I\u2019ve been thinking about how professional testers describe themselves. We have high level labels like Tester, SDET, or Quality Engineer, but beyond those (mostly meaningless) titles, many of us have our own personal missions or visions \u2013 the words we want people to associate with us.<\/p>\n
For example, my twitter bio is, \u201cLong time software tester and quality guy – author of hwtsam\u201d, and my profile on an internal twitter-like site is \u201cTester, tweeter, blogger, author\u201d. They\u2019re short, but both descriptions give people an idea of who I am. More importantly, I can back up each of the points.<\/p>\n
But those bios are sort of lame. They describe what I\u2019ve done, but not much of what I do, or how I do it. Many of us describe not just what we do, but what we think<\/em> we do; or how we want to be perceived. When someone asks what<\/em> you do, do you say \u201cI\u2019m a tester\u201d, or something like, \u201cI\u2019m a thought leader in testing who uses a combination of strategy and tactics to improve software and software teams\u201d?<\/p>\n Both of these are perfectly valid answers. The difference in this case is that the first is immediately believable, while the second requires some proof. This isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing \u2013 if the description is what you strive to do and how you want to be perceived, it\u2019s perfectly ok. But you probably have to show some signs that you can live up to the description.<\/p>\n For example, I could say, \u201cI\u2019m a thought leader in declarative testing approaches\u201d \u2013 which would be cool, because I\u2019m a fan of the concept, but I\u2019m far from a thought leader in the subject. If I were to say something like that, I should have some talks, articles, blog posts, etc. to back up that claim (and you should expect that of me if I made that claim as well).<\/p>\n That one was easy \u2013 let\u2019s explore something closer to a grey area and talk about how<\/em> I do what I do. If I were to say \u201cI use my view of the big picture to find patterns and connections to aid in my testing approach\u201d, and you observed several examples of me failing<\/em> to make connections within a system, do I lose credibility with you? I should \u2013 but then again, maybe you just don\u2019t know me, caught me on bad days, or your<\/em> observations were inaccurate. At the very least, you should question that claim.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure where I\u2019m going with this \u2013 perhaps it\u2019s a midlife crisis of a sort, but I find myself trying to be more purposeful about what I do and how I achieve what I do\u2026and how I remain credible. Every three or so years, I attempt to write a personal vision \/ mission and reassess my values. As you can probably tell, I value credibility \u2013 to be able to \u201cwalk the talk\u201d, both in myself and others.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s an example of one of these fru-fru self-activities from a few years ago.<\/p>\n I am a leader in software testing, software quality, who balances thought leadership with execution, ties vision to strategies, and nurtures communities of practice<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s not great, but it works, and I\u2019m due to write a new one in another year or two. This is different than a bio, because until now, I haven\u2019t shared this directly with anyone, but I still find it important to try to live up to this. I can take each of the points and ask, what am I doing to display this? Do I think the people who matter perceive me this way? <\/em>and what can I do in my current context to do more of these things? Am I credible? <\/em>I also make notes about what else I\u2019m doing to aid when I rewrite the statements in the future.<\/p>\n This approach works for me<\/u>. I don\u2019t know if it will work for anyone else, or how you manage your own career growth, personal bios or labels, but it\u2019s probably good for all of us to ask ourselves if we are really who we say or think we are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve been thinking about how professional testers describe themselves. We have high level labels like Tester, SDET, or Quality Engineer, but beyond those (mostly meaningless) titles, many of us have our own personal missions or visions \u2013 the words we want people to associate with us. For example, my twitter bio is, \u201cLong time software…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n