Story of how The Test Tribe came to Life.

Wonder how special things happen? You think they always happen with a lot of planning and thinking? Well, not always. The Test Tribe was not planned. Want to know the story as it happened? Please read on to know how one step at a time in right direction shapes the journey.

It was a quiet evening at Office where I was in the 1-1 conversation with one of my Reportee. Discussions were across various topics like, what is going well for our team and what is not working well. One of the improvement areas for the Team came out around stepping out of comfort zone and learning new things (Isn’t this true for almost all of us? ). The discussion then drifted to the Solution part.

Below is what we thought we can do:

• More collaboration so that the positive vibes spread better.
• Everyone bringing more and more learning opportunities to Team through possible ways. Like new or old Testing technique which we are not familiar with already, reading new Testing books and sharing the Take Away with each other, attending more and more Testing events so that we can learn from other Testers out there and pass on that learning to the team, etc.
• We focusing more on our collective growth through weekly training on different and new topics around Testing. Though we already do it through our weekly ‘Meet & Learn Wednesday’ session we agreed to make to better.
• Another major focus area was to have more and more technical knowledge with Testers, understanding that it is the future need.

Well now if you have formed some opinion let me tell you that this Team I am talking about is awesome and giving fantastic results already. The matter is about whether you want to stay at Top or near Top. To explain further, we knew are good but we also knew we can be better. “Being the Best version of yourself is not a destination, it is a Journey.”

After few days, when we were already taking execution steps one by one around what we had discussed, we noticed that mindset shift is one of the very basic and important steps in bringing the change. Making people understand(not easy though) that there is room for growth and how close or far they are from Best Version of themselves is the key. And probably nothing works better than face-to-face conversation or counselings. The seeds for The Test Tribe foundation were already being planted here(unknowingly).

As we(Note that more and more people were already contributing to this by now. Will write about The Test Tribe unit soon) kept working on this further, something struck like a lightning.

What if we attempt to touch the lives of many more Testers out there rather than attempting it just for our team.

We all loved it. Why not I mean? As someone has said,

A Candle looses nothing by lighting another Candle.

We then decided to have an internal meetup where we try to invite Testers across our Organisation. The Thought Train has started already you see. You already have a lot within you to give, you just need to think. It didn’t stop at within Organisation thought of course. Why not help the outside ones who need the help and growth as much as us.

We further came across another idea(my personal favorite too), which was visiting Engineering and Graduation colleges and helping Computer Science Students choose their career better. We all know how we got into Software Testing or rather any field. In most of the case, either we landed up somewhere by accident or with the flow, flow decided by the already running buzz around something. A lot of us realize it later that we are not made for what we are into. Though I believe it is never too late to change or do something, losing crucial time is not fun always. Not everyone will love switching through different things before figuring out where they really belong.

We wanted to help reduce this pain by meeting as many college students as we can and help them decide their future better. So that they can decide proactively where they belong. Whether it is Software Testing, Software Development, Networking profile, Database Administration, Business Analysts, DevOps, something else or ‘Ohh, wait! I belong to none from this!’. The right choice can be anything from these or something else. No one can precisely tell what a particular person made for. Everyone has to face that puzzle on his/her own. We can only help have clarity, which is needed equally.

That was it I think, even before we really realized, we were already up to something very special and satisfying. ‘The Test Tribe’ was born.

This was the time when I started approaching people who I thought would love to contribute to this cause, only for the sake of learning and satisfaction of giving back to the community. Some agreed happily and started contributing, some hesitated and waited before starting to contribute and for some probably the priorities didn’t work out. All of them were right and perfect at their own place. To contribute to a cause without any monetary or direct career returns requires a common cause and also a common path. Irrespective of anything, the cause still lives, mediums to take it forward may change but it lives on.

I was amazed by the response to a single LinkedIn post when I said we are up to something like this and if anyone would love to join the cause. That means we all are lovely people. We always want to help each other somewhere deep down at our heart but the daily struggle of life keeps us busy. It was already turning wonderful how the old contacts were coming to help the cause happily. Soon it was a cause which was not bound to people from one organization.

As I have conveyed before, getting multiple people work on a common(no direct returns cause) is not an easy thing. We may struggle at times and may slow down sometime. But we are committed to the cause and to bring the positive change. We may not have long-term roadmap clear, though we have short-term plans clear and we are already loving the execution part.

In coming time, one can expect Testing meetups, Testing Hackathons, College Seminars and Workshops from The Test Tribe. We initially thought about doing these things only in Mumbai to start with but was just matter of time before we were clear(at least in our mind) to expand positive change to Bangalore and Pune as well. With current visibility we have, we will have at least two and up to four events between March 2018 to May 2018 window. Out of which one is already finalized for March and an official announcement will come soon. A Testing Hackathon it is. And how is ‘The Bug Feast‘ as a name? : )

Our major focus will be to increase offline community presence in this part of the world as we believe in awesome work done online by so many existing community initiatives. There are so many to name, Ministry of Testing is one of our favorite.

Getting little back to The Test Tribe agenda before I conclude this post if you have already noticed the bullet points section above, it all revolved around three things, which formed The Test Tribe motto too.

Collaborate. Learn. Grow.

More than anything else, we will need your Love and Support always. So please follow our work, join the cause or at least help spread it to more and more Testers. You are awesome either ways. We are super excited about the Future.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

-Steve Jobs

The Test Tribe would not have happened without these wonderful people. 
The bunch who started it all.
Row 1: Paras Pundir, Amar singh, Shubham Karun, Ram Samal
Row 2: Kunal Ashar, Me, Steffy Thomas, Sybil Thomas







With Love,
Mahesh Chikane
Founder Tribal-The Test Tribe

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