Where do old testers go?

Herman-Pieter Nijhof

Walkthrough

Why this topic?

Career path: managing your future

What are timeboxes we are looking at

Satisfiers

Looking back to look forward

Why this topic?

Every Tom, Mike or Jane thinks about the future!

Some factors make it special for testers:

Our specialty does not provide us with a lot of examples yet, it is still very young

We tend to create our own unhappiness by being really critical and setting very high expectations

We tend to be front-runners, discovering everything ahead of everybody else

We tend to be very structured, thus requiring a lot of structure

We love it, it’s the best job ever

At this moment testers are in higher demand and more expensive than programmers

Test managers are becoming more and more powerful in projects

Business users are starting to listen to testers more and more often

Testers are in high demand but their expertise or potential is still being underutilized

We love it, it’s the best job ever

But testers do have a reputation

Personal– Testers have a reputation of being overcritical

No formal history– no training on testing on any educational institute

Misconception – everybody has done some testing, therefore anybody can do it

Status quo– in who's interest is it to change the current status quo between

testers, developers, designers etc?

Satisfying satisfiers

Elevator pitches

Challenge

Perspective

Respect

Recognition

Growth

Adding value

How they did this in the ‘old days’

Here are some traditional methods:

Fate

Pre-destination

Cristal ball

Time travel

Nostradamus

How do we do it today

Science fiction - will we explore the stars?

Dreams of globalization - will we have world peace?

Your guess is as good as mine

Timeboxes

NOW!

Next year

Far future

Nothing in IT ever stands still, neither do we

What can we do to take the lead in this?

Perspectives for testers

Perspectives for employers

Some examples of what you might become

Release managers / project managers

Programmers / designers

Key-user / business user

Chairman Eurostar

Test expert / test manager

Test program Mmnager

Happy analysts / navigators

Farmer, cook, anything outside IT

Roles and responsibilities of employer & employee

A career is never a static item, but changes continuously

The initiative lies initially with the employer

The initiative shifts to the employee as that employee gets more experienced and more precise in his needs

The initiative becomes shared for the ‘old’ testers and the employer to find a common ground were both find their balance

What do you want?

And how to ask for it!

If you want a hand in creating your future start writing it yourself!

We need to find common grounds

Do testers grow old as testers?

Are old testers better testers?

Maybe not better per se, but definitely different

More experienced

Better versed in ‘old languages’, ‘old platforms’, ‘old tools’ etc. And there are rather a lot of those.

Think then do, not do then think

A more mature way of communicating

They don’t run like mad, but proudly stride!

They have different pitfalls

And of course an infinite amount of great stories on testing

A look into the mirror, do you like what you see

Self reflection is a powerful tool.

Some techniques that may help you:

Requirements traceability Risk based SOA Prototyping Agile Waterfall DSDM

What do you tell St Peter?

Please visit the Escher museum here in The Hague: http://www.escherinhetpaleis.nl/