Becoming a Next Gen Tester

If you’re not growing you’re dying? My question to you is which one are you? Don’t be a factory worker tester. The key to success in any technology career is the love of learning and constantly working on your skills. In this episode Mike shares cores concepts like Visual Validation Testing. Metric and Leadership skill and much, much more to equip you to become the best next generation tester you were meant to be.

About Mike

Mike Lyles is a Quality Engineering Program Manager with over 22+ years of IT experience, gaining exposure through all aspects of IT in various roles – software development, program management office, and, ultimately, software testing. He has led various aspects of testing: functional testing, test environments, software configuration management, test data management, performance testing, test automation, and service virtualization. In his current role, he is responsible for defining and driving the efforts for test automation, performance, environments, and tools, and leading a Quality Management Office for the organization.

Mike has been an international/keynote speaker at multiple conferences and events, and is regularly published in testing publications and magazines. Mike’s passion to help others improve and grow in the field of testing, leadership, and management is his key motivation.

Quotes & Insights from this Test Talk

• I really love testing things. I’m constantly testing things whether I’m actually doing it as a role or as a job or not. I, you know, constantly finding something broken or not working the way that it should, through life and especially with apps or phones and on our computers now. I consistently catch myself just testing things in life.
• If we’re testing one area and we’re testing that thing so often that if something new comes along, we put our focus over to something new and we forget that something might have changed in something that we were really familiar with and you get so used to it, it looks similar, you don’t catch the small changes.I know with Applitools their tool actually, does a lot of that catching that people’s eyes usually don’t see, the naked eye just doesn’t catch. 
• I think it’s best to give a picture of where testing is. Give an overall story to them that they can understand and they can say, now I understand where you are and I understand how things are going. It’s tough to give these set metrics are the right ones or these … you know, people talk about defect removal efficiency and the percentages and how many have I ran.
• You know, with automation, I have become a believer in the discussions on automation. Automation has a place within testing and a heavy place but it doesn’t replace testing.
• If you’ve got a team of folks working with you and you’ve got three people who are from the millennial generation and you’ve got one person who’s a baby boomer and one person from another generation, how do you integrate those teams together and be able to manage them differently when you’re one on one with them and how do you integrate those teams together? 
• I would say the advice that I would give to folks is, don’t be that factory worker. That person that goes to work, punches the clock, does your job, and there’s nothing wrong with factory workers, my dad was, but don’t be that guy in testing that’s a factory worker that goes in, punches your clock and does the work. When you punch out and you go home and you don’t think about work because you don’t have to because you’re a factory worker. Be that person that goes out there and you go to work everyday, you do your work but then when you go home and you’re doing your time at night and you’re spending your weekend at home, do that research, go out and read blogs, follow the right people on Twitter that are talking about testing daily. Do weekend testing events. Do, go to uTest and practice with them. Learn these tools, take their free downloads of the tools so that you an actually have hands-on because everybody that has these tools almost always gives you that free trial version. You can get experience right there, hands-on.

Resources

• Applitools Visual Validation Testing
• Mike’s STPCON 2016 sessions
• Mike’s TISQA 2016 Sessions
• Testing Circus:  https://www.testingcircus.com/december-2015/
• CIO Article: http://www.cio.com/article/2451534/leadership-management/10-leadership-lessons-from-jeffrey-fox.html

Connect with Mike 

• Twitter:@mikelyles
• Blog:MikeWLyles.com

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