As yet another calendar year draws to a close and we focus on our New Year’s resolutions, here’s one that will be very important for the software testing community not just for 2015, but for the next few years to come: the need to innovate.
The need to innovate is becoming increasingly inevitable and is being spoken about more widely, partly due to the greater adoption of agile in the software engineering world. With time and cost constraints along with skyrocketing product expectations from end-users, teams are having to innovate when it comes to how they think and operate.
Testers play an important role in driving innovation to balance the constraints the team operates within and in keeping end-users’ requirements high to ensure a product of exceptional quality is delivered in the marketplace.
What does it really take for a tester to innovate? Is it something left to a select handful of creative thinkers on the team, or is it something everyone can attempt? The drive to innovate first calls for a change in mindset. The team has to accept that innovation is everyone’s responsibility, and with due diligence and effort, anyone can step into the innovation zone.
The BugHuntress blog talks specifically about what it takes to innovate as software testers: creativity, talent, courage, vision, competence, passion, and versatility. Of these, courage and passion are the key traits. Once the tester has these, the rest will automatically follow when the right efforts are taken.
A tester who has these other traits but lacks courage and passion will not be able to innovate, regardless of how capable he is. Courage and passion have a lot to do with an individual’s mindset. So, as a first step to innovating, let’s control and direct our minds to generate the required courage and passion.
Of course, the actual implementation effort and balancing innovation with other core responsibilities on a tester’s plate are also very important. Most innovation efforts fizzle as we get overwhelmed with balancing this new endeavor with our regular daily job responsibilities.
When we map innovation with a clear vision and understanding about how to implement new ideas and how they will help us in our testing responsibilities—whether increasing our productivity, making us more efficient, or helping us be more proactive—we will be able to connect the dots faster and also justify our efforts to our management team.
Driving innovation end to end is similar to a self-inflicted project where we define our goals, engineer our efforts, track our progress, and deliver end results, aiming for continuous improvement. You surely can face obstacles during the innovation process, but it is up to you to overcome them. And as we step into 2015, this is going to be more important than ever before.
