Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Agile Testing Days 2018 - Wonderful Unicorn Season

Agile Testing Days 2018 ended over two weeks ago, and yet I instantly get this very special conference feeling just when thinking of it. I know I'm biased when it comes to this conference as it was my very first one. To add to that I made many new friends there, the inspiration I drew from it changed my life, and it feels more and more like magic each year. The best thing, however, is that others share this impression!
Here are my experiences of the 2018 edition, the conference's 10th anniversary. Although this post became lengthy it cannot do this week full of inspiration justice in any way; and yet I hope it gives an impression.

Meeting Friends Old and New

This year I met Maria Kedemo and Tom Roden at the airport so I did not have to go to the venue alone. What luxury to share a taxi along with stories, getting into the conference mood already. Arriving at the hotel we met the next familiar faces and the next stories were shared. It was great spending the first evening with lots of the amazing people from the Women in Testing slack that I am part of.

Seeing my learning partner Toyer Mamoojee again in real life was simply awesome, as always! It's great we have so frequent video calls but they cannot replace meeting in real life. Also, so many people of the power learning group Toyer and I started were around as well! Lovely to meet João Proença, Viktorija Manevska, Lilit Sharkhatunyan, and Pooja Shah in person again. That not being enough, I also had the chance to meet several people I paired with on my testing tour like Thomas Rinke, Guna Petrova, Claire Reckless, and Marianne Duijst. Lisa Crispin, who introduced me to the community in the first place. And Alex Schladebeck, who won this year's MIATPP = Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person award! Congrats Alex, you very well deserved it. Several of my former and current colleagues attended the conference for their first time. I'm really glad they enjoyed our trip to unicorn land just as much as I did. One of them even won the first price of the costume contest and therefore a free ticket for next year's conference! How awesome is that?
DSC_8295.jpg
I cannot name them all, but I've also met again many people from past editions of Agile Testing Days, as well as made new connections. I'm thankful for them all.

With all those great people I had lots of great conversations and I wished I would have had more time for every single one of them. So many stories shared, lessons learned, a lot of feedback received, and much more inspiration to take home. I said it already so many times, and I'm going to say it again: it's all about the people.

A Theme, and It's Precious

The program of this conference can only be described as huge. Every year the fear of missing out is gets bigger, and yet we have to decide between 10+ tracks or giving ourselves a bit of rest. This conference goes the whole week from early hours until early hours again, nearly around the clock. Getting rest and sleep is essential and yet there are so many wonderful people to have inspiring and thoughtful conversations with which makes it hard to find a good personal balance. Complaining on a very high level here!

Although the program is huge, there is still a sort of theme each year. João Proença shared in his great blog post that last year it was "What does the future look like for testers?" whereas this year the focus was on "What should we be paying attention to now in ourselves?". I absolutely agree with him. Many sessions addressed diversity, inclusion, mental health, psychological safety, biases, learning, mentoring, teaching as well as our creative, critical, and lateral thinking skills. Yes, it's a testing conference! And all this is what we need to grow as testers and hone our testing skills. So many so much needed messages and exercises.

By the way, when it comes to diversity and representation, these conference organizers really do their homework, and their efforts are reflected in a very diverse speaker lineup and audience.

What a Week

In the following are the sessions I've attended, including the sketchnotes I did wherever I had the time and energy to do them. Knowing how overwhelming the 5 days of 10+ tracks of Agile Testing Days can be, I mostly chose workshops this time, adding in only a few talks here and there. Though it's really sad I couldn't hear all those other great talks, this strategy worked out well for me this time to not overload myself, get a lot out of the official program, and get even more out of the informal socializing opportunities and conversations throughout this testing festival. By the way, many speakers shared their slides, several people wrote own blog posts, shared photos and more, it's worth to check them out as well.

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday


The conclusion is clear: see you next year!

Yes, this conference is expensive, and yes, it's absolutely worth it. So it really does make sense to apply as speaker or volunteer or use the conference budget in case you have one. I know one thing for sure: I am going to find a way to get to the 2019 edition as well. So see you next year back in unicorn land!
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Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Bad Talk, Take Three: Sabina's Story

As announced in my post about How to Respond to Bad Talk in a Good Way, I am honored to host the voices of some of those who joined our discussion back at Agile Testing Days 2017.

Today I'd like to share with you the thoughts and experiences of Sabina Atic, written by herself, in her own words.
As a woman in highly man dominated IT job, I have had a lot of thoughts on how to achieve an including working culture where we have respect to each other and each other’s differences. In Sweden, the theory about equality is highly valued and in my senior working experience (+5-10 years), I had the luxury of not being directly addressed in an unappropriated way at my work. When I was younger, it happened a few times that both older men and women colleagues tried to “put me in place” in front of others, without any intervention from the public. Today I’m much more confident with both myself as a person and my professional knowledge. I also think that in most of the societies, the rib on how to talk and respond to young people and children is quite low. We somehow tend to forget that they also have equal feelings and that they are learning from us.
As for myself, as a woman not afraid to speak up and question talk I find disrespectful, it is quite easy when the talk is clear and direct. I can ask “how do you mean” or “could you please explain” or just explain how I perceived the message. I like using humor. I feel proud when I manage to use civil courage and I also am thankful to others doing so. But how do we handle subtle hints? Body language? Would I be able to understand that I hurt someone by using my ironic humor because irony has bypassed him/her? Is a man colleague/manager et al. even aware of being more critical to my suggestions and my knowledge compared to other men’s? Is he unwilling to listen to my questions and suggestions because he unconsciously thinks that I have less technical knowledge than my men colleagues and thereby is lacking trust? How do we communicate when our prejudices are constantly present, not just regarding men-woman relations but also relations between different cultures, races, gender identities, ages and so on? This is a quite complex and multidimensional topic and some people are more open and sensitive to both spoken and non-spoken vibes. Do we need to experience inequality to be able to perceive it? I think not. I think is a matter of taking the effort and time to evaluate own values and believes. To sometimes critically review societal structures, to understand and dare to trust that equality to others don’t mean inequality to me.
#metoo campaign is huge in Sweden and even reached government level. Hashtag technical failure points to the fact that harassment is present in our branch (https://www.thelocal.se/20171120/metoo-technical-failure-swedish-women-in-tech-say-sexist-culture-is-normalized-in-the-industry). If we want to live in a more tolerant and open world, we need to become a majority of men/women/other leading by example, questioning the structures and daring to speak out when encountering injustice.
—Sabina Atic
Thank you, Sabina, for sharing your thoughts with us.
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Sunday, February 11, 2018

Bad Talk, Take Two: George's Story

As announced in my post about How to Respond to Bad Talk in a Good Way, I am honored to host the voices of some of those who joined our discussion back at Agile Testing Days 2017.

Today I'd like to share with you the thoughts and experiences of George Dinwiddie, written by himself, in his own words.
I often struggle with what to say when friends say things I now consider inappropriate, or at least inappropriate to the circumstances. Society has changed over time, and not everyone is socialized at the same rate into new understandings. Many things that were once considered normal things are now out of bounds by today’s standards. Or, at least, by some people’s standards today. It’s obvious that not everyone has the same standards.
When I was growing up, the rules I saw in use in the society around me were quite different from what I try to follow today. When I watch an old movie from the early 1960s, I often cringe at lines or situations that didn’t bother me then. Every now and then I catch myself in mid-joke, realizing that the punchline hinges on assumptions that I now find unacceptable, and awkwardly stop in embarrassment. These are not jokes I made up. They’re jokes that I heard as a child that lie dormant in my subconscious memory to pop out in surprise. If I still have remnants of these attitudes in me, how can I condemn someone for speaking them in my presence?
Yet I must say something. I must say something to remind myself of the changes I have chosen over the decades. I must say something to help my friend choose such changes too, or to help them notice a lapse in a choice they’ve made. And I want to do so in a gentle way, so as to remain friends and be most helpful. Surely over the long run I can have more influence on my friends than on my former friends.
And if I say something inappropriate, I would hope my friends would do the same for me. I suspect that, given the socialization I received as a child, I will never reach the level of behavior to which I aspire. I do, however, wish to continue to improve the best that I can.
—George Dinwiddie
Thank you, George, for sharing your thoughts with us.
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Friday, January 26, 2018

How to Respond to Bad Talk in a Good Way

In 2016, Agile Testing Days hosted a "Women in Agile" event which had opened my quite naive eyes. It made me realize two things: first, that the women in tech problem is not yet solved; and second, how privileged I truly am.

As shared in my post about Agile Testing Days 2017, the conference offered a “Women and Allies Evening Gathering” this time. Following up on my experiences from the previous year I was eager to attend it; and didn't regret it. I took lots of food for thought home with me.

What I really liked about the 2017 event in general was the following.
  • The event’s title did not only invite women (which often feels kind of exclusive to me), but welcomed any allies at the same time.
  • Just before the gathering, we listened to the late night keynote by Ash Coleman and Keith Klain addressing the topic that “Culture Is More Than A Mindset”. It was perfect to get attuned to talk about gender, diversity and inclusion topics.
  • A huge group of diverse people joined the event and contributed, so we could hear many perspectives.
My highlight of the evening was a very personal group discussion of our challenges with great people in a safe environment. Unfortunately we could only tackle one topic due to lack of time, but this one turned out to be invaluable for me.

When we were asked to pitch the topics we wanted to talk about in front of the whole group, I decided to take a leap and share one of my huge and very personal challenges:
"How can I grow into a person that acts when they notice a behavior that is not cool, and also has the courage to do so. I often don't have the courage right now, but I don't want to be this person anymore in the future."
Two other women wanted to discuss a very similar problem: Jose Tegelaar and Kristīne Corbus. Kristīne had proposed two topics. As she saw the bad behavior topic taking care of, she chose to host the other one; so it was up to Jose and me to facilitate the group discussion.

Well now, how to respond to bad talk in a good way? The following people joined our discussion and shared their experiences. Thank you all for a lively discussion, sound advice, great ideas, and especially for making it very safe for everyone to talk openly!
We shared personal experiences and stories of when we had recognized bad situations in the past. What we tried, what seemed to have worked and what not. Together we brainstormed potentially good ways how to respond when we overhear bad talk or identify inappropriate behavior.
  • Ask why? --> ask for responsibility
  • How to not make this passive aggressive: replace "why?" with "what?"
  • Get out of the situation and talk about it later
  • How to deal with the risk of getting negative feedback
  • Tell them your experience
  • How to walk the line in your responsibility
  • Ask: Would you like to rephrase that in a more neutral / nicer way?
  • Directly refer to common sense
  • Make a request: Please don't refer to our colleague in that way - it bothers me
  • How to take action without "hurting" the subject
  • Keep to your experience: "This bothers me…"
  • Do rude people need a rude response sometimes?
  • "We don't do that here"
  • "It was just a joke"
  • Don't laugh --> let your face speak
  • Say "That was not a good joke." (in a dry tone)
  • Recognize that different people get socialized in different ways, they are not bad people
  • Leave a path to retreat
  • If it bothers you for too long and you don't know what to do, maybe ask the "trusted person" in your company
  • Bring up the topic in another situation by stating your opinion
  • "Let us discuss our working agreement." --> with the group, i.e. during retrospective
At the end, everyone agreed that our next step has to be the following: to talk. To do something. To step up. As simple as that! Well, maybe simple but definitely not easy for everyone. However, we made it a bit easier for us as we now have lots of ideas what to try at hand. And even better: we now have a list of fellow people to exchange our experience and lessons learned with!
Speaking of our group: what do they think about this whole topic? What are their experiences and stories? I’m honored to have their voices featured on my blog in future posts; look out for them to learn more from different perspectives! This topic is not done yet.
On our way back home from Agile Testing Days, I had another conversation with Diane about this topic which made me realize a very important point. Although I often feel like a coward nowadays when it comes to difficult situations, I had been acting way more courageously about two years ago. Our conversation suddenly made me remember a repressed incident with my team back then. I had just recently joined the company but still found the courage to speak up. However, doing so was badly received by another colleague. By triggering me to question my own behavior again, I realized that after this incident, I had become way more cautious again. However, I cannot use this as an excuse not to step up anymore. I must not let myself do so.

It’s time again to speak up in case of bad talk. At least now I know that I am not alone.
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Monday, August 14, 2017

Thoughts about Awesomeness

To be frank, I hesitated to write this post. I still wrote it because I think it is an important topic. I feel the need to document my current thoughts for my future self and to share them as a basis for discussion. The following reflects my non-expert, non-scientific impression of things. My personal thoughts of today will evolve as I learn more. This post got quite long, but please bear with me and read to the end.

At Agile Testing Days 2016 a Women in Agile Summit was hosted. To be honest, when I read about it, I was taken aback at first. Why would a women event be needed? Why excluding men and everyone who's not comfortable with this binary classification? I felt that making something gender-specific was not the right approach. I am not considering people for their gender first. We're all humans, right? We're having many different identities. In the end, we're all individuals. So I'd rather strive for equal chances than supporting women over others just because they're women; strive for diversity in all means, not only gender. It simply didn't feel right. It still doesn't feel right. But I might be thinking a bit too naive about the topic. Back then I finally decided: Well, I am a woman, I'm working in an agile environment, so I should attend this event and check out what it's all about.

At the summit, I joined a lean coffee session with several women coming from South Eastern Europe and Germany. We exchanged our experiences regarding gender issues at our work places. The German women saw things just about like me: well, there's no real problem anymore. If a few more women would join our teams, that would be great. To attract them, maybe we could advertise more that we're having an open and safe work environment. Right, and there's probably still a salary gap, but it appears to be closing more and more. Besides that, we didn't encounter discrimination due to our gender yet - well, at times some positive discrimination. But so far so good, we're getting there.

And then we heard the women coming from South Eastern Europe, telling us way different stories. Stories of women having to justify constantly why they are having a "man's job". Tales of women who learned that they had to show bossy behavior to get accepted by their male colleagues, and of others having to use their charms to survive in tech. Those women reported about struggles which never occurred to me. Naive me, to be sure. So, slowly but steady I realized that this topic is not at all out of date yet. For another view point I recommend reading Maaret's wonderful blog post about the summit. Personally, this event triggered me to be more aware of the topic.

The next thing that surprised me came early this year. I had submitted papers for Agile Testing Days 2017, so I followed their news about the submissions. When the call for papers statistics were published, I was really surprised.
29% of papers had been submitted by women speakers. One of my colleagues was positively surprised how high the percentage was. I, however, was rather disappointed; I would have expected that figure to be way higher. I mean, it was not about getting accepted at the conference, it was only about submitting. Why would less women submit? Does this only reflect that there really are way less women in tech overall? Or is there another reason?

Nowadays, again lots of discussions are going on regarding women in tech, minorities in tech, anyone in tech. Probably the most prominent example right now is the manifesto of a male engineer internally published at Google. I won't address the topic here, it has been discussed at length already.

Instead, I'd like to share another story with you. End of July, Ashley Hunsberger raised awareness of the following post.
It was quite commonly agreed that this kind of list rather served as marketing campaign than represented reality. On the one hand there were more women experts in test automation to be named and on the other hand same listed men seem to not match the profile at all. When people started to list further women, I found myself named as automation expert as well. Not my biggest strength, but people even started to follow me due to the mere fact I was added to the pool!
Shortly before that tweet, I had the honor to be invited to the Women in Testing Skype/Slack group, a group from and for women in the testing community (if you want to join, I can invite you, just send me a direct message via Twitter). As a reaction to above post, Anne-Marie Charrett came up with the idea to create our own list of awesomeness. The intention? Show the world that there are way more women in testing that could have been on a list. Way more that could get invited to speak at a tech conference. Way more to follow and get to know. And even way more who are not so publicly visible but worth being public.

Within very short time, we had a document with over 100 names on it. I could only contribute marginally myself; however, I was feeling so honored when realizing someone added me to the list as well. Even while creating this compilation of awesome testers, we felt how great it is to see who else is out there and which topics they're into so everybody could reach out to them more easily. We wanted to get this list out to the public. Agile Testing Days agreed to support and published the list on their blog.

The blog post leaked a few days before official publication date, and the reception was already overly positive and welcoming. I was even asked whether we also had a related Twitter list. Great idea! So we created it: https://twitter.com/lisihocke/lists/awesometesters Unfortunately not all women named have a Twitter account, but most of them do. The list is still growing as the Women in Testing working party is still adding to it. So look out for an updated version!
Side note: I would love to have gender, ethnic groups, educational backgrounds, or anything to be ignored and have a real diverse list of awesome testers compiled. The mere need of an all women list sticks in my craw. However, I found that sometimes support is needed to increase transparency and to point out issues. Also regarding my own biases. Just compiling this new Twitter list made me realize its difference to a personal Twitter list of awesome testers I created a while ago. Judging from the 70 testers I listed, I was aware of way more men (47) than women (23) in testing myself. I'll definitely have to add more women there as well. Well, every list is wrong in some way. Still, we can use them as a starting point and as a basis to trigger discussions.

In the end - there is no end to the topic yet. In my company, we have many awesome women. We also have many awesome men. We have colleagues from many different countries and cultures. I think (and hope) they had not been hired because of their gender or identity, but simply because they are awesome. Maybe we're still too similar when it comes to our education or work background in order to gain from actual diversity - worth finding out. Also, I'd like to further encourage hiring less for skills but rather for learning mindset and team spirit. Everyone deserves a chance to show that they are awesome in many different ways, and they deserve your support to grow their awesomeness.
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