A few weeks back we launched our Continuous Call for Contributions and since then every Monday up to 4 of us from Team MoT gather for an hour to review submitted Contributions. They are after all, continuous contributions, so if people contribute continuously, we should also review them with the same mindset.
We believe people have so much to give, but when it comes to submissions it is our role at MoT to find the best place for them to fit. There are many moving pieces, we can't expect everyone to understand or know what is going on. However, as a team we should be able to make decisions about where they could fit. We review submissions with that in mind. We do not want them to gather dust and we also check ourselves to improve our own internal processes and tech.Â
As we review them, we ask ourselves:
- Is this process working?
- What submissions are we seeing?
- What submissions are we not seeing?
- What are the trends that we may notice?
- Who is this person?
- Have they contributed before?
- Where would this idea fit best?
- What should we do with this submission?
- What feedback can we give?
- Can we make a decision on this now, or do we need to put it to one side for now?
As we are creating processes for this, we've settled on various statuses on submissions internally:
- Pending: Unreviewed submission
- Parked: Reviewed and put into a pile to go back to later
- Invited: Reviewed and sent an invite or proposal
- Rejected: Reviewed and rejected, with an explanation of reasoning
- Accepted: Accepted and agreed to move forward
Every week we find a few submissions to progress with, we expect to find efficiency gains as we move forward, especially in the run up to future TestBash conferences.
This is a transition year for MoT, as we believe we are moving towards something really special for software testing and QA professionals. We view everything that we are doing right now as an iteration. The tech and the processes will change to be optimised for the best possible experience.
I'm not sure we'll ever have "inbox zero" with this process, we can promise we are evolving and turning it into a process that makes more sense, for the contributors, us as Team MoT and also for the exciting things we'd love to deliver on for our software testing industry.
It's early days yet, so response time is a bit slower, this post is a way to share that we are working on it and hope to speed up the process over the coming weeks. And of course, feedback is always welcome.
In the meantime, we'd love to see you submit to contribute,you can submit any idea, but right now we are especially looking for submissions for the upcoming The Apprentice (The Testing Planet)
