tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6890958153006612459.post3660656577744055271..comments2024-03-23T03:23:58.477-07:00Comments on TESTHEAD: Stop Being InvisibleMichael Larsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16180074963526979074noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6890958153006612459.post-4190771673526704532011-12-01T12:31:36.353-08:002011-12-01T12:31:36.353-08:00Wade, that's a great question and it has spark...Wade, that's a great question and it has sparked a lot of comments and thoughts... enough that I can't really answer here. I'll do it in a blog post tomorrow :). Stay tuned. <br /><br />Short answer is "yes", I get some time to work on ideas, books, practicum, etc. on my work time, but that a misleading answer if I just leave it at "yes". There's a more nuanced story, and I think it deserves to be told, so check back tomorrow :).Michael Larsenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16180074963526979074noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6890958153006612459.post-50528842672795712532011-12-01T12:17:14.912-08:002011-12-01T12:17:14.912-08:00So this is a very interesting topic for me, as I a...So this is a very interesting topic for me, as I am having a similar discussion with my boss tomorrow morning.<br /><br />I am curious, how much of your blogging, book reading, practicum entries, etc. is done 'on the clock'? You don't have to answer with a specific number here, but if I had to wager I would guess that at least a portion of it does. For me that leads to another question that I am still answering for myself, what is the balance of creating value for the product, and adding visibility of that value within your team/company? Is it 50/50? 80/20? 90/10?<br /><br />In the teams I have worked on, the testing standards before I started had been sub par, and projects were almost expected to fail in some way, because they almost always did. After the help of some great testing teams, when features started rolling out without any problems, people started noticing. In my current team(which I joined 8 months ago), we have now had 4 consecutive release cycles without any significant issues and our team was recognized on the most recent company wide conference call. That said, there was definitely some salesmanship of my team to garner that recognition, as well as quite a bit of training and hard work, but the visibilty is a benefit to our team and the company.<br /><br />The positive outlook on our team has actually had quite a significant impact on the effectiveness of our team. After a year or more of being blamed for all the problems in the software, some of the team was rather burtn out and down trodden. Now that the team is back in the good graces of the company, they are increasingly more effective. Perhaps that is one angle of value added to the business, happy testers are more effective at finding bugs and identifying risks.<br /><br />(This has been a lingering string of thoughts that has been interupted several times today, hopefully it is cohesive somehow)<br /><br />Ultimately, the dilema that I face is balancing time as a regular full time employee reading, writing, and developing myself and my team with the time we spend actively working on the product. I think it is definitely important to be aware of what is happening in testing outside of one's own environment, but defining the value added during that time can be (to use your term) 'nebulous'.Wade Wachshttp://www.wadewachs.comnoreply@blogger.com