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.