I have always really enjoyed all my trips to Brighton for Testbash and more recently MoTaCon ever since the first one I came to back in April of 2013.  It not been possible to make it every year since but it has very much become a regular occurrence. 

This year I'm delighted I will be in Brighton for not just MoTacon but the Leading with Quality Day. I am very much looking forward to both of these events.  

Its actually quite cool to see a whole bunch of additional "festival" events also happening - such as dinners, walks and meetups.  I know I'll always feel nostalgic about thinking of it as TestBash, but I really do like the changes introduced last year to both the conference and the subscription model and think this is a very positive step forward for the MoTaverse.  I mean what is not to like about paying a single yearly subscription that gives you access to several in-person conference days as well as so much excellent on-line content and training!

But, whilst maybe the names, the formats and even the seasons may have changed, its still the same super friendly tech conference it has always been where folks come together, learn from each other and have a great time in the process.  

From a personal point of view I've taken so much knowledge and good vibes from TestBash and MoTacon over the years, whether that's meeting new people (and in one case working with them) or how it has changed my perceptions or approach to quality.

Last year at MoTacon I did a 99 second on the subject of change, and its somewhat interesting I find myself in a period now where change is definitely going to be coming over the horizon.  Back in July I found out that my company were going to merged into a bigger organisation and that potentially my current role as a Lead Quality Engineer may be changing.  Whilst I am a little apprehensive about what the changes may be, I am also looking at the other side of it that this change will be positive and lead to new opportunities.

So in a way the MoTaFestival next week has come at the perfect time when I will be spending two quality days talking to and learning from other technical professionals and leaders who have no doubt encountered similar changes during their careers. The week after MoTaCon I will be travelling up to our London office and will get the opportunity to meet some of the new people I will be working with in the enlarged business. It will be useful to be doing this on the back of two days of learning down in Brighton.
 

I always like to reflect on anniversaries and milestones in life and this year will be ten years since I first took to the stage to do a 99 second talk. Therefore it would seem appropriate to do the same this year and reflect on what has changed in my career over that time and what I have learnt about myself and improved.

The first time was on a much smaller stage in a different part of the Dome without all those balconies and royal boxes in front of me.  When I joined the main stage I could hardly see anybody in the audience where as the first time I remember looking at the front row and hoping what I was about to say was going to make some kind of logical sense to somebody!

Holding that thought for a moment....makes me rewind back for a moment to when I attended Testbash 2019 and my role within my current company was quite different.  As a lead tester I was very much involved in the planning and execution of testing (we had myself and another tester on the team at that time), but I felt I had a lot less influence in product direction and how we could improve the product. The lead developers and other managers made a lot of the key decisions and I focused very much on the testing. Our job was to test and find the issues that needed to be addressed.

Gradually over time things started to change.  It happened slowly over a couple of years but as we went into 2020 and beyond our team gradually shrank in size due to a combination or redundancies and team members with deep product knowledge and expertise choosing to move on in their careers.   

Curiously the direction of travel up until this point had been considering moving away from having a dedicated tester on the team and transitioning me to a customer support role. The thinking at the time was more towards bringing in new people from more of a development background that would develop automated testing and there would no longer be a need for a dedicated tester on the team.  I'm pleased to say this didn't actually happen but it could have done if the team had not changed the way it did. 

With a much reduced team myself and the remaining lead developer had to step up and pull together the direction for the team to move forward with the product.  It was somewhat scary realising that you are now the main people who everyone will now ask for the answers and advice on the software!! But of course you deal with the situation in front of you and you move forward.

Helpfully I had been working with our product for 15 years and so moving forward meant sharing my product knowledge with the other developers on the team and both myself and the more senior developer wearing additional leadership hats, to help direct and lead the smaller team. For me personally this meant talking to different managers in the business, running sprint planning calls & bug triages and working much more closely with the Product Manager on the product direction and planning. It took my role outside of the boundaries of the typical testing role I had become used to.

Don't get me wrong this was a challenging period not least because alongside less people we had some technical product challenges we had to overcome.  But we succeeded and gradually build the team up collectively. Having been with the business for a long time I could have quite easily decided to move on too but I decided to stick around.

Not only do I feel this has made me a more rounded quality professional but it has most definitely changed my perception on the best way to approach quality and software development. 

My view now is that software can be delivered in a better way by working collectively as a team and by everyone playing their part in the delivery of a quality product. I like the fact everyone on the development team is responsible for producing a good quality release.  I like the fact I can grab a build and test stuff and give early and helpful feedback. I like the fact I can support and encourage others in the team to test.  I like the fact I get to talk about the product and the roadmap with the senior developer and the product manager. I like the fact I have a seat at the table and have influence and input to the future direction of a product.

I recently recorded a Call for Insights with Simon Tomes where we discussed this period in my career and how we adapt to change within an organisation.  https://www.ministryoftesting.com/insights/what-to-do-when-someone-leaves-your-team.

So you are probably wondering how I now bring this back to Leading with Quality and MoTacon!! :-). Well you see this is what these event are all about, listening first hand to other experiences across development teams, talking to other professionals, understanding their challenges and relating them back to your own situation.  

There is always room to learn and improve.  Whilst we have slowly been building up an approach to quality in our team its still not perfect or polished - we are forever learning. We still have a certain amount of gating in our process between development and testing tasks and we have a challenging architecture that makes it harder than we would like to advance automation. We are also gradually embracing AI across the team and that has enabled us to deliver things faster, yet still learning so much about it every day and how it can help (and hinder us). And of course with the organisational changes there will be fresh challenges and opportunities coming our way...

Events such as Leading with Quality and MoTacon are the perfect opportunity to transport ourselves out of our current situations for just a few days, to reflect, to discuss, to talk to others, re-group and form new ideas.

I'm personally really looking forward to next week.  Leading with Quality will be great with many other respected and experienced quality leaders in the room - I'm looking forward to learning lots from them, talking about new ideas and seeing how I can apply my learnings to our current challenges. My intention is to really get stuck into the day, learn lots of useful insights and ideas and enjoy the experience.  

When its comes to MoTacon I've still not yet decided which talks and workshops to go to.  There is so much choice and depth to choose from!! I'm most certainly looking forward to meeting and chatting with people I've interacted with virtually over the past year, though the MoTaverse and from the excellent weekly This Week in Quality podcasts.  I also look forward to catching up with familiar faces.

I know this year will be a bit more of a challenge for me from a mobility point of view, so I may not be able to get to as many satellite events but I'm very determined to enjoy every moment of my two days down in Brighton!

I look forward to catching up with everyone in Brighton! :-)