This year’s Star East was the first one I had attended and I got to speak there; which is a pretty big deal as it is one of, if not the, most well known stops on the testing speaking circuit. (Thanks Lee!) My session was a reprise of the Hats Art Show that I did at last year’s Agile conference (results, analysis), but what made it interesting is that the demographics between the two conferences are very different.

I think what I want to do now is run this workshop in India, Europe, Google and Microsoft and see what the results are like on an even larger sample size — but throwing in cultural issues into the mix as well.

**[The Many Hats of a Tester](http://www.slideshare.net/agoucher/the-many-hats-of-a-tester "The Many Hats of a Tester")**</param></param></param></embed>
View more [presentations](http://www.slideshare.net/) from [Adam Goucher](http://www.slideshare.net/agoucher).

My observations from this round:

  • A Detective variant was still the top hat from the group
  • Firefighter was also right near the top of both lists. I continue to think that the people wearing this hat need to have a think about why they wear it and do some corporate structural changing.
  • There was significantly more of what I will call ‘old school’ type hats with the Star East crowd. Things like ‘Soldier’, ‘Defender’, ‘Victim’ and ‘Spy’ all, to me, reflect the sort of us-versus-them, command-and-control quality police that still exists in too many organizations. But it was to see whether this would happen, as I thought it would, that the workshop was held
  • The teams that people split into tended to be far more insular than at Agile with very little conversation happening between teams. And when the Art was on the walls, few wanted to move things around for better groupings.
  • There were still Hats on the wall that had no stickers on them to indicate that someone wore it
  • I’m quite happy that Teacher came in second, and Coach in fifth. Aside from the Detective type ones, I think those are important ones every tester should strive for.
  • Bottleneck really frightens me. Even more so than Firefighter. As someone who does a bit of agile coaching, I’d be looking at removing that hat from the organization as quickly as possible.
  • The hats I listed at the beginning to illustrate the concept were not listed.
  • Some teams did just a list of hats, other just the name, others drew the hat and yet others coloured it in (I gave them crayons)

Full Results:

  • Sherlock Holmes – 30
  • Teacher – 25
  • Firefighter – 23
  • Bottleneck – 22
  • Coach – 19
  • Houdini – 16
  • Soldier – 16
  • Product Support – 15
  • Liaison – 15
  • Diplomat – 13
  • Collaborator (which was a princess hat…) – 11
  • Translator – 10
  • Battered – 10
  • Pioneer – 10
  • Hard Hat (to fend criticism) – 8
  • Chef (a little of this and a little of that) – 8
  • Scapegoat – 8
  • Defender – 8
  • Traffic Cop – 8
  • Victim – 7
  • Hero – 7
  • Butcher – 6
  • Psychologist – 6
  • Advisor – 6
  • Wishful Thinking (a crown in a thought bubble that says “Its good to be the king”) – 6
  • Chef (What? You never bribed the devs with cookies? How else can you make them write unit tests?) – 6
  • Reporter – 6
  • Doctor/Nurse – 5
  • The developers were late getting the material for your hat so we cam’t show it yet. Do you mind telling me what you think of the above anyways? (was a ‘?’) – 5
  • Mediator – 5
  • Team Player – 4
  • Chef (cooking up test automation) – 4
  • Keeper of Hats Hat – 4
  • Spy – 4
  • Chemist (person who does experiments) – 3
  • Wizard – 3
  • Referee – 3
  • Planner – 3
  • Guardian – 2
  • Happy – 2
  • Hard Hat (construction) – 2
  • Parent (which appears to be a halo) – 2
  • Celebration Planner – 2
  • Lawyer – 2
  • Clown – 2
  • Psychic – 2
  • Viking – 2
  • Navigator – 2
  • Author – 2
  • Warrior – 1
  • Invisible (things are going well) – 1
  • Bandit – 1
  • Fun – 1
  • Witch/Dominatrix (shared a card so not sure where the star should be applied) – 1
  • Conductor – 1
  • Farmer – 1
  • Judge – 1
  • Timekeeper – 1
  • Doctor – 1
  • Pilot – 1
  • Weaver – 1
  • Swimmer – 0
  • Dunce – 0
  • Debugger – 0
  • Reference Builder – 0