Value and Visibility by Gem Hill

Description:

How do you figure out where and how to add value once you stop doing hands on testing day to day? In 2018 I was promoted to Senior tester when I moved to a new department. This meant I was on two teams, both with full time testers, so there wasn’t a lot of work for me to test. Suddenly I had to balance two teams, but not day to day testing, and no team lead responsibilities.

I wanted to make sure I was adding value to these teams and the testers on them without taking work away from them or getting in the way. I also wanted to make sure I knew the value I was adding - without knowing the value I bring, I had no idea what I needed to strengthen in or what skills to add to my toolbox. But I’d never had a job that was focused solely on the non-technical skills of testing before! Suddenly my priorities were being visible, driving communication and strategy: all things that have few ‘solid’ goals!

This talk will cover what I’ve learned in the past year and a half of this role, some successes, some failures, and some tools I discovered to help me.

Bio: Gem Hill is a Senior Tester in the Voice + AI team, working on BBC skills for Alexa and other voice platforms. She is passionate about self care and mental health, and is developing resources and exercises to help people come up with self care strategies. She can be found on twitter @Gem_Hill. She drinks a lot of tea, reads a lot of comics, and loves to bake.