This week I learned something of value to myself.
I have great difficulty translating what is going on in my head and filtering it through my mouth and my hands. This was causing me a bit of frustration. Not negative frustration, so perhaps it was actually agitation. I thought about it for a couple of days. I talked to myself about it. I asked myself questions about it.
1. What can I do about this?
2. How can I make it better?
3. Is there some exercise that I can apply that will help me work on this daily?
Here is what ended up taking place within a period of two day.
Day 1: I was reading the blog feeds on the Software Testing Club where I came across the latest James Bach blog entry. I read the blog and then read a few older entries in the archives.
Day 2: I went to the Software Testing Club and watched Becoming a Software Testing Expert. This is a video presentation that Mr. Bach made at Google. I had watched this before, but this time I was more in tune with the parts of the video that suggested to me that I "own my methodology".
I am going to make goal of understanding the methodology that I am applying as I test and writing it out in my notes. Instead of just doing what I am doing, I am going to require myself to stay in tune with the heuristics that I am applying while I am testing.
By utilizing this exercise, I hope to attain at least two things from myself:
1. What am I applying while I test (methodologies and heuristics)?
2. Why do I apply these?
Once I know the answers to these two questions, I can ask other questions of myself, such as what can I do to improve upon these?
The inspiration and insight that I received through watching the video helped me to look beyond the agitation, gain confidence, and create a plan. Thanks to James Bach for the presentation!
