As Chief Empowerment Officer of
The Test Chat
community, I try to ensure that community members are getting the right opportunities and platform to grow; and they can discuss & share their voice without any hesitation or fear.
Here are some of the initiatives of The Test Chat community:?
- TesterSpeak :TesterSpeak is one of the pioneers of Video podcasts in the Software Testing space. This initiative not only provides testers a platform to share their knowledge and experience, but also it is a great opportunity for the community to learn from the knowledge and experience of the leaders & pioneers of the industry.?
- WIT: WIT is a celebration of Women In Testing driven by women; for the entire community.?
- Tester of the Year It is a celebration of testers who are revolutionizing and impacting the community with their efforts.?
- So You Think You Can Test? (SYTYCT) It is a software testing contest where testers are supposed to test an application identical to the real life environment (1-2 sprints time); and they are evaluated on their testing prowess with different aspects of testing (including but not limited to bug finding).?
- What Lies Beneath It is an AMA series where the community gets a chance to ask questions to the experts and learn from them.?
- Chatterbox: Chatterbox is a panel discussion initiative, which allows people to know the views and learn about a topic from the expert panelists.?
- TTCWebinar As the name indicates, webinars are conducted under this initiative for betterment of the community.?
- TTCMeetup These are online meetups for the community for discussion, networking and more.?
- Axiom Summit AXIOM is a women driven conference with women speakers, facilitating the entire industry through its tech talks in and about testing, automation, agile, leadership, etc.?
- #21days21tips This is a yearly recurring initiative driven by community members, where they share insightful tips for testers on different social media platforms.
This is a tough one, let me try to answer with what is on top of my mind:?
- Unreal Expectations Many times it is expected that one Tester can assure quality; where actually a team of at least 2-3 persons with various expertise is needed for better quality deliverables. And a tester's job is to identify the quality and contribute to enhance it; no one can assure quality if they don't have end-to-end control of the factors, processes and people in the SDLC. Highly effective teams understand and implement "Quality is everyone's responsibility" and give good quality deliverables.?
- Fear/Lack of Upskilling Many testers struggle when it comes to upskilling. They are either too scared or too ignorant of the need of upskilling, which is harmful for them only in the long term.?
- Biased behavior towards Testers Many times Testers are looked down upon or taken for granted in terms of pay, respect, etc; especially compared to other tech roles. Thankfully it is changing gradually, but the overall tech industry still has a long way to go for this.?
- Balancing the Skill Sets The testing role has evolved in such a way that now it requires a broader spectrum of skill sets than before. It is a challenge for testers to know which skill sets to gain and in how much depth before picking up the next skillset.
The ethos behind The Test Chat community is finding individual voices and then enabling others to find their voice. Via the initiatives mentioned earlier and by providing platforms in the form of telegram forums; we are trying to bring awareness and make a positive impact which helps overcome the challenges like mentioned in the previous question.
There are two telegram forums we have:?
-
The Test Chat
It is a safe space for testers to share their voice, discuss the challenges, and learn from the testers worldwide. https://bit.ly/TTCTelegram?
- TTC Jobs Corner It is a dedicated forum for testing jobseekers to find a suitable opportunity globally or have discussions relevant to finding a job. https://telegram.me/joinchat/X9B-s3883f5hNzJk Apart from that, The Test Chat has sponsored the community members for different conferences /events, and from time to time has collaborated with various organizations, leaders and communities for the betterment of the testers. I believe that's enough from me, one can check what community members have to say about us here:
Thoughts/Views shared are my own and shared in personal capacity only | Chief Empowerment Officer at The Test Chat | Sr. Test Automation Engineer at Globant | OCA Java 8 Programmer | ISTQB? (Foundation Level) Certified
1 年Testvox FZCO Team thanks a lot for providing this wonderful opportunity and also for all the collaborations we (The Test Chat) have had so far. Looking forward to having more such collaborations in future as well !