Testing and sketchnoting

Sometimes I think I'm not a very sociable person, geez, I've even realized I'm super introverted and I enjoy spending time by myself...but boy do I belong to different communities! 

This year I had the pleasure of meeting Marianne Rady and she warmly welcomed me into the sketchnoting community. In previous years there have been bootcamps in which a lot of sketchnoters from all over the world met, but because of this year's events, Marianne decided to organize an online conference. That weekend was a bit complicated for me because I was attending a testing conference that same week, but I ended up attending Sketchnote Connect and I had a blast! They had THE best Miro board I've ever seen (I wasn't expecting any less of this community, tbh!). The conference had an open space format, and we know how inspiring those spaces can be. 

(Inner voice says: GET TO THE POINT, ANTO) One of the conversations I had was how did I transition from paper to digital and so this is more or less what this post is about (sorry for the long intro).

BACK TO THE PAST

I distinctly remember being very picky about my notebooks in elementary school, I always wanted a specific brand called Rivadavia (they're popular in Argentina) and I always wanted pens with a specific shade and thickness. Writing with a fountain pen was compulsory in elementary school and I always wanted to buy the same pen (I think it was Bic). However, as we grew older, they allowed us to use ballpoint pens and I always wanted the same see-through blue Faber Castell, thick stroke, not navy and not light blue...it was the perfect shade of blue. 

My love for notebooks started when I watched Harriet the Spy for the first time. She was so picky about her notebooks and it made me feel validated. 

PRESENT TENSE

Although I've started sketchnoting "officially" this year, as my Instagram bio says, I've been sketchnoting since the first grade. I remember doodling things that helped me remember what I was being taught...perhaps it's intuitive and we lose it with age? Anyway, I won Mike Rohde's sketchnote book at a meetup this year and I've been experimenting ever since. 

I have a lot of notebooks, paper, and pens, but I decided to go digital (most of the time, especially if it's live sketchnoting) and I'll tell you why. You can scroll down all the way to the bottom of the page if you don't want to read a lot.    

PAPER MATTERS

                                                                 

This seems like an obvious thing to write and probably to read, but you never know. Notebooks have different types of pages...and different quality! Notebooks can have ruled or unruled pages, pages with a grid, dotted pages, etc. The color also varies, since pages can be super white, beige, yellowish, brown, etc. The thickness varies too! Oh, and the price!

INK MATTERS

Do you like using watercolor? Then you better check that your pen is waterproof! But what if you are looking for a bleeding effect and your pen doesn't do it? 

Do you make mistakes? Everyone does...maybe you need a pen you can erase! 

The pen(s) you choose need to agree with the paper you chose (unless you like surprises!).

 

BE A TESTER

The ink you use will depend on the paper your notebook has - or at least that's what I do...but I always had accidents until I started having a "Tester page". This is not my idea, I think I either saw it here or here (blog in Spanish). 

Whenever I get a notebook, I use the last page as a tester page. I use each pen I think will agree with the notebook and write its name on the page and then add some water (but only to part of the writing!). When it's dry, I turn the page and see if it has bled through the page. By writing the name of the pen with the pen itself, I don't have to remember which is which, the name is right there. 

ADD COLOR (IF THAT'S WHAT YOU LIKE)

There are different ways of adding color to sketchnotes, and some are wetter than others. If you're using thin paper then you might not want to use wet markers unless you don't cringe when the paper starts to wrinkle :D 

PAPER DISTRIBUTION

Sometimes, you know exactly how long a presentation will last and how big your paper needs to be in order to fit the information you think you'll write down. I get really disappointed when I reserve space and then the speaker doesn't say anything that resonates with me and I have a huge blank. I also get a bit frustrated when I run out of space...but there's something someone mentioned on Sketch Connect I think, which is that you can always add more paper and just stick it to the page! Seems like an obvious solution that I never thought of :O 

MONEY

I have a stationery shop across the street and I used to visit them every month. Is it the smell of stationery that relaxes me and makes me think that ain't no mountain high enough? I don't know, but it's a sanctuary. However, I started paying attention to my receipts and I realized I was spending a lot of money there! That's what made me think that perhaps going digital would be cheaper in the long run. Sure, iPads and tablets cost money too, but it seems to be a one time purchase (at least for a good couple of years). 

THE UNDO BUTTON AND BEING ABLE TO RESIZE PAGE ELEMENTS

Finally, resizing text and the undo button. Those are two features that both of the software I use have (GoodNotes and Procreate) and what, in my opinion, makes it all worth it. 

Yes, I will continue to use paper because the feeling is different, and there's something amazing, a sense of achievement that I get when I'm able to fix/conceal mistakes without the magic of the undo button...but there are days in which my brain wants to experiment and undo, as quick and easy as that, and I'm happy I give my brain the chance to do so.

PS: An iPad has its own problems, like screen glare, Apple Pencil tips, etc. Maybe I'll blog about it in the future ;)

My 99 second talk that never was

You know when you're in class and the teacher starts calling random names to quiz the class and you keep repeating inside your head "Not me, not me, not me" and then your name is called? Well, it didn't happen to me today. 

What's a 99-second talk?

One of the greatest things about TestBash conferences is the last section, the 99 second talks. The idea is that 99 seconds is long enough for you to give public speaking a try, to conquer your fear in a safe environment, but 99 seconds is short enough for it to not make you terribly anxious about what to say. Also, if you're into public speaking and if you're not, why not give it a try? 

Anyway, I gave a 99-second talk at my first TestBash two or three years ago...it was TestBash Manchester precisely. The prize for being brave enough to speak was a beautiful light blue type of Moleskine notebook that one of the sponsors was giving, and I told myself I was doing it for the notebook but I knew why I was really doing it. 

Standing in line when no one can see you

The experience was different today because the queue up the stage wasn't visible. Nevertheless, every time I thought I was waiting for my turn, I kept repeating inside my head "Not me, not me, not me"...I guess I'm feeling a bit shy today and although I wanted to push myself, I didn't really want to push myself at the same time. I'm happy technology wasn't my friend today, but that doesn't mean I think the message should remain unsaid, so I thought I'd blog about it. 

I thought it was important to share this with you today because I've clipped my own wings in the past and it doesn't make sense so I've stopped doing it. 

I suck

I've always thought I sucked at art, so why keep trying?

I've always thought I had -1 musical talent, so why bother trying to learn how to play an instrument?

Sometimes it doesn't matter how many times you hear the phrase "Practice makes perfect", does it? Sometimes it just doesn't stick. 

I have stopped depriving myself of learning opportunities and if you're doing it as well, please, give yourself a chance. 

Butterflies

This post will be really personal (as usual) and not about work. Also, I'll try to make it easy to read but I think it's best if we see this as a ball of yarn that we're unraveling together. 

COVID as a unit of time

COVID months aren't like normal months. A lot can happen in a COVID month and nothing can happen as well, making a month feel like half a year or like a week. However, my months have been blessed with a passion for the internet and what you can find in it (I've always had it but now even more so), zoom activities every day after work, YouTube videos and not having to commute to the office, which has probably allowed me to do stuff after work. 

A sensei along the way

I can't remember when I bought my iPad, it feels like forever but it must have been one or two months ago. No more than a month or two before that I created @therookiesketchnoter, my public Instagram account, which is where I post all the sketchnotes I make. The sketchnoting community is amazing and I got lots of recommendations regarding who to follow to improve this and that...which is how I came across Fran Salomon, author of "Mejor Dilo con Monos" and Dean of the prestigious University of Moníchigan. I don't know why I find her so mesmerizing... if it's her charisma and how funny she is or the fact that she is a person who has struggled and found a way to improve. She's an amazing communicator and her messages just go through me and set me in motion. I wish she could convince me to go to the gym and stop eating crap...maybe I'll ask her to motivate me to do that when I finally meet her (I'm on the waitlist for one of her courses). 

This pic is from www.canva.com

I started following her on YouTube, Instagram, etc. I started practicing every day as she suggested. I can't say I'm getting better because I honestly don't see it, but I can say people seem to be liking what I make...and this time, perhaps that's the opinion I should trust...theirs and not mine because mine is pretty mean and judgemental when it comes to my own crafts. Fran Salomon always says that "drawing is a path to personal growth". She says we have to practice every day and enjoy the ride, since it's not the final destination that matters, it's the journey. 

Invisible competitions

All these months have been a different kind of journey for me because for once, I stopped competing with others. You know when you're in a competition to see who achieves more things but the other person doesn't know you're competing with them? Yeah, just like that. Shame on me.

I had been so focused on doing what everyone else is doing (thinking that I was going to become successful that way) that I was completely neglecting what I really wanted to do. I've always wanted to make films (don't ask, that one is a bit on hold atm). I've always wished I could draw and paint. I've always wished I spoke at least 5 languages by the age of 30. I've always wished I could play music...but I thought that all those wishes were not my thing (except for languages, that one I actually did invest my whole life in) since I was so bad at all of them.

Practice 

Fran Salomon talks about it all the time. Vera Gehlen-Baum talked about it too in her masterclass "You have no talent (and neither do I)". There's even a super cliché quote that says "Practice makes perfect", but why have I never really paid attention to it? I've always thought that you had to have some talent prior to practicing until you reached perfection...but what if you develop your talent because you practice so much? 

Tools

This part will sound very frivolous and consumerist (and it is and it makes me feel guilty but I don't know why I'm telling you this). I bought an iPad because I was getting frustrated that real paper doesn't have an undo button and I thought that perhaps digital sketchnotes might be the way for me. I bought a camera to make stop motion films. I just bought a ukulele. 

Butterflies

Last night, my husband and I were in bed and I told him: "I can't wait for it to be tomorrow morning so I can go to the music shop to get a ukulele. I can't wait to start my lessons*. I know you might think I've lost it, with all the hobbies I've discovered since March and all...but these are things I've always wanted to do and I didn't know I deserved to give myself a chance to try. I'm so happy I have the rest of my life to learn and practice. This is crazy because I don't think I've ever felt this way, but I'm giving myself butterflies in my stomach because I'm really happy that I'm alive and finally living."

*I used Roomie Official's two-month free trial Skillshare link and it worked! I also found a discount code to enroll for the whole year with 40% discount!! Send me a message if you want it :) 

Why it's OK to change your mind

I've wanted to write this post for a very long time, but I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do next and I figured there was no point in writing it yet.

Disclaimers: 1. This one will be kind of personal/philosophical so if you're not interested in that, I'd skip this post if I were you. 2. This is all my perception (as everything else). I speak no truth, I speak my truth. Nothing I say here should be taken as a norm.

So...I wanted to do a lot of stuff this year, for example, create a CoP at work and one in my city. Also, I had accepted the challenge to become a clandestine Scrum Master of my team and I was about to get certified with a free certification that I will link at the bottom of this post. However, I've changed my mind about it all and I will tell you why (I'm telling all of this to myself really). 

I made this picture. Heraclitus made the quote and did all the thinking.

Communities of Practice

I think that a Community of Practice takes a lot of time and effort. Sherlock haha. For quite a while, this might mean that you have to keep pushing yourself to keep going, even if you feel that you're all alone and that you don't see a result...at least until you find other members that are as involved as you are and that will help you work on it. Also, people have to share the same values, right? Anyway, I don't have that kind of time anymore or that kind of resilience I think...when things are down I tend to be down too. Also, it turns out that you can't force things and information on people (lol but very true), so in order for you to make a CoP at work, you need to find like-minded people. People who enjoy learning almost as much as you do (probably in their free time as well). A place that will help you find the time and space to make it possible. I don't know what I was expecting, that things were quick and easy maybe? 

Scrum Master

I've been told a couple of times that I'd be a great SM. I wanted to believe it. Who knows, maybe I would be a good one. However, I've realized that I don't want to be one for the time being. I have lost interest to become one right now. All my energy is currently used to keep my mental health afloat. 

Other priorities

I might be stating the obvious again, but this pandemic has shown me that I'm my top priority. Also, it has shown me that time is finite. Why haven't I thought about it before? No idea, but I hadn't. 

I want to continue improving my sketchnoting skills. I want to improve my drawing skills. I want to dedicate my free time to the things that make me happy and to my hobbies. I want to be able to dedicate my free time to my health and work out. 

So yeah, that's about it. The river has changed and so has the woman. 

*https://www.scrumstudy.com/certification/scrum-fundamentals-certified

* This is my sketchnoting Instagram alter ego https://www.instagram.com/therookiesketchnoter/?hl=en

How to be a successful tester

What is "being a successful tester" to you? Does it mean being rich and famous and that everyone praises you when talking about testing and that one day they make a movie about you or does it mean making a real contribution to the industry, even if you don't have thousands of followers on Twitter?

One of my favorite literature teachers from uni taught us that even though William Shakespeare is the most famous Elizabethan playwright and poet, he wasn't necessarily the best (At least that's what I remember...but maybe I don't remember correctly, it's been a while). Update: Indeed, I remembered incorrectly. He was the best, but that's not the point of this blog entry.

Anyway, I remember a quote that went something like "Jonson wrote for posterity, Shakespeare wrote for prosperity".  

That, dear reader, is exactly my point here...when you want success, do you want to be remembered, even if you weren't the best (but you were awesome and memorable, I'm by no means trashing Will here) and even if you flipped your opinion like an omelette sometimes to please the current ruler so they'd sponsor you (like a patreon.com of 1550) or is success enough if you made a valuable contribution to the industry and you know it has improved people's lives and/or influenced the way they work? Maybe you want both, I'm not judging you, I promise.

I don't know how Twitter churning reflected on Shakespeare's times (perhaps an empty theater?) but in our beloved 2020, people will follow you on Twitter either because they think you're cool and they want to read what you post...or because they want to build an audience. They will follow you, you'll get happy and feel validated (one more reason to remember you don't need validation) so you will return the favor and follow them back, but then (or if) they'll unfollow you because they never cared about you or your content, you were just a number darling (sorry, I'm mean today). Whose praise do you want anyway? The silent praise of some people following you or the praise that is reflected when people quote you or your work?

It's almost lunchtime here so I thought it was the perfect time for some food for thought. 

DISCLAIMERS: 1. I never intended to disrespect the memory of William Shakespeare or discredit him or his work, thas was not the point of this blog post.  2. I received the information that it wasn't Marlowe who wrote for posterity but that it actually was Ben Jonson, so I edited the quote. However, later on, I received the information that it is was actually Milton who wrote for posterity. I understand that for literature's historic justice it's important to know if it was Jonson or Milton who wrote for posterity, but since it wasn't the main point of this post, I will update the sources as they come. In the meantime, the quote "Jonson wrote for posterity, Shakespeare wrote for prosperity" can be found on page 47 of the book "Art Imitates Business - Commercial and Political influences in Elizabethan Threatre" page 47 https://books.google.es/books?id=r7gHKfW5zSEC&pg=PA47&dq=%22shakespeare+wrote+for+prosperity%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiB8KW-idLqAhWj2-AKHSXsAZ4Q6AEwAHoECAUQAg#v=onepage&q=%22shakespeare%20wrote%20for%20prosperity%22&f=false

Antzie Origins: How to raise a child that ends up like me (or not)

Have you ever wondered what would you be like if you had been raised by different people? 

Would you be a rocket scientist? Would you be a better/worse person? Would you still be yourself?

I'm the way I am because I'm me (duh), but I think I'm also the way I am because of how my mom raised me. I've been thinking about the things that she's done that ended up shaping me and I've come up with a long list that made me realize I'm just like her in so many ways. She raised me to be this way, even if she wasn't doing it on purpose (I'll ask her and let you know). 

She taught me:

1. That you gotta fight for your rights 

Since I was a child, my mom has always taken part in protests to claim and demand better working conditions. When I was 18, she paid my boyfriend, who was a drummer at a punk rock band, so he'd come to the protest and play his snare drum. 

I don't know how it is in your country, but in my country of origin, a day is deducted from your salary if you join a protest. I remember a couple of years ago my mom made a comment about her salary that month, that she was getting less because of a protest she'd join. I have major respect for that. However, I understand that not everybody has that privilege and that, for some, every penny counts. 

2. To learn from your mistakes 

When I failed my first exam in college I was devastated. I was so used to not giving my best and studying at the last minute and still always getting good grades somehow. However, one day I failed (and I failed many times after that). I was crushed and I had to hold my tears for one hour, which was how long the bus took. 

"Some lessons are more expensive than others", she told me. That's one of my mom's signature lines. She doesn't necessarily mean expensive "money-wise", of course, though sometimes she does. 

3. To sketchnote (without knowing what it was and that it even had a name) 

My mom would help us study sometimes and when she did, she'd make little drawings and help us associate the drawing to the meaning. I can still remember the name of an Inca priest and the drawing that represented him. I saw that drawing at least 25 years ago and it wasn't even me who was learning about it, it was my brother. 

4. To surround yourself with peers and learn constantly

My brother and I practically grew up at the Dental Association of our city. My mom was always taking endodontics courses. My mother raised us alone, and sometimes she didn't have anybody to take care of me so she'd bring me to her endodontics courses with her and they'd made me run back and forth carrying dental instruments from station to station. I was 6 years old when I learned what sodium hypochlorite was (it was the 90s...parents were fierce) and I could barely pronounce it.

5. To get involved in your community 

She was the treasurer of the Endodontics Society of the Dental Association of our city. She was an active member of the Dental Association and she'd organize courses and workshops. 

I remember falling asleep more than once on the brown leather couches of the large waiting room of the Dental Association since their monthly assembly had gone a little off the schedule and it was late at night. I remember hearing my mom's voice, passionately defending her beliefs. 

6. To share knowledge 

My mom has always mentored students who have just graduated from dentistry. She'd also give talks, usually encouraging her colleagues to rebel against the system and improve their working conditions (Argentinian dentists aren't rich haha). 

She used to pay me to do her presentations in PowerPoint. I'm sorry mom, I shouldn't have charged you. 

7. To not be afraid of your creativity 

My mom has always believed that the specialization she chose is a bit unfair. It's such a detailed, complex specialization, but they don't get paid very well, so lots of dentistry students prefer specializing in cosmetic dentistry or orthodontics instead. She was convinced that Endodontics was dying in our city and she refused to let it die, so she asked me to draw a root canal file inside a coffin. SO.WEIRD. 

I remember I did it in Paint. It was pixelated and ugly, but my mom loved it. She printed huge posters with my drawing in them and I remember her colleagues telling her how much the drawing had impacted them and even congratulating me for it. It was ugly but it made a point. 

No wonder I turned out like this.

"Testing is the responsibility of the whole team"

I made this tag with https://fontmeme.com/name-tags/

                                                                                                                 

Hello, my name is Antzie and I'm a bottleneck. I don't want to be one and I know I shouldn't feel like one, but I do. 

For years I've been hearing and reading that "testing is the responsibility of the whole team" and that "testing needs to be done, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be done by the tester of the team", and I completely agree with those statements. I wish I could benefit from those statements 40 hours a week. I've been trying to pitch them to my team, but perhaps I need to improve my sales pitch in the first place because I'm clearly not good at it.

For a couple of months, every single sprint we close, we have bugs and tasks in "Ready to test". I know I shouldn't feel like a lousy tester because of it, but I do. I'm a person who enjoys finishing a sprint with zero things in my to-do list. It gives me peace of mind. It allows me to enjoy my Friday afternoon feeling that I managed to complete something...that I managed to close a chapter on Friday and I get to start a new one on Monday. 

I understand that cultural changes take time. I also understand that testing takes time and that if by the first half of the sprint all the tickets estimated are waiting for me on the "Ready to test" column, then new tickets are grabbed from the "groomed" backlog, and so new tickets will be added to my pile. Do they equal the 20% of buffer time and capacity? I'm not sure, but it overwhelms me.

Perhaps that means I should dedicate less time to each ticket, but if I've estimated x amount of time for each, then why should I reduce it only because I have more stuff to do now? It doesn't feel right to ditch my own estimation only because I want to "finish on time".

Should I just learn to be okay with finishing all sprints with stuff stuck in the "Ready to test" swimlane? It doesn't feel like it's the solution to my problem.

I know what you're thinking, but I'm very vocal and I struggle to shut up about the things that matter to me, so I've brought this up multiple times in our retros. My team knows I'm frustrated and they've suggested leaving their finished tickets in "Code review" so I'm not overwhelmed. However, that looks, smells, tastes and feels like a placebo to me. 

I know what you're thinking and no, I don't want to quit, I happen to love this team, I want to stay and I want them to help me. I think this is a growing opportunity for all of us.

What I want is to do pair testing. I want to do mob testing. I want to do all the things suggested by Explore It! and Agile Testing Condensed. I want to be a Modern Tester. I want my team to understand that this is not only on me and the other tester of the team (we're actually one big mobile team but split in two mini teams). 

Some people might say: "If I do your job, then that means you need to code too then" and whereas I disagree with it, I know I would if I could, if I had the skills to do it...I so would, especially if a team member was drowning and they kept asking for help during every single retro. 

So dear team buddies, if you're reading this, please help me. Please jump on the evolution bandwagon with me because sometimes I feel like I'm the only one seeing this Thestral. 

*Note: I don't know how on Earth I forgot to mention The Modern Testing Principles but I've mended my post. In my defence, I was frustrated with the mobile app of Blogger because I had written a draft there but it was never saved, so I had to re-write this post. Of course I uninstalled the app afterwards.

The retro that made everyone warm and fuzzy inside

As I have mentioned before, although I'm not the scrum master of our team, I have volunteered to facilitate our retros...and I've done it for almost 6 months, but then I felt a bit drained and I asked my teammates for help. I thought I needed a couple of sprints to recharge my creative batteries, but honestly, I feel like I still need some more time. 

Anyway, my dear friend Korcholis (probably my best friend at work, but don't tell him) volunteered to facilitate some retros and they were good. They made everyone in the team sigh and be all "aww I love you all", which was beautiful and felt great, but being the flawed person I am, I felt a bit jealous (and feeling jealous made me feel small). 

Jealous? Why? Well, because I've been trying to get the team to reach that climax for almost 6 months and I felt weird that someone else achieved it. Since Korcholis and I are the kinds of friends who can be honest with each other, I confessed my jealousy to him, and guess what he said? 

"First of all, all processes are long and sometimes they take time. The fact that they said that when I was facilitating it might only because I was "a new person" facilitating the retros, but the whole effect came from before.

Second, if you hadn't brought games and 'emotional things', I wouldn't have brought games and emotional things. To be honest, when I was officially responsible of facilitating the retro, every day before starting work I'd look for metaphors about how to split tasks in "good" and "bad" and that's it, but afterward, once I started looking for games, I realized that splitting positive and negative things of the sprint into two columns was not the most important part...the most important part was to see how we work as a team.

Third, I know you don't like to hear this, but you can't allow someone's words to affect you. [...] Fourth, don't say you feel small, imagine you teach someone how to ride a bike. Will you feel small because that person knows how to ride a bike now? Will you feel small when someone tells them "Wow! Well done! You ride your bike so well!"...of course not. You should feel proud of being such a good teacher."

I must admit that, after those words, I felt a bit emotionally manipulated to feel proud of my work and happy about what had happened... After all, he's really smart and he'd know how to cheer me up, but he made a good case.

We're finally riding the bike together (sometimes).

The self-assessment time of the year

A couple of weeks ago we had to write our self-assessment reports in one of the HR platforms of the company. At first, I was very confused about it, especially because I have been working in this company for about eight months and sometimes it's hard for me to retrace things that I'd fill in in a self-assessment form. Anyway, even if I've had to assess my work every year in my previous company, each company has its own format for this type of evaluation. NOTE: If you don't care about the story behind this and just want to skip to the conclusion and tips, scroll down to the bottom. You're welcome :D

Fortunately, HR set up a training session in which they taught us how to use the platform, that we had to give examples, etc.

But what do I say? Each section of the form was mapped to our company values, and we had to provide examples of each and rate ourselves from 1-5 (each rate value has an explanation). I had lots of questions: "Have I done enough? Have I not done enough? Have I surpassed the expectations they had when they hired me? What were they expecting from me?" If I knew that, then I guess I'd know whether I've met such expectations or not. "Does my work apply to each value?" "Do I live and work and breathe the company's core values?"

It all made me think of quality since I had to assess the quality of my own work after all, and I suppose the company values and the rating 1-5 were my heuristics (or were they my oracles? I'm second-guessing myself here as usual). 

Jerry Weinberg's definition of quality says that "Quality is value to some person" and if you add Michael Bolton's and James Bach's addition to this quote "who matters", then the definition of quality is "Quality is value to some person who matters". 

Also, I remember learning that "quality is a subjective value" (I will quote the author when I remember who said it), but "how do I make it more objective so I can actually rate my work? Or should I remain subjective because this self-assessment is about me and my work?" Ugh...I know... I was getting way philosophical about it but that's how it happened.

I have impostor syndrome (maybe you have it too, dear reader) and I underestimate myself a lot, so how could I be objective about my work and not sell myself short? Or, once again, should I have remained subjective, since it was about me?

I was a bit stuck, so I googled "how to fill in a self-evaluation" and clicked on the first link I found: this link. 

I started scanning the text and this part caught my attention..."There’s no way to evaluate your performance without a clear description of your job. If you already have one, keep it handy while composing your self-evaluation."  I browsed my inbox, trying to find the job description that made me want to apply for this job and I found it. After reading it, I didn't feel that bad about myself, they were looking for someone with some experience but always willing to learn (hey! that's me!!). I was in a better place to review myself, so I sat in front of my laptop and started typing and I didn't move until I realized I was sitting in complete darkness (it's not like I typed for days though, it was probably that time of the day where it's about to be sunset but it's quite lit still). 

I read it aloud...it seemed okay and honest. I have to say that the assessment does have something I liked a lot, which is that the categories are our company values, so you provide examples of your work under each value. I detailed the things I consider an achievement, things that I've been struggling with but kind of overcame...I was ready to give myself a rating. Oh boy, here comes the overthinking part again.

"If I choose 3 for all, it'll sound like I think I do my job well, but I'm not arrogant about it. If I choose 4-5, will it look like I'm too self-confident about what I've done? What if I actually haven't done anything praise-worthy and I just have the illusion that I have?" (Dunning-Kruger effect FTW)

I thought I totally deserved a 4 in one of the values, so I gave myself only one 4, and the rest were 3s. 

Total: 3.2

"But what does it mean? Does it mean I'm OK? Do I deserve a raise or a promotion? Am I going to be the first one to get fired because I didn't get a 5 average? What does 3.2 even mean?"

I've given some feedback to HR about it already, perhaps so that people like me don't get anxious about a number whose meaning we don't even know...Also, if we knew how this will be used (maybe they did explain it but I missed it?) maybe we wouldn't be so uncomfortable with it (I know I wasn't the only one). 

Lessons learned (and tips, so if you're in this situation and don't know how to do it maybe this can help you a bit): 

1. Keep a record of your achievements and difficulties (especially if you've managed to overcome them). Not only will they come in handy for self-assessment, but also for a job interview.

2. Job description: If you're new at the job, it might help you to keep your job description near, so you can refer back to it if needed. Just remember that sometimes you might get a job because you meet the job description, but then your responsibilities can change over time.

3. Audience: Asking who will read your assessment and how it will be used will help you write it down. If you know this will be used for future promotions, maybe it'll even motivate you to come up with better examples of your achievements!

4. Ask a colleague for help: Getting a colleague (or maybe even your manager?) to proofread it or help out if you're stuck can be really helpful. Sometimes we don't see things others see, so I don't think this can hurt.

Why are we doing it anyway? Perhaps once a year is not enough.

A post about feedback

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a wonderful webinar organized by IT Matters. The speaker was Crystal Mbanefo, and you can watch the webinar here. It was heartwarming, fun and I'd watch it a thousand times. 

The webinar was about receiving feedback with resilience. I let the webinar sink in my brain for a while, and I realized I need to learn to receive my own feedback as well (that can be the hardest part sometimes). 

"I accept that I did what I could, acted as I could, with what I had at the time."

I am quite harsh on myself and I rarely cut myself some slack. I'm not sure if it's the anxiety dominating the body or the judgy brain I've always had (and a vital organ whose behavior I'm trying to correct) but sometimes I find it really hard to forgive myself for not having excelled at something...and I don't excel at anything (lol), so you can imagine how tortured (by myself *cough*) I can feel sometimes. 

I find it hard to forgive myself for not being as bright as I wish I was.
I find it hard not to compare myself to others and remember that all our paths are different. But I need to remind myself that at all times... "all paths are different because we are all different". If context matters so much to me, then I need to remind myself that in this situation, context matters too.

Fortunately, this webinar is on YouTube, which means I can watch it as many times as necessary. 

I had a great conversation with an amazing friend today and among other things, she reminded me that I am me and that I shouldn't feel bad for not being productive all the time. 

I wonder what I'd think of myself if I wasn't me. Maybe I'd even think I'm the bomb. 

Hi, how are you? For real, how ARE YOU?

I think that by now, my teammates know exactly which post-its are mine because of how personal they are. I don't know if this is right or wrong, but if it is true that we need to focus on individuals and interactions over processes and tools then I will...because I care. Deeply. 

Last week was a bit weird, not only because of the whole pandemic situation that is making a lot of us feel like we're riding an emotional rollercoaster, but also because my grampa broke his hip and he was taken to the hospital to the intensive care unit (He's alright and he's back at home now, thank you for asking telepathically). I was a bit mopey last week and feeling all sorts of guilt.

I felt guilty because I am the favorite grandchild (oh yes, yes I am) and I used to spend lots of time with my grandparents before I moved to Spain, but I can no longer spend time with them or teleport (now THAT would be the solution to my problem). I have been calling them every single Sunday at 5pm their time for five years though. They love it, I love it.

I felt guilty because I was executing a pretty long manual regression run and it was taking me forever to finish, and my mind wasn't helping much either. 

I felt guilty because our biggest consumer base is iOS, and I test our iOS apps. Did I want to mark a test case as passed but not test it well? Hell no, that's not me. I'd rather take my time than giving my word on something that I haven't checked properly. However, when I can't focus I don't remember what I did and so I need to do it again. Yes, I do take notes. Yes, I'm distracted anyway, especially when I get interrupted on Slack.

I felt guilty because I wasn't allowing myself to understand that it is OK if you're not giving your 100%. This situation is effing different from anything we've been through before. Some of us live in countries that are going through hell right now, while our families are in poorer countries whose hell would be ten times worse, did COVID-19 hit them. 

So there I was, feeling guilty when I saw a pair of eyes rolling whenever I said I wasn't done with our regression yet (I might be paranoid and maybe no eyes were rolled...maybe my guilt was playing tricks on me)...and I wanted to cry a bit, tell them that I felt under pressure, that I wanted to perform and out-do myself but that my heart was breaking because I was terrified that my 94-year-old grandpa would die and that I wouldn't even get to say goodbye on the phone because mobiles are not allowed in the intensive care unit (because phones are dirty and we know it).

We had our retro yesterday, and fortunately, I wasn't the retromaster* this time. I wrote that pink post-it note and deleted it. Wrote it again, deleted it. Wrote it again, deleted it. I finally was eggsy enough to do it.  I told my teammates that I wanted to explain why I was acting the way I was acting last week. I told them that I was embarrassed about telling them about my grandfather and how that was eating me from the inside out because I was afraid that they would think it was an excuse for being lazy. I just couldn't focus. I told them that we are transparent about each other's work every day at the daily stand-up but are we transparent about how we're feeling? I think we should because being agile means adapting, right? We don't see each other's faces all the time, we don't see each other's body language anymore...so we might as well ask each other how we're doing and mean it. Oh, and create a psychologically safe space so we can actually tell the truth if we want to and not just answer "Fine".

Who would have thought that a tiny post-it note could be so emotionally liberating?

*Retromaster: I have volunteered to facilitate our retros and I've been doing it for 7 months but I was running out of my creative juices so I asked for help last sprint and said I needed someone else to facilitate them for a sprint or two. A big shoutout to my buddy who volunteered as tribute. You rock. 

I confess...

I always try to go to meetups when I have a chance, even if meeting new people does make me nervous. I'm tempted to confess what is exactly what makes me nervous about meeting new people, especially in a business-like context, but I want to be mysterious so I won't. *evil laughter* 

Last year, I was diagnosed with anxiety. I thought I had depression too, but the doctor said I didn't and I quote her "You have lots of plans for your life and even if you say you're tired, you do all sorts of things. I think you have anxiety." I don't know if it was an accurate diagnosis or not, but I've been in treatment ever since and I am way less anxious (and happier), so maybe she was right. 

"You have lots of plans for your life and even if you say you're tired, you do all sorts of things."

Yes, all sorts of things. That I do. But should I? During "covid-tine" (that's so fetch, let's make it happen)... should I be doing all sorts of things or should I prioritize what sparks joy (yes, I'm quoting Marie Kondo) and not necessarily what triggers my brain activity work-wise? Sometimes they combine, but sometimes they don't and I might be pushing myself to enter a dark cave that I already know quite well. Doing too many things exhausts me.

I hereby confess that I have attended a lot of meetups.

So I tweeted something (with a grammar mistake that will haunt me forever...darn you Twitter for not allowing tweets to be edited). 

I think some people identified with it, but the tweet was for me, for future me to read and think about it before walking inside the dark cave of over-attending-meetups without a flashlight. I suppose this tweet was the flashlight.

A final thought, to myself, of course...is attending meetups almost compulsively like binge eating? 

"Do we even enjoy food when we binge eat?" - types while she chews the last bonbon that's left from a box of chocolates she bought three days ago.

Family recipes

I could have sworn that my mother told me this story, but when I asked her where she read it from, she told me that I was the one who told it to her...so, unfortunately, I won't be able to quote the source this time (I will do some research when I can and update this post if I find the source of the story). 

This post was inspired by a comment that Toyer M. made in the chat of TestBash Home's during the session "Panel: Leadership. With Shey Crompton, Nicola Sedgwick, Alessandra Moreira and the awesome host Jenna Charlton).

 I wanted to tell him this story, but I thought the chat wasn't the right place to do it.

The story

Once upon a time, there was a child who received an assignment at school. She had to find a family recipe and write it down, step by step. She didn't have to think too much about it, whenever she thought of a family recipe, "pan-fried fish" sprung to mind. 

She came home after school and asked her mom to write down the steps for her:

1. Buy fish

2. Clean it and cut it in half

3. Heat up a pan, drizzle some olive oil, place the fish in the pan and let it sizzle. 

Girl: Mom, why do you cut the fish in half?

Mother: I don't know, mom always made it that way. Ask her. 

The girl ran upstairs and asked grandma the same question.

Girl: Gran, you know our family pan-fried fish recipe? Why do you cut the fish in half?

Grandma: Hm...I don't know...ask Aunt Susan, it's her recipe. 

The girl called Aunt Susan on the phone. 

Girl: Auntie, I'm working on a school assignment and they asked me to write down a family recipe. I chose pan-fried fish! 

Aunt Susan: That's great!! So what do you want to know about it?

Girl: Well, my mom said I had to cut the fish in half...I asked grandma and she told me the same thing. But why?

Aunt Susan: When I got the recipe from my mom, I know she used to cut it in half, but only because her pan was so small! I got a bigger pan now and I no longer cut it in half. 

Asking questions is always a good exercise. The reasons why things are a certain way is purely based on the context.

TestBash Home

This event made me feel many things but I'm still processing them. In the meantime, this is what I did during #restBash to express what I felt and to summarize what my TestBash Home day was like.

Click here to see my video.

A sneak peak

 It's the third one I make in my life. It's a long time dream I've had, and the current situation re-ignited my dream.

Happy Sunday! 

"You is kind, you is smart, you is important"

The title of this post is what Aibeleen Clark tells little Skeeter Phelan to remind her how important she is, and because she knows that as adults, we can help shape children's self-esteem and confidence by reminding them important things. Whereas a scrum team is certainly not made up of children, the confidence of its team members might increase as the team matures, but also if they're shown that they're valued and appreciated.

 From the film "The Help"  

Sometimes I feel that we're usually more prone to giving negative feedback when we have to rather than giving positive feedback spontaneously. But what if the other person really needs to hear something nice? What if the other person is having impostor syndrome or is simply having a terrible day and a little nice gesture could make their day?

Living with the current pandemic in Spain is not easy. Lots of people are losing their jobs, and I can't imagine how awful it must be to have to look for a job when you're not feeling good about yourself and when you don't know how much you're worth.
That was the thought process behind this retrospect activity...that, and perhaps my own need to be validated.

The day before the retro:
I don't know about you, but sometimes when I ask people to think about something, anything, it takes them ages, so I decided to give my team an assignment, so that time wouldn't be an excuse. I asked them to make a list of each person of the team (except for themselves, but now that I think about it, it would have been cool too) and list two or three virtues for each.

I also found this Secret Santa tool and tested it to see if it did what I needed from it https://mywishlist.online/secretsanta/new

The day of the retro:
I decided to give them one little push and send them a list of virtues https://www.virtuesforlife.com/virtues-list/
(Just in case they didn't know what virtue was and they were too lazy to google it). I know what you're thinking, I'm spoonfeeding them, yes, but I was scared that some of them hadn't understood the task and were afraid to ask, so I decided to give people a little push.

The moment of retro:
1. I set up a Secret Santa email distribution list, and each member of the team received an email with the name of a team member (the website I used takes care of not sending people their own name and there are some rules you can set up).

2. I sent them this link https://avatarmaker.com/ and asked them to draw the avatar of the name they got by email.

3. I sent them a link to an open Google Drive doc and asked them to go to the link in incognito mode (so that it would be anonymous) and paste the picture they drew and add the virtues they thought of.

4. Once all the pictures where on the doc, they asked me why did I make them make a list for everyone, but then only add the virtues to one person? :) It was part of my evil plan mwahaha. I knew that sending them a name on the spot and asking them to think of virtues would be hard, especially because we're like sub-divided in the team and we don't work with each other all the time, so I figured that giving them some time in advance to think about it wouldn't hurt. I asked them if they wanted to add the virtues to all avatars and they wanted to, so we did.

5. In the end, each team member had an avatar like this (see image).



Conclusion:
My memory might be playing tricks on me, but I feel like this was the first time I was thanked for facilitating a retro (Disclaimer: we don't have a scrum master and we don't take it in turns to facilitate retros, I have volunteered to do it when I started working here, 7 months ago). Anyway, I'm not sure if being thanked is a good or bad indicator of anything (etiquette aside) but it felt rewarding. Do you know what felt awesome too? To know how they see me, which virtues my team thinks I possess.

Regarding the other team members, I know that they felt good about the exercise because they said so.

I really liked the fact that I had to write a list of virtues for each team member. It made me see how different we all are and it made me appreciate the diversity of my team even more.

P/S: I don't know who made my avatar and the person whose avatar I made doesn't know it was me and, you know what? I like it this way, it makes it mysterious, and the fact that no-one asked who drew them makes me think the others like it this way too.