Just Ask for Help

On TestWorks Conf I had the opportunity to facilitate a workshop on Exploratory Testing with Maaret Pyhäjärvi. It was great and I learned so much that day! My head was spinning with all the new insights and I felt very inspired. One thing that Maaret said that is so important is: “you are responsible for your own learning”.

A bit of story time. After this day with Maaret, I felt like a very obvious piece of a puzzle fell into place (ah, hindsight, how I love thee). In my career, I only had one year of learning about testing and then I started giving trainings and workshops myself. Nobody really taught me how, I just did it because the circumstances were there. And now, about three years later, I feel like I can’t go back into ‘student mode’. I don’t know why or how I reached that conclusion, because it’s complete nonsense, of course! You can be a thought leader, workshop facilitator or just really good in your craft and still be in ‘student mode’ sometimes. (I would even argue that it is really good for you to be the student once in a while, it reminds you to stay humble.)

The day spent with Maaret made me realise that I really, desperately longed for having a mentor. To me, that is someone who knows a lot more, someone who has loads of experience and also the means to teach. That’s why the day made me so happy. I felt like I was a student again, and I enjoyed it immensely. The fact that doing things together is my preferred learning method also helped.

So remember: when you feel like your environment doesn’t inspire you to learn anymore, or you feel stuck in a rut, you can actually ask the community for help. You should ask the community for help! We are there for you. You can ask people to Skype with you and do a remote test session together, for example. Or if you just want to chat, there’s the Slack community that will surely respond to you.

I am personally looking for people who want to do some remote pair-testing. So see this as my invitation to you: let’s test together via Skype or Screenhero! Contact me via this blog or Twitter if you are interested!