Addressing the Skills Gap
I play recreational Lacrosse which is not that unique an event where I live. What is somewhat unique is that I did not play as a child. Growing up I played baseball from t-ball all the way until I was 16. This means that I do not have the thousands of hours of muscle memory and skill as other players on my team.
One such player this fall is the captain of the Brooklin Redmen; the local Major Series team. He is good. Scary good actually.
I mentioned this to a coworker, he pointed out that sport holds all sorts of these gaps in skills:
- Never done it before
- Purely recreational
- Competitive recreational
- Semi-professional
- Professional
Between each of these categories is a significant jump in the skill of the participants and the level of work needed to achieve the next level. In lacrosse I would fall into the ‘Purely recreational’ category. In order to play in the ‘Competitive recreational’ level I would have to start eating (far) healthier, start a running regime designed for both bursts and longer time period stamina and spend a lot more time with a stick in my hand.
I’ve now been doing QA / Testing for 10 years now and consider myself in the ‘Professional’ category. What strategies do I think worked in my favor in making the jump between levels?
- start writing – writing requires thought and thinking is a key skill of testing
- join a community – being part of a broader community gives you a venue to experiment with thoughts and provides a sounding board for questions
- start teaching – there is a big difference between ‘knowing’ a concept and having internalized it enough to be able to communicate it effectively to someone who does not have it figured out yet
- bite off way too much – I learned unix by formatting my windows partition which meant that if I wanted a working computer I needed to get it working (took a bit, but I did). I’ve done the same thing in testing over, and over from my first day at my first job (‘Sure, I can write you a database that can do that…’).
As always, where are you in the progression, and are you willing to do what is necessary to move up. If of course you want to that is.