I’m fortunate to talk with lots of quality and testing professionals looking for advice and resources to grow their careers. I’m lucky to have a bunch of resources that I can share. It occurred to me that I could share them here on my blog, too. I’m still happy to talk with people, of course! […] The post Growing your career as a quality and testing professional appeared first on Holistic Testing with Lisa Crispin.
I’m fortunate to talk with lots of quality and testing professionals looking for advice and resources to grow their careers. I’m lucky to have a bunch of resources that I can share. It occurred to me that I could share them here on my blog, too. I’m still happy to talk with people, of course! And this is a work in progress. I’ll keep adding to it as things come back to my brain. Of course, a lot of what I’ve put here is recency bias, and I’ve no doubt left out a lot of my go-to resources.
In no particular order, here are my favorite places to go where you can learn, meet other helpful practitioners, and find opportunities for professional growth.
Testing- and quality-specific help:
- Ministry of Testing has some content available for free, and a whole lot that requires a pro subscription. I’ve found the pro subscription to be great value over the years. I can access all the webinars, master classes, workshops, conference talk recordings, courses. The MoTaverse community platform has so many places where people share experiences and insights. It includes virtual chapters for specific topics such as AI. There’s also a Slack workspace for paid subscribers. Whether or not you can afford the subscription, the Club is a useful place to ask questions, start and participate in discussions.
- Quality Leadership Academy, sponsored by Practitest, offers some free on-demand video courses that will help you be a leader in testing and quality – regardless of your job title. Full disclosure, I have a course there on using metrics effectively for continuous improvment!
- Test Automation University sponsored by Applitools offers a wide range of free on-demand video courses. Topics range from automation with a variety of different frameworks to leadership. I’m not sure if all the courses there on test automation tools are up-to-date, but many courses there (including my own on test automation in DevOps) remain relevant, even in this AI age. And I see rumblings that TAU is about to get a big update.
- British Computing Society Software Testing Specialist Group, this is obviously UK-based, but they host a lot of virtual talks, and host a hybrid conference where you can watch a lot of the talks online, for free.
- Join the DORA Community. It’s free. You can watch talks and join Lean Coffee discussions on just about every topic in software development, from DevOps to AI to testing. There’s also an active Google group (of course, because DORA is part of Google) where you can post questions and join in discussion threads. I’ve found that most discussions here end up being about quality and testing.
- I can recommend so many leading practitioners in this area, too many for this post. If you have specific needs, for example, someone to help you with leadership skills, contact me.
- That said, I’m recommending Anne-Marie Charrett here, because her Quality Coaching book covers so many areas of testing and quality, and she is also leading the way in using AI. Follow her on LinkedIn too.
AI assistance for development and testing:
- The DORA AI Capabilities Model provides much-needed guidance for teams wanting to benefit from AI. DORA research shows that AI is an amplifier for both the good and the bad in software development. The seven capabilities in the model correlate with better performance when using AI assistance. The tried-and-true quality practices do not go away when using AI!
- See Ministry of Testing above, it has a huge amount of educational content on AI, plus an AI chapter.
- Follow Maaret Pyhäjärvi on LinkedIn and her website. This fits for testing and quality-specific help as well. She is a leader, maybe the leader, in so many areas. Exploratory testing, ensemble testing, vibe coding, test automation, leadership, management, you name it. Check out her books, too.
- Follow Antony Marcano on LinkedIn and his website. As of this writing, he is doing a ton of experimentation with test-driving agentic behaviors, so that automated tests generated by agents are reliable and trustworthy.
- Beyond Quality is doing insightful research around AI and quality engineering. “QA in the Age of AI-Accelerated Development” echoes DORA’s research findings.
Books
After I published this, a kind soul on LinkedIn suggested I include books as well. I had mentioned Anne-Marie’s and Maaret’s above. The problem is – so many books. I’ll start a list here and keep updating.
- Nicola Lindgren has some excellent books, including one for people just starting out in a testing career.
- How to Test a Time Machine by Noemí Ferrera is truly a practical guide to test architecture and automation that covers a lot of ground, including some guidance around AI.
- Accelerate by Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble and Gene Kim has so much sensible advice to help people and teams perform well, based on the first several years of DORA research and still relevant. Frictionless by Forsgren and Noda has more recent takes on improving developer experience for better performance.
- Continuous Delivery by Jez Humble and Dave Farley. It’s really a book about testing.
Podcasts
I listen to so many excellent software-related podcasts. For now, I’m going to recommend one that ticks all the career-growth boxes, the Engineering Quality Podcast. It’s available on all podcast outlets as well as YouTube.
Public speaking and conferences
First of all, why am I including this? Because conferences are incredibly valuable places to learn and network. And in-person conferences especially are expensive. If you speak at a conference, you get to learn and meet people for a lot less money (though choose your conferences carefully, some do not compensate speakers). AND, you need good speaking skills to influence people where you work, “sell” your ideas to them, make your contributions visible.
- MASH Program Mentor and Speaker Hub is a good place to get a mentor to help you build your speaking skills, including choosing topics and creating conference proposals.
- A few of my own favorite conferences, whether you are a speaker or non-speaker participant:
- Agile Testing Days
- MoTaCon (formerly known as TestBash)
- BoosterConf
- Targeting Quality
- CITCON
- PeersCon (I haven’t attended, but so many fab experience reports of it, and I’m on the program committee now!)
- Online Test Conf (hosted by Practitest – free!)
- There are many more. Contact me, and, subscribe to this list of all testing-related conferences.
I’m sure Ive forgotten a lot of links I often give to people looking for learning and professional development. What other resources would you like to know about? Contact me and I’ll see what I can find.
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