testiloquent
Testing-Essentials ▪ Think Like a Tester ▪ Test Strategy ▪ Test Tooling, Automation ▪ Test Analysis and -Design ▪ Performing Tests and Reporting ▪ Appendix
Who’s this?
Hi! I’m Sharol Süess-O’Reggio. My motivation for working with migrants entering the IT job market is two-fold.
- The program simply makes sense! All participants, including those who don’t continue working in IT, receive job and integration coaching, learn useful skills, and grow their network. IT talents that may otherwise have gone undiscovered have an opportunity to develop, which benefits both the participants and their families and Switzerland at large.
- Teaching is learning on steroids. Having to explain testing to others deepened my own understanding.
My Testing
Part I - bootstrapped test process
My first job in IT was in testing, working for a small company that built software for car insurance and repair shops. I was the first tester they’d had, and I had no previous knowledge or experience in the discipline, so I just winged it - my line manager told me what was needed and I figured out a way of getting it done.
Part II - test management by ISTQB, waterfall-style projects
After a few years in other roles, I returned to testing, this time at a large bank. I took an introductory course in project management and I gained some experience in test management before joining Swiss Mobiliar’s new test center organisational unit as a test manager. The test center staffed projects and releasing with test specialists, and made sure that everyone on the team was ISTQB certified. I sat the CTFL exam in 2009, and completed the advanced level certifications in 2011.
Part III - new paradigms: context-driven testing, Agile software development
In 2013/2014 I hired one test manager who introduced me to exploratory testing with session-based test management, and another who introduced me to Specification by Example and Agile SW development. This led me to take a number of courses in 2015/2016 that changed the way I thought about testing and software development projects: an RST (Rapid Software Testing) course with James Bach and Michael Bolton, Scrum Master training with Jeff Sutherland, and with Gojko Adjic, a Specification by Example course and an Impact Mapping course.
The mindset change came at the right time - by the time my last test management assignment in a waterfall-style project ended, Mobiliar’s IT department had adopted SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework). I tried my hand at test automation, then took on the role of Product Owner for a small team of test specialists in 2020.
My Teaching
As mentioned above, I first taught SW testing to a Powercoders class in the spring of 2017. It was a short class, with just enough time to introduce basic theory. When Powercoders partnered with the Swiss Testing Board (STB) in 2021, I collaborated with STB volunteers to prepare and teach an ISTQB Certified Tester Foundation Level (CTFL) course - a great opportunity for me to work closely with experienced training providers.
After teaching the course three times, it had become clear to me that the ISTQB curriculum is not the right fit for most Powercoders participants. I had recently taken a BBST course. Thinking a pared-down version of it would be ideal for Powercoders, I offered to design a new learning path for the Testing Track, and with the support of Michal, I set about writing the Applied Testing course syllabus.
Turns out, I’d bitten off quite a bit more than I could chew. As lessons began in November 2022, the syllabus was still incomplete and very rough around the edges, and only a few exercises and assignments were ready.
Based on feedback from the first course participants, when I taught Applied Testing for the second time in the summer of 2023, I decided against using an LMS, freeing up time to prototype changes to the teaching approach, and to complete additional exercises and assignments. In the Focus Weeks at the end of 2023 a new teacher joined the team who designed assignments for the test automation module. I gave working with the LMS another go, this time with better results.
Stressful as it is, developing and teaching the course was and is an incredible learning experience. The course will continue to evolve, and I’m very much looking forward to my next batch of Powertesters.
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If you have any questions about the course, Slack is the best way to contact me. You can e-mail me, just don’t expect an answer in a reasonable time frame. I rarely check my e-mail. If you post a message in Powercoders Slack that I need to see, make sure to the teaching team or tag me with @sharol. And you can also DM me on Slack, of course.
I am not very active on social media, but when I do share something, it will be on Mastodon or LinkedIn.