Back to school

Recently I blogged about sharpening the saw where I mentioned that I wanted to start learning to code in VB as it was an area I'd identified as a weakness in my skillset (not the only weakness, I might add...).

Then, on Friday I read this blog (Don't Forget to Test) which reminded me of another concern of mine; I haven't tested in ages. I've been in a management role for 18 months and although I spent 12 of those months still doing some test leading I haven't been doing any testing at all. This worries me; I'm meant to be in a position where I can coach testers about most things testing, but I've not done any testing myself in ages...

I've had this dilemma before and figured it wasn't feasible due to time / other constraints but I've decided to challenge that. I've offered my team the chance to have a free tester, i.e. me (I won't put my time against the project), for a little bit of time each week so help them do some testing. I said I'd be more than happy to run some ET tests which they may be struggling to get the time to run, or I'd happily give a fresh perspective on some aspect of a program - whatever they want really.

We'll see how this goes and I'll come back and blog about it. I've found, so far, the single biggest challenge to team leading is trying to stay up-to-date with the challenges the team face on a day-2-day basis and you can read all the blogs you like but unless you allow yourself a little time to test I'd worry you could end up removed from the realities of life as a tester!