How do you choose what you want to learn next?
To me, one of the great things about software testing is that almost anything you want to learn can be applied in some way to making you a better tester. Unfortunately, this does mean that the list of things that I want to explore seems to be increasing in size exponentially at the moment. (Esp after Eurostar!)
I've been thinking a lot about how to pick a manageable subset out of that list to look at over the next year. I know that if I don't do that, I'll flit from one to the other and won't really get down to anything that really challenges me. Browsing is great but I kind of want to immerse myself in something long enough to get to the knotty bits too. But I don't want to have to choose! It's a bit of a new challenge for me: over the last year my "new stuff" quota has been filled up quite nicely by the new job, and for the seven years before that most of my energy outside work was going into getting my degree done (and doing various bits of organising around that), so being able to choose almost anything I want, rather than having that dictated by outside neccessities is both freeing and rather bewildering...
Which prompts me to ask: how do you decide what you're going to be spending your time and energy on learning next?
Do you wait for things to come to you? (Just In Time learning?)
Are your priorities set by outside influences? (Your boss wants you to start using Selenium, you need to brush up on your stats knowledge for next semester's college course, etc...)
Or are your priorities set by your own internal preferences? (Ruby looks interesting, let's play with that next...)
Do you look at what skills/knowledge you have, and don't have, and then set about filling in the gaps methodically?
Do you look for a curriculum and then set about learning the things listed on that curriculum? (The "body of knowledge" approach?)
Or something else entirely?
And, at the risk of adding even more cool stuff to my "want to know more about that" list - what are you learning currently? I know there's a couple of people in the Software Testing Club doing the AST BBST course... which looks so very interesting...
I've been thinking a lot about how to pick a manageable subset out of that list to look at over the next year. I know that if I don't do that, I'll flit from one to the other and won't really get down to anything that really challenges me. Browsing is great but I kind of want to immerse myself in something long enough to get to the knotty bits too. But I don't want to have to choose! It's a bit of a new challenge for me: over the last year my "new stuff" quota has been filled up quite nicely by the new job, and for the seven years before that most of my energy outside work was going into getting my degree done (and doing various bits of organising around that), so being able to choose almost anything I want, rather than having that dictated by outside neccessities is both freeing and rather bewildering...
Which prompts me to ask: how do you decide what you're going to be spending your time and energy on learning next?
Do you wait for things to come to you? (Just In Time learning?)
Are your priorities set by outside influences? (Your boss wants you to start using Selenium, you need to brush up on your stats knowledge for next semester's college course, etc...)
Or are your priorities set by your own internal preferences? (Ruby looks interesting, let's play with that next...)
Do you look at what skills/knowledge you have, and don't have, and then set about filling in the gaps methodically?
Do you look for a curriculum and then set about learning the things listed on that curriculum? (The "body of knowledge" approach?)
Or something else entirely?
And, at the risk of adding even more cool stuff to my "want to know more about that" list - what are you learning currently? I know there's a couple of people in the Software Testing Club doing the AST BBST course... which looks so very interesting...
Tags: learning, tester education
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Dipan on -
"How do you choose what you want to learn next?" is a very difficult question. I don't think there is a specific answer for this question. Learning is totally depends upon individual interest. If you want to learn or to know something and if you have that passion then you will not wait for time, time will never come. Instantly you have to start learning about that subject or fact when it strikes your mind. Here anybody can ask the question, what we are learning will help in future or not? In near feature it may be not help you but one day your knowledge comes into action.
For example you are a software tester and working in financial project. At the same time you have interest to learn foreign languages. If you think, why should I learn foreign language now and there is no benefit in my current project. Yes, its true. But, after few months or year management decide to release this product in that language, then tell who will take the front seat? Of course you will handle the team. I personally believe if you want to learn something do it now.
Its your interest, your passion which drives you to learn something...
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Permalink Reply by phil kirkham on -
I would have to agree with Dipans last sentence - what I learn next is almost always driven by a passion. Not always a 'positive' passion - for example I was very frustrated by managers I worked with so I started to learn about management, at my last company we worked very efficiently so I learned about Lean, Toyota Production System etc
I also try and work out what will be useful for my career and not just pure personal interest
I also learned about my personality style and know that I'm internally driven and also like to learn through books and have a learning plan set out. Other personilty types will have different learning styles
So currently I'm doing an OU Management course and reading books and blogs on TDD, Artful Making and Consultancy Skills
but yes, I also struggle with so much I want to learn and not enough time
Good topic !
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Permalink Reply by Anna Baik on -
Hmm. Interesting point about identifying your learning style, Phil. It took me a long time during my degree to realise that I wasn't actually a "bad" student, but the learning style that works for me differs rather a lot from the "approved" "good student" model you see in study guides. Sitting down at exactly the same time each day and doing a little bit each day and starting at the first chapter and understanding what I read before moving on to the second...all of those things were really unproductive and actually went some way to convincing me that I wasn't particularly good at study. It was also unbelievably boring.
Being the absolute opposite of organised, disciplined, and regulated worked like a dream. Skip the first chapter of textbooks and dive straight in. (Textbook authors often seem to use the first chapter as a tedious warming up exercise - I have lots of books which would actually be much better if the first chapter had just been left out). I studied when and where I felt like it. Some weeks every spare minute, other weeks nothing. I jumped about all over the syllabus picking out whatever bits seemed interesting and then the minimum I needed to stitch those bits together. Usually I made a few passes through stuff, skimming to get the rough shape of things before getting to the detail on later passes when I had a structure to put it in. Sometimes I spent more time reading tenuously related papers than I did on the textbooks.
It seemed to be the only way to keep things chaotic enough to make my hindbrain sit up and pay attention. And stitching together my own structure rather than following someone else's plan seemed to work much better for me in terms of developing my understanding of the subject. Funnily enough, it seems that although I felt my approach was fairly chaotic, from the outside my approach looked incredibly organised - other students seemed to think I was organised and together.
It's also a lot more similar to the way I get information in work. Rarely does everything I need arrive bang on time organised exactly how I need it. I'll get the end before the beginning and the middle bits inside out and backwards. Often, there's a drip drip drip of useful info, and I'll need to try to stitch it together somehow to make sense and ferret out what I need to fill in the holes.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Page on -
I wrote a short article in the December issue of Better Software - the article ended with the following phrase:
"A passion for learning drives the work of every great tester I know. What drives you?"
I think the fact that you're bringing up this topic is fantastic. While I don't know if there's a formula to help figure out what to learn next, learning just about anything is certain to have benefits.
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Permalink Reply by phil kirkham on
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That's a really really good article - the first few paragraphs had me going yup, yup, yup
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Permalink Reply by Sharath Byregowda on -
Even I like Dipan's sentence ""Its your interest, your passion which drives you to learn something...""
When I want to learn something new or know about a particular subject/event I do not look at the value or addition it could give to my professional growth. But learning new things might add it's value some time later, like for example last year I wanted to learn more on still photography, when I was gifted a new camera. I started reading, practicing, exploring different photo editing softwares. Today I am asked to test a multi-media application, but the research I had done a year back for my own interest is actually helping me.
-Sharath.B
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Permalink Reply by Harinder on -
how do you decide what you're going to be spending your time and energy on learning next?
I would agree with Dipans last sentence. However sometimes its your project that requires you to learn new things. For example, one of my clients was an Insurance company. To do a better testing I had to learn about Insurance and how there legacy system worked. This allowed me to do better testing as well as also taught me how Insurance system/world works and the loop holes in it :). hehehe
I am also studying, so this also dictates what I can accomplish/do during my free time. Which means I will look at what skills I am missing and how I can improve on it. For example, to get better at performance testing, I found one of the skills that is useful is knowing how to optimizing the server performance. I started building my own server and then letting my housemates access it while I monitor and improve the server performance.
I have also enrolled in the AST BBST course(currently on waiting list) so that I can learn something different from other testers.
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Permalink Reply by Malinda on -
You are not alone in that situation,i 'm having this idea as well.I think the one thing we should make a plan which is related with work .For example if you are a web tester,you can learn html,css,javascript and source code...,if you are a mobile software tester,you can learn telecommunication knowledge
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Permalink Reply by Anna Baik on
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Hi Malina,
That sounds an interesting idea - I think that some descriptions of potentially useful skills in different domains would be very useful.
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Permalink Reply by Ainars Galvans on -
Once upon a time I've red Bret Pettichord about tester's "Embracing “Dilettantism” . Tester
...able to make judgements even when they may not have mastered the specific subject at hand. Their strength is often
their ability to be generalists; they need to have a broad understanding of many areas.
As a tester I really have broad understanding of many areas. I learn subjects broad based on project priorities. I choose broadly learned subjects to master based on my own internal preferences. (for example I don't like Rubby, so I only learned it as little as necessary to use WatiR, but I keep reading and writing blogs about Exploratory Testing, tester skills, etc.).
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Permalink Reply by Anna Baik on
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< lightbulb goes on >
I think...I might have been looking in the wrong place all along.
I've always felt my knowledge is lacking because I don't have an in-depth mastery of any particular area, and part of my "problem" is that I could see in testing there are just too many areas I would have to "master" before feeling I was knowledgeable enough. So then I started thinking that perhaps I needed to pick the "right" areas to master. (And maybe buried under those misconceptions is the idea that it's possible to finish learning an area. I already know that's wrong, so why on earth am I finding it in my thinking again?) Perhaps I should be thinking that my "mastery" is actually in managing to work with incomplete knowledge over many different areas. Maybe I could do with looking at how I do that, and trying to improve what I do there.
Many thanks, Ainars, you've given me an entirely new way to look at this.
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Permalink Reply by Simon Godfrey on -
I'm a bit ad hoc with my learning aims. Within the context of my job I have objectives around my development areas; which at the moment are related more to the managerial side of things (cost, business knowledge etc). On a personal level I like to sharpen the saw which means I'm currently learning VB. Why did I choose that? It was more an observation that, when compared to other testers I was listening to, being able to code was a skillset I didn't have.
Typically though, I'd identify what I want to learn by what I was struggling with when test leading on a project. (Just in time I guess).
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