Reflecting on leading a Testing Community of Practice Part II
Devoting time and effort - when I have it
While I’m on my project my priority is as a tester in my scrum team. Therefore, I only devote time and effort when I have it. Some weeks I’m very busy in my team and barely give the CoP a second thought; other weeks I have more time to prepare a presentation or approach people to give presentations (or look up topics to see what people may find interesting to hear about from others).
I really appreciate the flexibility. While there is an expectation that something happens regularly, it seems that definition of “regularly” has become roughly once a month.
Merging the Test Automation COP and Testing COP
The lead of the Test Automation COP pinged me on slack a few weeks ago to see what I thought about merging the two. I said I was all for it (after all I saw Test Automation as a part of testing; a way to approach testing - and so did he). We both posted messages in our slack channel saying we had this idea and wanted to hear what people thought of it or if people were concerned/worried about this move. Based on the feedback, people seemed ok with it.
Now that we were merged, we updated the Confluence page (for those who read it that is. Are there page counters in Confluence? 💁). I also sent out a survey asking how testing is going in their teams and what their biggest testing problems were and what they wanted to learn more about. I also asked them if they had automation set up in their team or if they wanted help in getting it set up. (I’ve found people don’t always actively seek out help, but if you offer it - they may take you up on that offer).