The major three - On the importance of smiling

You lot, you spend all your time thinking about dying, like you're going to get killed by eggs or beef or global warming or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible, that maybe you survive. This is the year five point five slash apple slash twenty six. Doctor Who, IX (quoted by Internet transcript)


In my experience, probably the most popular reason of a conflict is when someone (apparently unaware of what's important and what's not, or, worse, having his or her own opinion about the matter) tries to push their agenda, thus putting your interests in danger. That's what missionary's complex feels and looks like.

I don't know why (and probably the origin is not that important here, unless we regard a problem from neuropsychophysiological point of view) people (we) sometimes tend to feel their (our) job as a kind of a mission. It may be good when we want a good motivation. It is not that good when we need a team to function harmoniously. Meaning, if not altogether without a conflict, but at least without coming to a halt due to unresolvable contradictions between its members.

The major three - Building a test plan with professional standards

Apparently you can't be president with a whole brain. 
Zaphod Beeblebrox

Sometimes your employer is a company with a well-documented process. Sometimes this is not the case. And if you are reading this, you are probably facing one or both of these problems (or have had a similar experience ealier) :

1. Your manager doesn't understand what process is and what it is for.

2. There is no project documentation available that you can re-use to setup or streamline your test share of whatever you are participating in.

As it is out of scope for this article to fix the whole world, and as it is unlikely that you'll be able to quickly change your manager's point of view (things like that are normally connected with person's life values and are extremely hard to adjust), I suggest we concentrate on #2 as a more realistic option. 

Standards

In brief, the answer is IEEE 829. And you do not have to spend your salary to get access, as Internet contains enough information for you to start with. Also you do not have to follow every single word there, but rather use it as a guideline or a checklist.

The major three - Health assessment for a test project

Let me start with some trivia. No project is the same. No project is dull. Every project is what you make of it. The interesting part is what you should do if you wanna make it.

Personally, I hate doctors. But in situations like this I have to act like one, which means, I start with collecting a medical history. And here are some hints regarding what to look for (as they say, including, but not limited to):

The major three to start a test project

Sometimes you just have to start a test project from a scratch. And it often feels and looks like having to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Or having to learn Chinese overnight. The normal state of mind for everyone, who is not that experienced in such matters, or who is used for managing health projects, is a stupor.

This is why I decided to publish these three posts I wrote for my future self in case I, like all normal people, get temporary amnesia:

    1. Do project health assessment.
    2. Build a test plan based on standards
    3. To make it three (as they say three is easier to remember) -- smile =)


Good luck!

Are you sure it's your job that you hate

It is important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem
Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy, the movie

Years of employment kind of proved that one's attitude to their job is not necessarily connected with an objective quality of that job. After working for many years as an employee myself, and after talking to the other employees, I was surprised to discover that the job is almost never an evil in itself, but is often treated as an underdog that can't say anything in it's defense. 

Probably it is so because its advocates are managers, and who trusts managers? Right. Even managers don't trust managers. (Seriousely though, managers are not bad because they are managers, this problem of trust comes from the difference of understanding and a long history of miscommunication that exists between different social groups).

This is not an article on phychology (and I'm not a professional psychologist), but being familiar with such notions as psychological defences and rationalization as a special case of it may be of help. To say it plainly, these defences came to life with the best of intentions, and as many other originally good things got a bit rogue in a course of time. And, in attempt to keep you safe, integral and unfamiliar with pain, they may slightly distort your view of yourself, your priorities and your life. Thus preventing you from being able to get to the root cause and fix it, and hurting you on the way.

So here are some of my favorite job-related biases and the reasons behind them as I see it.

Interesting statistics on test challenges including test automation

Via LinkedIn:
https://www.testingalgorithms.com/survey.html