Test Team Book Club
Submitted by John McConda on Fri, 05/10/2007 - 16:29.
Oprah should be worried.
Ok, not really, since I doubt I’ll have a worldwide syndicated talk show anytime soon, but I wanted to share a little about what my team has been doing to increase our knowledge and skills as testers.
I think training is a problem for just about all test managers, especially those who need everyone to be billable as much as possible. Seminars, workshops, and conferences are great, but I also wanted to foster an atmosphere of continual learning amongst my team so I came up with this “book club” idea. I will pick a book that I think is interesting and relevant to improving our skills and knowledge, and then allocate an hour and a half every week to it. One hour is to do the actual reading and exercises, the other half hour to get together once a week and discuss it in a book club type of format. We rotate each week on who has to present the material to the rest of the team during the meeting.
The first book I chose was Brian Marick’s Everyday Scripting with Ruby . I chose this book first because I have a tech-heavy team, and I think scripting is a skill every tester should learn or learn better (myself included). I’m happy to report the book club format has taken off even better than I had hoped. Everyone has kept up with the reading so far and we’ve had lively discussions about scripting and what it means for our jobs.
This is not a new idea by any means, but I think if you’re struggling as a test manager to find a way to keep your testers in a learning mindset, this is one way that could work. Just be careful to keep the meetings civil, we almost went from Oprah to Jerry Springer yesterday arguing over Test Driven Development. (Thanks Brian!) :)
I'm curious to hear how other Test Leads and Managers foster learning amongst their teams. What activities have worked best in your context?
Ok, not really, since I doubt I’ll have a worldwide syndicated talk show anytime soon, but I wanted to share a little about what my team has been doing to increase our knowledge and skills as testers.
I think training is a problem for just about all test managers, especially those who need everyone to be billable as much as possible. Seminars, workshops, and conferences are great, but I also wanted to foster an atmosphere of continual learning amongst my team so I came up with this “book club” idea. I will pick a book that I think is interesting and relevant to improving our skills and knowledge, and then allocate an hour and a half every week to it. One hour is to do the actual reading and exercises, the other half hour to get together once a week and discuss it in a book club type of format. We rotate each week on who has to present the material to the rest of the team during the meeting.
The first book I chose was Brian Marick’s Everyday Scripting with Ruby . I chose this book first because I have a tech-heavy team, and I think scripting is a skill every tester should learn or learn better (myself included). I’m happy to report the book club format has taken off even better than I had hoped. Everyone has kept up with the reading so far and we’ve had lively discussions about scripting and what it means for our jobs.
This is not a new idea by any means, but I think if you’re struggling as a test manager to find a way to keep your testers in a learning mindset, this is one way that could work. Just be careful to keep the meetings civil, we almost went from Oprah to Jerry Springer yesterday arguing over Test Driven Development. (Thanks Brian!) :)
I'm curious to hear how other Test Leads and Managers foster learning amongst their teams. What activities have worked best in your context?