Long time no seen

It has been a busy winter for us. Not only in our daily work but also around the book. After the book was published five months ago, we agreed to focus on sharing our learnings for students. That was our first priority.

And oh-boy, this is what we really have been doing! We have visited several Univertities and Universities of Applied Sciences. To be exact, we have visited 10 of them already, meaning we both have used around 50 hours for this. It is quite a big investment, as our calendars are pretty full already with other duties. But, man's gotta do what man's gotta do. Some of the talks were on-site, and some were remote. And the journey won't stop here: we will continue this in the future. In addition to this, we have been talking in podcasts, companies and in one hospital too. And our first public training will be this week!

We have been asked how to get to the schools. We used one secret method for this. It is called "asking." We think that it is a bit undervalued nowadays, but we really recommend you use it. You never know what is possible until you try and ask.

So, we emailed and asked teachers if they wanted us to visit and give an ACT 2 LEAD talk. Almost all of the answers were yes. There are a few schools in our pipeline that we will visit later this year, as schools are almost out for summer - as Alice Cooper sings. That's a bloody good song, actually.

It was a pleasure to share our thoughts. Students were interested in testing and quality. And to our surprise, their knowledge about quality and testing has increased a lot compared to when we were students (that is, 20-30 years ago). Students already knew many essential things, and what is most important: they asked us excellent questions. This is exactly what we say in our book, too: the most stupid question is the one that is not asked.

We wanted to highlight that what ever work they will do in the future, understanding of quality and testing is essential. Testing is at the core of software development, which is actually a learning process. The better we test, the better we learn, and vice versa. This is actually the meaning of "L" in the ACT 2 LEAD heuristic. Maybe we need more competent testers in the future if the AI will make anyone a software developer. This may mean that the nature of the bugs may change, making them more nasty and difficult to catch. Maybe, but we will see.

All in all, we are happy with what we have done. We also hope that our book will be used as a learning material. We recommend all of you to share your learnings. In schools, seminars, meetings or in your internal communities.

If you know anyone interested in hearing what ACT 2 LEAD means and what we learned while creating the book, just contact us. These talks are typically free and last one hour. They're good stuff for a team day or community event.

We also offer paid talks, training, and study groups around the book. This is good stuff for improving testing knowledge widely in your organization. It shifts competence development from the individual level to the department/team level. Most importantly, it maximizes the value of investment by supporting people in putting the learnings into practice. That is where the money comes from.

So you know what to do, if your organization needs rethinking around testing and how to lead it.

Until next time.