Testing the Limits With Anne-Marie Charrett – Part I
To kick off another amzing year of Testing the Limits we reached out to Anne-Marie Charrett, an independent tester who has worked for the likes of Mercury Interactive, IBM (twice) and Nortel – just to name a few. She also arranges for speakers to visit Ireland as part of Softtest Ireland and blogs about her testing experience and offers coaching at mavericktester.com.
In part I of this month’s interview, we learn what motivates Anne-Marie to coach via Skype, what’s caught her interest lately, how her book with James Bach is coming and what the biggest mis-conception about testing is. Come back tomorrow for part II.
uTest: In terms of writing, speaking and researching, you are one of the most active testers in the business. So we’ll start by asking you this: What hot topics within testing have captured your interest recently?
AMC: 2012 has kicked off with a flurry of activity. Key topics appear to be, How we learn, Rapid Test Management and more recently James Bach has been looking Exploratory Test Documentation.
It goes like this. Typically we write tests and charters as artifacts for other people as evidence of work performed. But writing is a lot more powerful than that, it has the ability to assist in design (think brainstorming in mind maps). Exploratory Test Documentation is about changing the purpose of writing from an end product to a by product.
I also like the way new conferences and peer workshops are happening at a grass roots level, for example Lets Test in Stockholm. These are not necessarily big conferences, but ones that offer value to testers and that encourage participation. I hope that this will be the conference circuit of the future!
uTest: You’ve made quite a name for yourself as a testing coach; offering advice to testers free of charge via Skype. In your experience, what areas require the most coaching on your part? In other words, what does a typical tester coaching session cover?
AMC: Often testers come looking for coaching in a particular skill (e.g Test Automation), but many fail to understand basic testing concepts such as: “What is testing?” and “How do you determine bugs?”
Understanding testing is key to improving your testing skill. After all, if you don’t understand something, how can you improve it?
Software delivery typically doesn’t allow for this type of introspection. Our jobs demand we focus on delivery, often to the detriment of how well we are doing our testing.
Coaching is the breathing space that all testers need to learn and grow.
In coaching I encourage testers to work through tasks to acquire skill. I’m there to guide and help them, but they need to work out the answers. That way, their learning experience is deeper and more meaningful and empowering.
In the software business, it’s all about precision, as even the slightest coding mistake can lead to catastrophic failure. This lesson is clearly not lost on the folks over at the United Nations telecommunications agency, who are meeting as we speak to decide whether or not to abolish the leap second. That’s right, the leap second.
Tired of useless, generic horoscopes that have nothing to do with software testing? Well then check out my useless, generic horoscopes that are written specifically for software testers!
What is community management without measuring the pulse of your community? Every now and again it is important to take a step back from the frantic happenings of the day-to-day activities of uTesters and look at the bigger picture. All too often, we forget about the profound and incredibly human impact we have on the lives of uTest’s biggest asset, our testers.
