Take The Blue Pill Or The Red Pill, You Decide If You Want To Change - Leigh Rathbone

The challenges facing testers, test managers, test teams is vast, wide, and deep.... it always has been. Recently though something feels different. With all the tools available to a development team, all the 'best practices', the pennies dropping about quality being built into a coder's work from the offset, the shooting fish in a barrel days are long gone and have been for some time.

So we all have a choice and using the Matrix 'Blue pill do nothing, red pill learn and change' comparison, I relay the journey I have been on. 1998 to 2002 I was constantly swallowing the red pill, on the front foot. Then came the 7 year drought, 7 long years of the blue pill. Complacency, arrogance, lack of self-development all kicked in, and then ....... BOOOOOOM, 3 events changed my life in 2009 that meant I had to take the red pill, I had to change, I had to adopt a mindset of self-learning, self-development.

The message throughout is you own your self-development, not your company. You have to make the decision to take the red pill, and change, and I will hope to show the benefits through my own journey of doing that.

Takeaways:

• You own your self-development, no one else. You will leave with this being drilled into you
• You need to prepare for the future of testing and to do that, you have to change your mindset right now. If your CEO came and asked 'How would you test XYZ', would you know right now?
• You work in an IT driven world, which is forever changing, so why aren't you training your brain to learn. When you leave you'll know why
• Think Big, Start Small, Start Now - You will leaving KNOWING you have to change, but I will through relaying my journey, and my mistakes, show you some tips and hints
• The unforeseen benefits of self development