much more in line with what I would have expected.

Culprit Number 5 #

I had a bit of a rant about this one on Twitter as I was navigating through the site.

In avoiding as many stores as possible over Christmas I'm learning which ones have sites that don't support #mobile, definitely haven't done #performance testing (of any kind) & need to update their SSL certificates 🤦
— Heather Reid (@heather_reiduff) November 19, 2017

If you want to relive my experience, check out the website that ticked most of the boxes.

When I was on this site previously, I was the distracted user. I was looking for ideas but also possibly watching TV or getting food ready or something else. I would click on a link and not notice how long it took to load. I would click on the back button but not pay attention for so long that I forgot where that button was meant to take me so just accepted the page I landed on. This time, I was the determined user. I knew what I wanted to look up or at least the section I wanted to look in. As time passed, I gave up on the site. The response times and overall usability were terrible so I took my business elsewhere.

I then thought: imagine being a parent trying to order things for your children for Christmas. You’d probably crack up trying to use the site!

Culprit Number 6 #

This one I actually discussed with my dad afterwards. He’s not terrible at tech to be fair to him but he wouldn’t know some of the stuff I would know, so a regular user. I clicked on a link shared by a friend on Facebook, I can’t remember exactly what it was because I’ve been procrastinating writing this blog for a while. I got a huge warning on my phone letting me know that the security certificate had expired and my browser wasn’t going to let me continue.

To me, I know what this means. To my dad he knows that it sounds bad, probably isn’t great but still wants to see the page because he clicked on it for a reason. When we talked about this, he raised some interesting points “Anyone can create a website now, they might not know what they have to do to make that website reach certain standards but I guess that’s the internet”. “Sure isn’t that how the hackers get half their information? People like me not knowing what things mean online.” He’s right, I’ve just come to expect certain things from interactions online but really it’s a bit of a cesspool for some terrible stuff too.

We can’t expect that all users of the internet are well experienced users. We can hope, but we can’t expect that they are and we need to test for those users too.

Culprit Number 7 #

Myself and my husband regularly watch the vlogger Shonduras. At the end of the weekend, we were watching a video of Shauns. My husbands phone was showing a battery level of 50%, 2 minutes into the video the phone turned off! Probably more of a hardware problem but it’s a regular occurrence with his phone. Do phone manufacturers test this stuff?

The Final Culprit #

Oh Snapchat….ever forgotten your password on it? Ever tried to use an asterisk in the new password you’re setting and wondered why you can’t continue and why you’re getting no error messages even when the password seems to comply with the guidelines? This happened my mum when we were helping her set her new phone up.

She started as the patient user “Oh damn can’t think of my password, silly me. I must set a new one.” As time went by neither her nor I were the patient users. Snapchats password guidelines on the app say that your password must be over 8 characters long and may contain special characters. There’s no link out to their site from this and even looking on their site, it seems pretty straightforward.

Snapchats password tips as of 9-Dec-17

My mum ended up writing her password out for me on a page. I saw an asterisk on the page and thought “They’ve hardly excluded those from the special character consideration?” We replaced it with an exclamation mark and password reset was successful. Unnecessarily stressful process as a user!

Moral Of The Story #

I tried to reduce my use of tech over one weekend. I tried to focus on my family and friends more. What I learned is, no matter where I go or what I’m trying to do, be it order Christmas presents for loved ones abroad, visit some tourist attractions with family or de-clutter my emails, I will never be able to stop testing.

Community Boss So Far

Fri, 17 Nov 2017 20:22:17 +0000

This blog was originally posted on Medium.

It’s hard to believe that just over 3 months ago I became Community Boss for Ministry of Testing. It’s been a crazy start but so much fun!

When I finished the last post, I said I’d try to give more insight about what the job actually entails. As Beren Van Daele said to me just last week “So much of what you do goes on in the shadows”, it can seem on the outside that I’m not actually doing work. This isn’t something I’m concerned about. I’m not in this for me. Working away in the shadows to help an awesome community is what most of us at Ministry of Testing do and love doing. So what’s going on in the shadows?

Writing for Ministry of Testing #

I’m not doing this so much any more. I do have some ideas on the back burner that I plan to write about. For now I’m not writing so much as reviewing the writing done by other people. In Rosie’s brief break, I was/am the final step to reviewing articles. It feels a bit scary.

I know Mel and Sarah have reviewed the articles and edited and given suggestions through many rounds but when you’re taking the place of the BossBoss for a while, your brain thinks “Don’t screw this up” and “What would Rosie think?”. It took me a while (and a lot of talking to Sarah) to realise I’m me. I shouldn’t try to be Rosie. Rosie trusted me to do this job so she must like the way I approach things, right?

The great thing about reviewing the articles now though is I actually get to read them all. Before I started, I was drowning in a backlog of articles on the Dojo that I wanted to read but wasn’t making time for. Reviewing also gives me the benefit of having longer to think about a Club post for the article and generate discussion around it.

The Club #

This is still my baby. My project that I’m working with heaps of people to improve. I’m still posting on the Club but now I have more time to encourage others to post there too. I’m not always acting as the voice for others and this is amazing. I’ve helped people who never posted on the Club before by reviewing their posts with them and advising them of any other questions they could add to help them get answers. This also showed me that we needed a bit of a “How to” section on the Club so I’ve started that and am continually adding to it.

There’s some new things on the Club now like a Pro Dojo only members section. This is crucial for our next steps with the Dojo. It’s providing an interactive learning space for courses. I’m also approaching people about this for feedback. How are you finding it? Could we do better?

There’s also a great bunch of people contributing on the Club so we decided why not reward them? We’re now picking a ninja of the month who contributes in many ways to the discussions on the Club.

TestBashes #

This has probably been one of the bigger learning curves for me so far.

When I co-organised a TestBash, Richard did a lot of behind the scenes stuff. I’m now learning all of that from him. How to set up the ticketing system, add events to the website and add speakers to the website. We also decided to experiment with some things on the ticketing system like asking people at the point of sale if they have any dietary requirements, what their t-shirt size is and what workshops they want to do.

Manchester was my first TestBash since officially becoming a Boss at MoT. Being at TestBash Manchester was intense. I felt like I was “On” all of the time. I would get up at 7am, check Twitter, Slack and emails to see if there was anything I needed to action or add to Trello. I’d then attend the events for the day, go to dinner with folks from the community, attends socials and introduce people, go back to my hotel room and check Twitter, Slack and emails all over again.

It was intense but rewarding. I met people new to testing and people I’d only known on Slack. I was able to introduce people with similar interests. Point people in the direction of others with job openings they might be interested in. Marianne Duijst really helped me to keep going with the hug and feedback she gave me on the Saturday. I was helping people feel that it was safe to share by sharing myself. This is a big part of being a Community Boss!

I was so glad to see my hotel room on the Saturday night though with a waterfall shower, new carpet and the history of magic on the TV. It wasn’t something I had even looked at, I just needed a hotel for that night so booked the cheapest I could find. It was an awesome surprise! My fitbit tells me I slept for 11 hours and 42 minutes that night. Damn was it needed. They don’t call it #RestBash for no reason!

Online Forums #

This is where I lurk or, as someone on Testers.chat said “Heather is omnipresent”. I’m always checking Slack (6 groups in total), Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, the Club, Stack Overflow, Flipboard. My goal with this is not only to share, promote and discuss Ministry of Testing content but also to promote content that others in the community are sharing or talking about.

If a post or project from someone in the community would help one of these people out, I share the love. If we there’s some really cool stuff on any of the platforms, I work with Áine to make sure that we really share the love anywhere we can (social media, news letters, other forums).

The Calendar #

I was the point of contact for people to sponsor a charity calendar to help save Linnea Nordström. I joined long after the initial steps had been taken but the spirit involved really was something to be proud of. This has been such a rewarding project to work on. The way the community came together to not only create this calendar but also sponsor it was amazing to see.

Finding my mojo #

It’s been difficult to get into the groove and scheduling of this job. I don’t do set hours per week so much as tasks to achieve and always keeping my eyes open. That’s great but it also means I need to organise myself better. I need to plan. When most of your job could be done on your mobile phone it can become difficult to just switch off too.

I still haven’t fully found the mojo but I’m getting there. I’ve learned not to completely plan out an entire week hour by hour. When I do that it never works out and then I get anxious about plans that haven’t worked. Instead I plan

Where I’m going to be working (my house, somewhere else with family, a different city)
My tasks to achieve for the week (I write a list so the progress is visually represented)
My me time for the week (e.g. I would like to go to yoga once this week or I want to watch this film with my husband)
Times I definitely know I’m going to be offline & let the other Bosses know

This is all still a work in progress. I definitely don’t have the balance perfect or even halfway perfect but I’m trying different things.

I try to plan tomorrow each day. So what task would I like to achieve and when do I want to be online. If there’s a masterclass then I take a big break in the middle of the day and spend more time online later on. Some days working right through the day works and makes sense. Other days being online for a few hours here and there is better. A lot of it depends too on the timezones of people you need to interact with on that day.

The biggest thing I’ve learned (and this may sound crazy) is feedback. Get feedback from people and give feedback to people. How could you help them better? How could they help you better? What did either of us do that wasn’t great? Feedback, learn, try new things, iterate.

Becoming a Community Boss

Mon, 25 Sep 2017 20:33:03 +0000

This blog was originally posted on Medium.

In the beginning #

Back in September 2015 I officially became a software tester. Before that I had been dabbling in it while also developing a product within the company I worked for at the time. We were moving from an installable product to a cloud based one and a dedicated tester was highly recommended by many of the companies we had consulting with us up to this point.

I started googling for somewhere to get started. There was a lot of iteration involved. Try one site, get nowhere or run in circles, strike it off the list then move on to the next site. Finally I found Ministry of Testing. I wasn’t skipping past this site as quick as previous ones. The content was getting me somewhere.

Getting to TestBash #

I noticed on the website that there was a conference coming up called TestBash. I’ve written about this previously. I asked the people we had contracting with us if they’d heard about it. They had and said it would be great to go to. This wasn’t enough to convince my bosses boss.

I went out on a limb and decided to email Rosie Sherry asking for help convincing work to send me. It’s been a while now so I don’t have the exact email thread but it worked! When I came back my boss said he’d never seen me so energised about something.

It was pretty easy to convince work to send me to TestBash Manchester then!

Writing for Ministry of Testing #

The next step in the journey seems like it comes after the one that follows but it actually started long before that. A call went out on the Ministry of Testing Slack channel asking for people interested in writing to get in touch.

What followed was months of work with Melissa Eaden to publish 30 Things Every New Software Tester Should Learn. I’ve written about the experience previously for the Life at The Ministry of Testing publication. One article led to another and we published Gamifying Your Software Testing Career & Workplace this year. I think I’ve finally found my writing voice!

Organising a TestBash #

TinyTestBash Belfast was announced before any of my writing pieces were published but they ran in parallel. It was yet another wonderful step in my journey with Ministry of Testing. When Belfast was over I joined the organising group for TestBash Dublin. I had most definitely found something I enjoyed doing.

The Club #

I approached Rosie and asked if there was any more ways to get involved with Ministry of Testing. I was really enjoying engaging with the community. I was learning all the time and I wanted to help others have a similar experience to me.

The Club had just started up to replace the Software Testing Club platform. My task was to help encourage some conversations on there, particularly ones that cropped up frequently in the community such as certifications and regression testing. I also worked towards making the Club a place where people felt safe to ask questions, just as they do in the slack channels.

Community Boss #

When you put all of the above down on paper, my current move makes sense. Many people had guessed what was to come when they saw a Tweet from Rosie https://twitter.com/rosiesherry/status/904673793678946304

I still get a stupid grin on my face when I think back to the message from Richard and Rosie “Heather, will you come work with us?”.

To me, it’s all still a bit surreal! I get to do work that doesn’t feel like work because it’s something that I enjoy doing. A long time ago myself and a good friend of mine Neill were in stressful work situations. We talked about what our dream job would be. Yep this sounds corny as hell but Neill reminded me about this when I was offered this job. I said my dream job would be to work with Ministry of Testing helping them to help people who were in our situations at the time and trying to get out. I also wanted to help people learn because I’d found so many sites that steered me down the wrong track in my early career.

So what will being a Community Boss entail? All of the above that I have been doing but much more concentrated. I’ll be helping people get answers to their questions, finding content that helps them learn and helping out at events.

Once I’ve been in the job a while I’ll post a bit more insight about what it entails but for now, from the lady who went out on a limb and asked for help all that time ago, I look forward to meeting you all on the next leg of my journey.

Google Maps Holiday

Fri, 04 Aug 2017 20:40:07 +0000

This blog was originally posted on Medium.

Have you ever sat at your desk and found yourself dreaming of being on holiday somewhere?

You have definitely sat there stressing about something you were working on. You think “I can’t get up because I have to fix this”.

A coworker of mine a few years ago offered me a free and easy solution to this “Go on a Google maps holiday”. You’re already at your desk, chances are you have your browser open. Open another tab and type in Google maps. Allow yourself a minimum of 5 minutes for this.

The Planner #

You might have a bucket list of places you want to visit or places you’ve been before that you want to return to. Perhaps you’re lucky enough to have an actual holiday coming up and you want to check it out. Whatever the reason, you have a plan when you open maps of what you want to see.

Find one of those places on the map, zoom in, go to street view and enjoy wandering around taking the sights in. Make sure to set yourself an alarm because you can forget that you’re actually at your desk!

The Wanderer #

There doesn’t need to be a plan to the virtual holiday, you can wander too! A fun way to do this is close your eyes, move your mouse around the screen until you decide to stop, drop a pin and open your eyes. Start wandering around in street view where you’ve dropped your pin (provided it isn’t the middle of the ocean).

I’ve discovered some wonderful spots this way: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Burma, Iceland and Stockholm to name a few.

I’ve shared this when I interviewed with my last company. I was asked something along the lines of “How do you deal with stress?”. They definitely weren’t expecting me to reply with “Going on a Google maps holiday”! It’s something that stuck with anyone that was in the company when I started and has come in handy over the years when there were stressful situations.

The next time you see someone looking stressed in work, tell them about the Google maps holiday way of relaxing.

Sharing Helps Us Learn

Thu, 01 Jun 2017 20:43:24 +0000

This blog was originally posted on Medium.

Simon Tomes recently spoke at TestBash Belfast. There was one line he said that made me instantly think “YES! Exactly that.” I’ve been mulling the line over, trying to put thoughts to it ever since.

“The more I shared the more I learned.”

I’m going to try to explain why that line means so much to me and why I think you need to think long and hard about it too.

I joined the Ministry of Testing Slack about a year and a half ago. I was an introverted newbie tester looking for help. I was also terrified to ask for it in case I asked a stupid question or the wrong person a stupid question.

Fast forward about 6 months: I had attended TestBash Brighton and met Andrew Morton. We got chatting on Slack after that about how I wished for a good testing community in Belfast. He said something along the lines of “Funny you should mention that, there’s a guy called Neill Boyd in another Slack group looking to set up a meetup for Belfast.” I managed to join that Slack and get talking to Neill.

I attended the first meetup of NI Testers and met some amazing people. I even joined the group of organisers! I shared I wanted something like this in Belfast and learned it was actually in the pipeline. I’m still learning about how to grow and engage that community but I’m learning with the community here. They share what they like/dislike/would like to see in the future and we work to try to make that happen.

Help and be helped #

Someone shared with me at one of the meetups around TestBash Belfast that they were struggling to move jobs and they felt a bit stuck in the domain they were testing in. We had a really long chat about the possible avenues this person could go down to expand their options. In the end a lot of it came back to sharing: come to a meetup, join a Slack, share that you have a problem and the community will help you learn.

I won’t reiterate the details of my Dynamic tables in automation post but again, I shared that I had a problem, the community probed that problem a bit and I started to learn. I learned that it wasn’t a stupid question. I also learned that I knew more than I thought I did. I gained two mentors with Richard Bradshaw and Andrew, I managed to make a difference with a bottleneck in my company.

So many of us have impostor syndrome or feel like we’ll be asking a silly question or taking up someones time. My message to you would be exactly the same as Simon’s, the more you share the more you will learn. The testing community are a great and vast bunch of people. Someone out there will know how to help or advise you or they will know a person who can.

Don’t be afraid to share your problems. Don’t be afraid to share your learnings so others can learn from you. You never know who you’ll inspire! There are so many mediums you can use to share your problems and look for help: Slack, Twitter, LinkedIn, Meetups, forums like The Club, the list goes on.

Get out there, dip your toes, engage, share something and see what you learn.

In my situation in work this is also applicable. How many of us sit there thinking “Shit shit shit I don’t know what’s going on with this”? Don’t be afraid to put your hand up and ask to go back over something or say you don’t know. When it comes to testing, be confident sharing what you’ve discovered. You and your team will learn something valuable.

Now go be the person who can say “The more I shared the more I learned”.

Organising a TinyTestBash

Tue, 23 May 2017 20:49:47 +0000

This blog was originally posted on Medium.

I’ve been pretty quiet on the blogging front recently. There have been multiple reasons for this, one of them being the amazing honour of being part of the organising team for TinyTestBash Belfast. I want to shed some light on what the experience was like for me.

I remember when Richard Bradshaw first started the group message with myself, Hugh and Neill asking us if we would be interested in organising a TestBash. I was so excited! It’s an unusual feeling when someone you respect feels like they can trust you enough with something like this. I remember jumping the gun with swag ideas, social ideas and other such things. My mind was racing with all of the wonderful possibilities.

The three of us had been involved with the testing community in Belfast for a while, some longer than others. We had seen the amazing potential that there was here. We wanted to encourage that. From the beginning, we agreed this was not to be on the scale of other TestBashes. The purpose of TinyTestBash Belfast was to encourage the local community and give new speakers a chance to take to the stage.

The process was not plain sailing. We were new to this, we never claimed to be perfect but we had the enthusiasm to try. We also had both Rosie and Richard to mentor us through. They are patient mentors and when we felt we were out of our depth, they helped guide us rather than do it for us.

The biggest hurdle for us was choosing the speakers. Our decisions were questioned a lot. We retrospected over and over. Had we made the right decisions? Were we keeping the balance of new speakers and speakers based on this fine island? Had we a good diverse range of speakers? It’s a difficult place to imagine yourself until you are in it. We had made our decisions and explained our reasoning to Richard and Rosie. They were the external impartial mentors for this. They questioned us too. I would say that every speaker on the schedule appeared there after a good healthy discussion about each. These decisions were not made lightly.

Of our line up we had two first time speakers. There were 3 speakers based on this fine island of ours. We also had 3 wonderful women speak. This is a great ratio for our first event we feel, certainly comparative to other conferences. It’s absolutely something we care about, and will be factoring in to future events. Best and most positive of all for me in this process was that every speaker we picked in the beginning said yes.

Ticket sales were slow until the last minute which made this quite stressful. Experience had a big part to play here, Richard and Rosie reassured us over and over that we would be OK. The magic number to hit was 80. We got to 50 and we were hopeful. It felt like it took forever to get from 60 to 70! With just short of 2 months to go to the event we finally hit 80. We didn’t take the feet off the accelerator then but we felt more relaxed about it. In the end there were 92 attendees (including speakers and staff). I think this is an amazing achievement for the first of this kind in Belfast. From the very first ticket sale to the last I was bursting with pride!

As we neared the date for TestBash, Rosie let us know that she wouldn’t be attending. This felt like a blow. It would be her first TestBash not to attend. I realised what it really meant was she trusted us and Richard enough to handle the day without her. In a sense, this removed the safety net. In another way I saw how it tied in to the local community encouragement. It said “I trust you guys enough to know your own turf and be able to make educated decisions”. Rosie has been organising TestBashes for years. She has been working with Richard for 18 months and us for almost a year to organise this. We were the people she trusted to start her TestBash baby growing up. We were the people she trusted to keep those community values listed in her blog post. I know I said I felt honoured already but I really did!

On the day as it turned out we had focused so much on making sure we had all the tech issues under control, getting a good video guy, ensuring we had all dietary restrictions covered, getting all of the swag laid out/organised that we had forgotten to check that the venue had WiFi. In hindsight this was really stupid of us but you live and learn. Was this the only issue on the day? Not at all! Did it phase us? Somewhat but, when we looked at the attendees all networking with each other it helped keep those smiles on our faces.

Now that it’s all over how do I feel? Partly relieved. I felt like I had massive shoes to fill. I’ve done what I feel I could do. I now know what things I would change and what decisions we made that, I feel, were solid. The biggest part of me is sad that it is all over. I had so much fun with the team that was around me organising this. It is a testament to the testing community in Belfast that there was such a great local turn out but also a significant number of attendees that traveled to Belfast from further afield.

We will be doing a retrospective to identify pain points. We’re also calling on the attendees to let us know what they think went well or could have been better. We took a leap. We set the bar. Will you help us raise that bar? This has always been about community. We want your input. We want you to help this grow as you’d like to see it grow.

I’ve been fortunate enough to join the TestBash Dublin organising team for next year so there won’t be sadness for much longer :-)

My First Writers Piece for the Ministry of Testing

Fri, 17 Mar 2017 20:53:53 +0000

This blog was originally posted on Medium.

“I am not a writer” that is what I kept telling myself. I had written a few blogs and, not many of you will know this, I was part of a youth writers group in school to help with my reading difficulties. I am actually a published author from that. Yet I still considered myself hopeless!

When Rosie posted in the Ministry of Testing slack channel that she was looking for people to start creating content for the Dojo I thought I’d like to at least try. That is one thing I’ve learned since I discovered Ministry of Testing “don’t be afraid to put yourself out there”. Rosie agreed to add me to the channel and Trello board for this. I could read through all of the possible articles and pick one when I felt the time was right.

I’m pretty new to software testing so I guess that contributed to part of my reluctance. Then I saw the perfect article on the Trello board “30 days to get started in software testing”. I had just gotten started in software testing. I had followed a lot of links and articles that ended up being no help. It was difficult to sift through it all and I didn’t want others to have to do the same if I could help it. I was nervous but Melissa Eaden (hero by the way) said I could work on an outline and she would help me as it was my first serious piece.

I started with a brain pour of ideas into one of those lovely notebooks I got at TestBash. It really was a mess. Thankfully someone suggested I try Coggle, a free to use mind mapping tool. Now I was in business!

From the mind map it became very clear that this article wasn’t going to fit well with the “30 days of” format. I honestly thought I had screwed this up. This wasn’t the case though. Mel encouraged me that if that was the natural flow then it made sense to change the format, we could think about a new title once the article was written.

Then the real fun began. I still wanted the article to be 30 tasks or things. I wanted people to be able to check things off as they worked through them. You wouldn’t think it to look at the article but actually choosing what each task should be and the order they should go in took nearly as long as writing each task out!

I think now is the perfect time to thank Mel, Beren, Tony and Rosie for giving me so much feedback. I know it wasn’t easy for them because sometimes I really struggled to see the points they were making and the bigger picture but they stuck with me and I am forever grateful for that.

The fun thing about writing the article was I had so many links to really useful material and I had to figure out what to add to the article and what to keep to send to people who may read it. There was a fine balance between not terrifying the intended audience and retaining their interest. It was also interesting to put myself back in my shoes a year before I started writing the article “If I was me then would I find this useful”.

I also got to connect with lots of new testers on Twitter when I started writing. At times I would tweet a question for a part of my article, people would retweet, I would get new followers who would start a discussion with me about it. It really was an amazing experience to do!

Once the article was published I was in this weird daze. People from around the world started tweeting me and saying how useful they were finding it, maybe I wasn’t such a terrible writer after all!

In work an apprentice was hired to help me with testing, the first thing I handed him was 30 Things Every New Software Tester Should Learn. That was nearly two months ago, we’re still going back to it every day and we’re both learning more as we work through it again.

My first article with Ministry of Testing has taught me many things:

I am maybe not a hopeless writer
The Ministry of Testing writers group is a family, we support each other
Don’t be afraid to dip your toes in, you might not think you can do it but you’ll never know unless you try
At some point you need to stop editing or you will drive yourself crazy

Watch this space for the next article I’m working on!

Communication Efforts Are Like Diets

Wed, 08 Mar 2017 20:54:31 +0000

This blog was originally posted on Medium.

It’s been a while since I blogged (more on that coming soon). I had a thought on the train to work recently when I heard all the people around me talking about the diets they had tried since Christmas “communication efforts are like diets”.

Some of the things I heard:

“I tried this and it worked for me so it HAS to work for you”

“I tried this and saw no difference after two weeks so I gave up”

“If you’d just give up everything you normally do, try this new way and it is sure to work”

“You need to be in it for the long haul or you won’t see a difference”

Go back through that list and imagine it’s a room (or train) full of people giving you advice about how to improve communication in your organisation. They really can apply to both. What works for one organisation or even a group within an organisation might not necessarily work for another.

Some places might need a long term plan to tackle problems. Other places might benefit from a quick fix. Similarly to diets you need to think about what’s best for you and your situation.

The only piece of advice I like when it comes to diets and exercise is “make it fun”. If something is really awful to do are you likely to stick with it? Probably not! When someone tells me a diet plan I usually think about how I can work cake into it at least once a week.

2017 on Heather Reid's Blog

When you try to stop testing…..you end up testing anyway

Culprit Number 1 #

Culprit Number 2 #

Culprit Number 3 #

Culprit Number 4 #

Culprit Number 5 #

Culprit Number 6 #

Culprit Number 7 #

The Final Culprit #

Moral Of The Story #

Community Boss So Far

Writing for Ministry of Testing #

The Club #

TestBashes #

Online Forums #

The Calendar #

Finding my mojo #

Becoming a Community Boss

In the beginning #

Getting to TestBash #

Writing for Ministry of Testing #

Organising a TestBash #

The Club #

Community Boss #

Google Maps Holiday

The Planner #

The Wanderer #

Sharing the Love #

Sharing Helps Us Learn

Learning to share #

Help and be helped #

Share to Learn #

Organising a TinyTestBash

My First Writers Piece for the Ministry of Testing

Communication Efforts Are Like Diets