Having been at 2i for just under 2 months now, I can say that the whole experience of starting this new chapter in my life has far exceeded my expectations.
The support and help that we’ve received from everybody has been incredible, I have never worked in such a positive and encouraging environment before - it has helped me to feel empowered and It has given me a lot of confidence that I may have lacked previously.
Before joining 2i I had very little experience in testing, we have been slowly building up our knowledge of testing and the company – from my experience so far, I have learned about the importance of testing, and essentially how much of an impact and effect it can have on everybody’s day to day life. I have found myself fascinated by the future of testing, as there always seems to be new advancements in the field, whether that’s techniques, tools or simply idea’s and concepts.
I personally believe I couldn’t have started this journey at a better time than right now as I come into this new field with an open mind and as I learn more, I can begin to generate my own ideas and insights into the world of testing.
The Assurance Leadership Forum
Recently I attended the Assurance Leadership Forum in Glasgow, it was an overall positive experience, it was especially interesting being there as a graduate who has not attended an event like this before.
I attended two different talks, the first of which was Bryn Coulthard, his talk was titled “A View From The Outside”, it consisted of self-reflection and looking back on his 20+ years of expertise and how he slowly gravitated outside of testing and his unique view looking back on his experiences and how things have changed in the testing community, furthermore how his whole mentality and assumptions changed as he grew and became more exposed to it.
It was very useful to hear from somebody with so much experience in the field, he had some very unique views into what he believes to be future challenges for testers, he talked about the complexity and the issues that arise when dealing with things such as automation, and the issues that testers face around the advancement of AI - it gave me lots to think about as I have just started my journey into the world of testing.
The next talk was from Lynn Purcell and was titled “The Changing Role of a Tester”, where she spoke to us about the role of testers and what sort of changes we’re seeing in the world of testing. Her presentation brought up a lot of great topics for discussion, one thing from her talk which stood out to me was how she talked about the change of customer’s expectations and how this affects the role of a tester.
The world of technology is always moving forward, and more and more people expect things on-demand these days, these expectations shape and change the way in which we test and her talk helped to highlight this correlation. It helped me to understand how so many things are changing right now in the testing community and all the challenges that testers are going to face in the future. With the introduction of things such as Machine Learning and the rapid advancements being made in Artificial Intelligence; I think we can say that the only thing certain about the future, is the uncertainty.
Being at the ALF was a highlight of my journey so far, I think it was very beneficial for me to be in that type of environment where there was a lot of good in-depth discussion about a range of different topics, and I got to meet some people who had some really interesting backgrounds and I enjoyed hearing about all the diverse levels of experience that everybody had there.
The whole experience provoked me to think about what impact that I can have on the community and what insights or knowledge I can bring to the table, I look forward to attending more of these type of events in the future as it helps me to become more immersed into the community and sparks a lot of interesting discussion and reflection.
