Learning from The Dreyfus model

For a IT professional, googling has become a mandatory skill for survival. As a tester when you find a critical defect by chance sometimes and feel blessed. similarly while googling for a specific topic, we find lots of stuff and suddenly something catches your eye and out of curiosity you dig deeper and find it very useful. I would like to share what I found and learned.

"The Dreyfus Model Experiment" in a blog from Cory Foy http://blog.coryfoy.com/2006/03/the-dreyfus-model-experiment/

As per the blog, the Dreyfus Model, it is a model of skills acquisition that describes how people progress in their knowledge. There are five levels to the model, summarized as:

• Novice – Needs to be told exactly what to do. Very little context to base decisions off of.
• Advanced beginner – Has more context for decisions, but still needs rigid guidelines to follow.
• Competent – Begins to question the reasoning behind the tasks, and can see longer term consequences.
• Proficient – Still relies on rules, but able to seperate what is most important.
• Expert – Works mainly on intuition, except in circumstances where problems occur

For me this is very important, because one of my responsibilities is to communicate with different teams, team members with both higher and lower experiences and skill sets. we most times assume that we know how to deal with it and read and here that it will come through experience. But this model gives us a reasonable model of communication with whatever level of co-worker we are dealing with.

In the environment and work culture where I work, I need to be aware when I am talking to a senior or junior and some times I have only 2 fixed ways. one for seniors and one for juniors. The dreyfus model gives me more flexibility. I will definitely implement this model and check the results.

Feel free to experiment if you too find it interesting and share.

I can sing BUT I don't know how I do it..(contd)

As promised This is a continuation of previous post.

I was interested in this story because I can relate this story with my thinking on testing. The main moral of the story was eventhough a person has talent, but if he doesnt know and utilize skills to the best of his abilities then he misses an opportunity to do his best.

Same thing happens in testing teams, I have seen and worked with people who do testing and find defects BUT dont know how they did it. May be this is because there is no proper thinking process or tester never tried to find out why this happens, He is happy until he is finding defects, sending report and executing tests. BUT there is more to testing than this.

This type of thinking makes a tester more predictable and at some point his testing techniques(which he doesnt know) get outdated. As a tester it is very important to realize what is going on during testing and note down all the interesting things that happen. This kind of approach helps in identifying style of thinking and testing, This information can serve as a feedback for self-growth and other testing tasks.

In many companies it is a bad practice to appraise people based on bug counts, which is not at all a measure of a good tester. Eventhough this is competitive, testers tend to miss other aspects of testing in this mad rush of finding defects, because they see benefit in only finding defects and logging them to get attention from managers/leads.

If you know the past, think in present, it will not be that hard to build or predict future...

I can sing BUT I don't know how I do it

A guy in a small rural village says "I can sing BUT I don't know how I do it" - Other person from same village says " Its God's gift" - Is this correct?

I asked myself. I was curious to know the answer. I requested the singer guy to give me some of his time. He Immediately obliged in a humble way. I thanked him.

First of all I appreciated him for his singing skills and told him to sing few of my favourite songs, he was brilliant and a bundle of talent.

Suddenly I realized what my focus was because I had bought time of this singer guys and I had to complete my task.

I was curious to know about this person and his singing skills that made me interested in him. I started with few general questions and then focused specifically on his singing skills...few of his answers interested me.

He said,
he had lot of interest from childhood in singing,
he used to listen to songs on radio whenever he used to get time
he used to sing, sing and sing because it made him feel happy and make others happy
he was interested in singing different types of songs
he also made a tool out of wood and strings that was similar to a string instrument called 'violin' and was good at playing it
Based on the type of mood, weather and occasions he used to sing different songs
he was a fast learner, because he said he can sing a song once he listens once or twice on radio
he even had a chorus kind of group who used to sing with him during festivals in village

wow, I was just amazed to listen to him and also satisfied that I got the information that made me curious and answered my question...

You might be wondering why I am writing this experience in a testing blog...you will know that soon

to be continued :)

Do you need skills for testing ?

Testing is an activity that requires diversity. Diversity in thinking, in doing and analyzing, These skills are not taught in schools or colleges. It becomes very hard for a tester who has never focused on these skills to become productive in his job.

In most companies, lack of focus on people skills causes many problems. Eventhough management knows they just Ignore and focus only on the delivery dates and getting business. This has a major effect on the type of products you deliver or the service you provide.

Still in few companies a tester is considered one who doesn't need any skills as compared to his developer colleagues. This mindset makes people make wrong choices.

I feel testing requires a diverse range of skills, it Includes communication, interpersonal, technical and many more...I would like to dedicate a post on the type of testers and their mindset

Testing is a skill that has still not got recognition as it should be...The more you practice the better you get at it

1..2...3..Start...Here you Go...The Testing Express

Hello reader,

Welcome to my blog,

I am a Tester by profession and the motivation for starting this blog is passion for the profession I am in from past few years.

Today I reach a milestone in my career, After deep thought when I reflected back on my journey in various roles as a Tester and QA professional. I feel that the role of the Quality department has changed considerably in the past few years. with emerging technologies, latest trends and various other factors that drive business, Focus on quality has increased. This has not only created opportunities and challenges to QA professionals but also demanding specialized skills to face these challenges.

This is no one rule or process that can be called Ideal today when it comes to delivering Quality. Right from small to big companies the major source of information is experience and data from previous projects that drive the Improvement in processes. Every company has a QA department or team and uses it based on their process and products. The major problem which I have seen from my experience is less focus of skills improvement for the people who are part of the QA department.

I will also try to understand my style of writing and with your help and feedback, hope to get it soon.

There are many topics jumping in my mind eager to come out, I ll try to put them down in my next post

All in all I m very excited and enthusiastic in posting my first blog

I hope you are with me in this wonderful journey

Note: Please excuse me for all my mistakes, because I am here to learn and I welcome your comments with an open mind

Happy Testing
Shiv