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The context of this blogpost is captured  here . In short, this is a part of Q & A i did with Women Testers website recently on the topic of careers and beyond. The questions were asked mostly by people who were at the early stages of their career. The series can be located at:  https://www.womentesters.com/q-and-a-with-anuj-magazine-part-2/ Q. What books do you recommend non-technical one's for someone who has decided a career change and is looking to explore new avenues for volunteering work and not paid work. Or simply read and enjoy the book. I have also not read any sports biographies or autobiography. Can you make a suggestion or refer a list please.  [Anuj] Article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/navigating-mid-life-transition-deepak-jayaraman/ Books: How will you measure your life ?  Your Next Move  Six Lenses: Vignettes of Success, Career and Relationships Measure What Matters Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success Search Inside Yourse...

The context of this blogpost is captured  here . In short, this is a part of Q & A i did with Women Testers website recently on the topic of careers and beyond. The questions were asked mostly by people who were at the early stages of their career. The series can be located at:  https://www.womentesters.com/q-and-a-with-anuj-magazine-part-2/ Q) What skills can the testers learn from the programmers around them? [Anuj] You can learn programming and other humane traits like attention to details, analytical thinking, troubleshooting, thinking on the feet, learnability and many others from programmers. But you can learn a lot more if you don’t slot people as programmers and non-programmers. When it comes to learning from others, do not bucket people into categories. Be willing to learn from everyone- irrespective of profession, seniority, gender, caste or any other innovative category you can think of.

The context of this blogpost is captured  here . In short, this is a part of Q & A i did with Women Testers website recently on the topic of careers and beyond. The questions were asked mostly by people who were at the early stages of their career. The series can be located at:  https://www.womentesters.com/q-and-a-with-anuj-magazine-part-2/ Q) What are the new trends,topics and tools that the testers need to equip themselves with before stepping into 2019? [Anuj] In large part of my career, I meticulously followed trends only to find out that: 1. Following trends is an easy thing. 2. Technology trends are often short-lived. 3. Despite 1 and 2, technology trends matter. Since technology trends matter, we got to do something about them. Learning about them is the least we can do and we must learn. But the real challenge is to find trends at the right time and assess their impact on our careers before they become threatening. I follow these three step principles to deal wit...

The context of this blogpost is captured  here . In short, this is a part of Q & A i did with Women Testers website recently on the topic of careers and beyond. The questions were asked mostly by people who were at the early stages of their career. The series can be located at:  https://www.womentesters.com/q-and-a-with-anuj-magazine-part-2/ Q) What are some of the ways in which we can build the team towards being better at communication? a) between testers and b) between testers and the others in the team? [Anuj] You can do all sorts of team outings and team games to improve teamwork and communication among the team members but most of the times such events just give a momentary feeling of accomplishment and not make a long term impact. Why? Because most such events fail to touch the foundational elements that impact team communication. What are these elements? How do these help better communicate? 1. Focus on building trust: Trust is at the very foundation of the way hu...

The context of this blogpost is captured  here . In short, this is a part of Q & A i did with Women Testers website recently on the topic of careers and beyond. The questions were asked mostly by people who were at the early stages of their career. The series can be located at:  https://www.womentesters.com/q-and-a-with-anuj-magazine-part-2/ Q) What education should the testers, test leads equip themselves with prior to getting into management roles? [Anuj] I am not a huge fan of educational qualifications as a criterion for entry into management roles, so I won’t answer this question citing any degrees or certification. More often I have seen degrees and certifications to be self-limiting than really empowering. You may be the best individual contributor but that’s no guarantee that you would make a good manager. Most organizations make the mistake of promoting best individual contributors to managers. This doesn’t always work because a job of manager requires more skill...

The context of this blogpost is captured  here . In short, this is a part of Q & A i did with Women Testers website recently on the topic of careers and beyond. The questions were asked mostly by people who were at the early stages of their career. The series can be located at:  https://www.womentesters.com/q-and-a-with-anuj-magazine-part-2/ Q) According to you what are the top 5 skills a context driven agile tester needs to have by 2019? [Anuj] To be honest, i think i may not be the best person to answer about agile testing skills as i don’t practice it daily. But i do find this question important and would like to share a different perspective around it. I prefer to look at this question from the point of view of ‘First Principles thinking’ which i fundamentally believe in. In layman’s terms , first principles thinking is basically the practice of actively questioning every assumption you think you ‘know’ about a given problem or scenario — and then creating new knowled...

The context of this blogpost is captured  here . In short, this is a part of Q & A i did with Women Testers website recently on the topic of careers and beyond. The questions were asked mostly by people who were at the early stages of their career. The series can be located at:  https://www.womentesters.com/q-and-a-with-anuj-magazine-part-2/ Q) How having a mentor / coach helps a tester be lead in a better path? [Anuj] Let’s see what role a good mentor plays. As I have seen, a good mentor: 1. helps you become as good as you can be. 2. observes, judges and guides (in that order). 3. asks the right questions at the right time. A mentor uses questions as a tool to bring you closer to solution. 4. will not give you all the answers but still teach you how to think. 5. helps you see the mirror through which you can judge your performance. 6. know how to break down performance into its critical individual components and suggest a plan for ailing components. 7. focus less on thems...