Most of us have our definition of success and there are multiple books on success stories. Though we learn a lot from such success stories, one thing many of us miss is the struggles and failures that the person/team has overcome to achieve the success. When I look back at my career in software testing, it is more than twelve years. The experience is varied – working with multiple teams and products, following different processes and models, learning from different conferences and workshops, the multiple 1-1 discussions with the online testing community. There were so many attempts to learn in depth about software testing. With every task or attempt, success was not guaranteed. What was guaranteed was the effort behind it and the zeal to succeed. This resulted in many mistakes in hindsight; no one starts with an intention to make a mistake. One should be proud of their mistakes provided they don’t repeat it. I know for sure that my confidence is boosted by the numerous mistakes I have done in my software testing career.
This talk is based on an honest acceptance of the top twelve mistakes of my career. I hope that the audience would learn from my mistakes and not repeat the same mistakes in their career. Also, get to know about my book on 50+ mistakes of my software testing career at www.leanpub.com/50mistakes
Ajay Balamurugadas, goes by the handle ‘ajay184f’ in the testing community and is continuously re-inventing his testing methodology. He co-founded Weekend Testing – a worldwide movement for skilled testing, authored six small books under the theme “What If” downloadable at his blog http://EnjoyTesting.blogspot.com. His friends associate the terms – ‘Change Agent, Idea Man, Motivational’ to him. He tweets under @ajay184f and loves to have long conversations on software testing and life in general.
