Tester's growth and carer
Submitted by Ainars Galvans on Fri, 01/06/2007 - 08:47.
functional testing | people issues
You work as tester for some time already and want to advance. Before looking into test automation, management or any other career change option, think if you can’t yet advance as a functional tester? Do you want to be an outstanding functional tester or an average-to-weak in a different position?
What’s my dream job ? It is as simple as this – I need to grow all the time. There are project/company level prerequisites: I need to have challenges; motivation to take a dare and a boss able using situation leadership. How do I grow, how do I ensure the prerequisites, how do I avoid mimic/fake challenges - this is what the blog is about.
An introductory paragraph - I especially love manual functional testing because it does not produce anything. Indeed if you would (somehow magically) know that the test you are doing will pass, you may skip doing it and none will even know. You can skip a few tasks as a developer but not all of them there will be no code to execute otherwise :) . So I think tester is the role able to most dramatically improve productivity (at least theoretically).
I’ve been presenting topic on tester growth
Last month I presented topic about tester growth at local conference (sorry, all presentations in Latvian only). Typically after such events I figure out how much I did not managed to tell despite the fact that colleagues say I did quite good. I’m sorry I’m not going to repeat what I told there, but my main goal was to popularize blogs (and this site among others) and other types of exchange. But I don’t feel like I managed to deliver surrounding context and generic (along with technical) recommendations too well. So I want to try the second chance here in my blog.
Certificate makes everyone equal.
As you learn/experience more and become more efficient and could manage more and more complicated tasks your salary should grow as well. Still this is not a determined function - as a manager I can’t say that person X is exactly 15% better than person Y. Certificates, tests, statistics (e.g. goals scored) etc. end up with a boolean or numerical evaluation which only partly reflect the what are you worth.
That’s why I have mixed feelings about ISTQB guy having keynote on our local conference. It is great we got speaker from outside Latvia. On the other hand the conference was always aimed to share work experience and ISTQB is not about work experience. Latvia is seen as outsourcing country - with European culture and more mature/experienced IT industry (and also average person within that industry as they very seldom emigrate U.S. or whatever). We are not as cheap as India however, so if certificate is how they decide about tester maturity/skills/service level we can’t win because they have the same certificate for les money...
Career does the same: makes everyone equal
There are companies that have different positions like test engineer, test analyst, test expert, etc. They pretend to describe different skills of different people. Mostly types of tasks that person is capable to carry. Sometimes generic skills/characteristics like capable to interact with ...
Going further as tester prove capable to write scripts he may be moved to be automation (and having also tuning/dba experience to performance...). As a result it may seem like advancement and unfortunately it is typically seen as such by management. When a tester shows ability to lead less experienced colleagues he may become a team leader.
Still we have only limited list of positions in each company. However ask any manager if he is willing to give me any (the best) of his members and get another (worst one) one who carries the same position? “You are joking, aren’t you?”
So what are you really worth and how to improve that?
I know that a single highly skilled tester may replace 2-3 novices and still provide much better service for a project. Not because he types twice as fast, but because prioritizes better (and could drop a lot of low priority tests), solves problems faster (e.g. make not-repeatable defects repeatable), diagnose defects deeper (saves developer time), etc. - if only not encumber by too detailed formal processes.
Of course this is worth to improve only if you work in a company/for boss that recognize need for highly skilled manual testers and are able to appraise that (I mean money and other amends). Or on the other hand if you are willing to improve yourself find a job where the improvement is evaluated.
How to get the dream job?
If on an interview your are mainly asked to demonstrate certificates, mention tools and types of tasks ever assigned to if you feel comfortable using skype. In other words if you feel like they don’t want to know if you are able to learn new tools, approaches, styles, types of tasks, but only make sure you are capable to do what they want you to do, then I would avoid accepting such a job offer.
And of course - learn who your first boss will be and if she/he is able to practice situational leadership.
What’s my dream job ? It is as simple as this – I need to grow all the time. There are project/company level prerequisites: I need to have challenges; motivation to take a dare and a boss able using situation leadership. How do I grow, how do I ensure the prerequisites, how do I avoid mimic/fake challenges - this is what the blog is about.
An introductory paragraph - I especially love manual functional testing because it does not produce anything. Indeed if you would (somehow magically) know that the test you are doing will pass, you may skip doing it and none will even know. You can skip a few tasks as a developer but not all of them there will be no code to execute otherwise :) . So I think tester is the role able to most dramatically improve productivity (at least theoretically).
I’ve been presenting topic on tester growth
Last month I presented topic about tester growth at local conference (sorry, all presentations in Latvian only). Typically after such events I figure out how much I did not managed to tell despite the fact that colleagues say I did quite good. I’m sorry I’m not going to repeat what I told there, but my main goal was to popularize blogs (and this site among others) and other types of exchange. But I don’t feel like I managed to deliver surrounding context and generic (along with technical) recommendations too well. So I want to try the second chance here in my blog.
Certificate makes everyone equal.
As you learn/experience more and become more efficient and could manage more and more complicated tasks your salary should grow as well. Still this is not a determined function - as a manager I can’t say that person X is exactly 15% better than person Y. Certificates, tests, statistics (e.g. goals scored) etc. end up with a boolean or numerical evaluation which only partly reflect the what are you worth.
That’s why I have mixed feelings about ISTQB guy having keynote on our local conference. It is great we got speaker from outside Latvia. On the other hand the conference was always aimed to share work experience and ISTQB is not about work experience. Latvia is seen as outsourcing country - with European culture and more mature/experienced IT industry (and also average person within that industry as they very seldom emigrate U.S. or whatever). We are not as cheap as India however, so if certificate is how they decide about tester maturity/skills/service level we can’t win because they have the same certificate for les money...
Career does the same: makes everyone equal
There are companies that have different positions like test engineer, test analyst, test expert, etc. They pretend to describe different skills of different people. Mostly types of tasks that person is capable to carry. Sometimes generic skills/characteristics like capable to interact with ...
Going further as tester prove capable to write scripts he may be moved to be automation (and having also tuning/dba experience to performance...). As a result it may seem like advancement and unfortunately it is typically seen as such by management. When a tester shows ability to lead less experienced colleagues he may become a team leader.
Still we have only limited list of positions in each company. However ask any manager if he is willing to give me any (the best) of his members and get another (worst one) one who carries the same position? “You are joking, aren’t you?”
So what are you really worth and how to improve that?
I know that a single highly skilled tester may replace 2-3 novices and still provide much better service for a project. Not because he types twice as fast, but because prioritizes better (and could drop a lot of low priority tests), solves problems faster (e.g. make not-repeatable defects repeatable), diagnose defects deeper (saves developer time), etc. - if only not encumber by too detailed formal processes.
Of course this is worth to improve only if you work in a company/for boss that recognize need for highly skilled manual testers and are able to appraise that (I mean money and other amends). Or on the other hand if you are willing to improve yourself find a job where the improvement is evaluated.
How to get the dream job?
If on an interview your are mainly asked to demonstrate certificates, mention tools and types of tasks ever assigned to if you feel comfortable using skype. In other words if you feel like they don’t want to know if you are able to learn new tools, approaches, styles, types of tasks, but only make sure you are capable to do what they want you to do, then I would avoid accepting such a job offer.
And of course - learn who your first boss will be and if she/he is able to practice situational leadership.