Goals For Testing

I manage a testing team.

Team is the blend of juniors and experienced talent.

We have the open door culture. That is anyone can freely discuss about anything. Be it growth, learning, opportunities, etc.

Today, I will give you some story, which helps you.

Yes, helps you to set goals, and achieve them !

Here it goes.

A team member of mine came to me

And asked something related to his career growth.

He asked : “How can I grow in my career ?”

Me : “What are your goals ?”

He : “ I have not thought about it yet. Can you help me with goals?”

Me : “ Sure. You can set goals. But have milestones.

So set short term goals and long term goals”.

He : “Great. What are short term goals?”

Me : ‘Short term goals are the ones,which can be achieved in 3-6 months.

Example: Learning new technology or tool or programming language or process or methodology etc,.”

He : “Makes sense. What are long term goals?”

Me : “ Long term goals can be envisioning what you want to be in next 2-3 years.

Example : Lead, tech specialist, security tester, etc., or domain expert in healthcare, banking etc,.”

He :” Thank you, now I got fair idea. But how to know which goals to set ?”.

Now, this question needed more detailed answer.

And here was my answer.

To know where you stand, you need some analysis. May be SWOT analysis.

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

If you know what are you strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, it will be easier for you to set the goals.

There can be 2 options here:

Option 1:

You can further strengthen your strengths by building on the knowledge and experience you are already having. This makes you more perfect.

You can be at the expert level.

Example:

Assume that you are good at scripting.

You can learn different languages like Java, Python etc. Also, you can keep the goal of building automation frameworks.

Building framework example here is stretching you scripting skills.

Option 2:

You can learn the skills where you are weak and where there is a threat.

Example:

Assume that, you are good at testing. You can perform exploratory testing, without any requirements/documentation provided to you.

And if you do not know automation, you can set the goal to learn programming, to learn automation frameworks, learn debugging etc.

Also, as per analysis you know what are the threats.

Threats can be loss of job if new skill is not learnt, end of life of project, acquisition by another company (leading to job cut), fear of technology replacing you.

In these scenarios, you to adapt to the situation.

Set the goals such that you can achieve something in short term. And make yourself safe.

Opportunities can be scope for promotion, job rotation possibility, new project expected etc.

You need to understand what are the expectations for these opportunities and set goals accordingly and learn the skills.

I hope, this helps for you !

Summary

As you can see, you can set short term and long term goals. Short terms goals can be for 3-6 months and long term goals can be for 2-3 years. Note that, it depends on you, how can manage them.

To know what should be your goal, you can dot SWOT analysis. This analysis helps you where you are standing now and where you want to go.

That’s all for now.

You need further details, do schedule a call with me.

Thanks,

Jayateerth