I have this constant dilema with myself and education.

I don’t like the education system – it doesn’t work for me. I can’t stand sitting around being expected to be engaged in stuff for such a long period of time. Over days. Weeks. Years.

What’s worked for me in the end is to find my own path. Learning as I go. Through the internet. Through the occasional course, meetup or conference. Through reading books.  And, perhaps most importantly, through trial and error.

And I’m getting there.  I’ve discovered things along the way that have deeply interested and inspired me.  And I’m doing things because I can and want to.  Not because I have qualifications of x, y and z.

To Homeschool, or not to Homeschool

I mulled for ages about homeschooling my boys. I never did.  Opted for choosing to send them to a small private ‘child led’ school.  Long story cut very short – I should have spent my money elsewhere.

When it came time for my boys to go to ‘normal’ school, I was nervous and full of fear, though remained positive for their sake. The funny thing is I’ve actually been somewhat surprised at how well they’ve done.  The past 1.5 years has done them wonders.  Their confidence has grown. Aaron’s cleverness shines. Within a couple of months he went from barely interested in reading to reading loads.  He’s now working his way through the Harry Potter books which is freaking him out a bit And his math skillz are awesome…a geek in the making perhaps.

Ben has gone from just being able to read and write his own name, suffering from huge amount of shyness and lack of confidence, to being proud, writing (messy, but at least writing!) and is now reading The Diary of The Wimpy Kid series.  He’s working himself up to the top half of the class, rather than being at the bottom where he was at the beginning.

I can’t help but think that if I were homeschooling them, that I couldn’t have gotten them to this stage myself.  Perhaps with a bit of support…who knows, perhaps I’m doing myself a disservice.

Questioning

Of course, I’m not really here to brag about their achievements. I’m questioning things.

For example, the really simple things at school appear to make such a difference.  Those different colour reading levels give them so much motivation. As do stickers. And being star of the week. And having those precious 15 minutes golden time at the end of the week.

It’s great that these techniques work, and perhaps this is the best way to get kids to learn and do stuff in a school environment, but is it the best way for the child to learn in the long run?  Maybe, maybe not.

I think back to what puts me off the school system, which is the inflexibility, standardization and tests.  My boys haven’t reached the tests stage yet.  I am not really sure when they do and am trying not to think about it – it appears these things change constantly that I can no longer be bothered to keep up.

Will things change then? The idea of them studying hard with the focus being on passing a test, it just feels wrong.

Will the fact that my son would love to play more football make me rethink all of this over again? What’s better for a child – spending that extra time learning more about something they appear to love, or focusing on passing that test.

I really struggle with this.

What’s in my heart?

And of course, it doesn’t help me when deep in my heart I just don’t value degrees (in general) as an entry to a better job.  And in 10 years time when my eldest will be 18 and perhaps considering going to university, the job market will probably be even tougher.

My heart tells me to educate these kids myself.

Seeing how Penelope Trunk runs her startup life and homeschools her kids makes me believe it is achievable too.  For example, she brings her son on business/conference trips. He is learning business skills. They learn through her. They put some stuff into action, she encourages it.

My boys would love that, they love my STC monsters are curious about what I do and often help me stuff envelopes and stamp our brand on it.  They are always trying to come up with business ideas (often ones similar to mine!), to make that bit of money to buy toys or a house with a big garden and swimming pool and a horse and a dog and a cat and a Camaro…

Schools don’t teach…

Schools can never teach these kind of things.  The kind of things that I want them to be teaching will probably never happen, like…

• When it comes to technology – I want my kids to build stuff. Invent. Code. Design.
• I want them to learn about business. About making a life for themselves and not relying on having a proper job.
• I want them to do creative stuff every day.
• I’m really not fussed about fancy math or reading skills.  If they can read and write and practice regularly, this feels good enough for me.  I didn’t read much until my early twenties.  There wasn’t anything that made me want to read, but that changed once I started to develop interests.  I now can’t get enough books or time to read or learn.
• More sports please – twice a week is not enough
• Cooking! Food! This is so crucial for everyone.  I really wish I knew the basics of cooking when I left home.

The Sherry School

So I struggle. They like school and seem to be happy right now. This makes it more of a dilema.

But I also bet they would be happy creating their own school agenda full of sports, cooking, business, making stuff, reading, etc… and given the choice, I think they would opt for The Sherry School.

And god, where would I find the time to do it? Hah!

And my husband probably disagrees, purely to keep him from going insane

I’ve been busy over the past year or so learning more about how to do business and take action on ideas that I have.  This has mostly been through The Software Testing Club, but hopefully, overtime it will be for other things too.

Following are some tools and books I’ve looked into and use to help my thought processes and development ideas.  It’s not meant to be a comprehensive list, merely a good place to start.

Business Model Generation, the book and related tools.

• The Business Model Canvas Blueprint is at the heart of creating a business outline/plan.  A few tools have cropped up in the past year.  Though my favourite one is the Business Model ToolBox for the iPad – ideal for sitting on the train and trying to plan and think ideas through, though I found it very difficult to convince myself to pay for this app
• LeanLaunchLab
• Lean Canvas

Related books to read:

• Business Model Generation
• Eric Ries – LeanStartup
• The Founder’s Dilemmas

I’ve been wondering recently if Pinterest could be of use to the testing community. I’ve always felt that what we produce as testers is often not very visual, which is kind of the point behind Pinterest.

Then I realised that I had done a mindmap recently and actually there are a bunch of mindmaps related to testing dotted across the blogosphere.

Lighbulb moment – I created a Pinboard for Software Testing related Mindmaps, do check it out!

And if there are more that I could add, do let me know!

The world focuses so much on the success of extroverts that it is easy to forget there are introverts out there quietly plugging away at making things happen.

I class myself as an introvert. Though am in my element when publishing and being online, does this make me an online extrovert?

I went on the Coaching Testers course with Anne-Marie Charrett and used a MindMap to make notes. Here it is. Might not make much sense to everyone, but goes to show how much is involved in the process of coaching testers!

(Click for large/readable version)

I find the whole movement of mum/mom/mother bloggers intriguing.

RWW says that The Best Mother’s Day Gift Is A Six-Figure Blogging Income – and I suspect this is true to some extent. But it would be true for Father’s day too.

I guess many people love the idea of making money from blogging. The reality of this happening is few and far between. And the ones that claim to make money often feel somewhat sleazy – in it to make a quick buck with affiliates, advertorials and advertising.

Of course, I’m generalising here. And I’m not here to offend anyone.

What I would love to see more is the concept of making money from blogging as something of the past. Sure blogging can be a part of it, but I can’t help but think that if people/mums saw themselves as setting up as (micro)businesses then perhaps they would benefit in many more ways – the simple fact that they are ‘in business’ will put people in a different mindset. A mindset to learn. To grow. As an individual and as a business.

The web can be a fantastic place for mums to make a living. Blogging isn’t the only way. And relying on brands to make a pittance, I suspect, is not where most people want to be.

I’ve long loved and followed the creativity and fun some websites put into their 404 pages. It adds a sense of pride and character the organisation behind it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if such thought and effort were put within other error prone areas of websites/apps?

Here’s a story on 404 pages from Reeny Gleeson on Ted.com

So, at the TestBash we had Ben Wirtz step up at short notice to talk about Lean Startups.  The video is below if you are interested.

The Tale of a Startup – Ben Wirtz – TestBash March 2012 from Software Testing Club on Vimeo.

Now I haven’t watched it back, but what really stuck in my mind was the fact that many testers seemed shocked that Ben hadn’t really considered doing any *proper* testing on his startup.

Perhaps I wasn’t surprised because I’ve seen and talked to many people who have never hired a tester in their life.

It’s not necessarily the industry norm, but in my ‘testing life’ I’ve frequently come across the following type of comments:

From a Tester’s perspective:

• what you have no testers?
• you need more testers?
• have you consider this type of testing, reels off a list (functional, exploratory, security, performance..etc)
• I’m not working for that kind of money
• What, you have not budgeted for testing?
• Ha ha, look at this bug…they should have tested properly

From a non testing perspective:

• Sorry, no time for testing
• Oh yeah, we fully intended to test, but it just didn’t happen
• We’ve implemented some automated and unit tests
• The Project Manager can give it a once over
• Hmm, testing, don’t know a lot about that
• Perhaps an office junior can do it
• Lets ask our users to do it, we can release a ‘beta’ first
• We should probably have more testers working on this

The shock that people felt of Ben’s lack of testing kind of saddened me, but at the same time great things happened.  As the questions and discussion went on testers became a bit more sympathetic to Ben’s business situation AND Ben also learned alot about how testing could help companies like his.

I was really pleased to see this happen.  Inspired and pleased.  And whilst Ben went away people apologised for being harsh on him, but he was enlightened and actually positive about the situation. He was a brave man!

Will we get off our high horses?

By this I mean…

• what right do we have as testers to make demands of how a project or business should be run?
• why do we think our roles as testers are so damn important?
• we would love to think that no team or project can survive without a tester, but they do
• why do we feel justified at commenting on bugs and saying that it wouldn’t have been there ‘if they had tested properly’.

I think it is about time testers got off their high horses and look to get a bit more diversity.  Usually there are justifications for not having testing.

I mean, perhaps as a startup:

• you have the choice of going under or employing a tester
• you have the choice of figuring out your business model or perfecting a model that users won’t buy or use
• you have a budget for a tester or a sales person? a tester or a community manager? a tester or a support person? a tester or a developer?

What would you do?

Diversity

As testers we need to diversify. We need to become more than just testers.  This is partly why the Test is Dead rant has been going around the past few months.  We need to pick and choose carefully what we would love to get involved with.  Think how much more valuable you would be to a team if you had more than one focus:

• tester / developer
• tester / support
• tester / community manager
• tester / user experience designer
• tester / writer
• tester / business analyst
• tester / startup
• tester / sales person

I’m convinced there is more than just a tester in each of us, but it may take time to figure it out.  The more we diversify the more right we have to sit up on that high horse.

It’s Sunday night (or Monday very early, jetlag!) and I’ve been back from my Workliday a couple of days now.

How did it go?

Mostly good as I didn’t do too much work at all.

Was travelling with the (3) kids exhausting?

Yes. I’m now trying to figure out how to get that relaxing holiday that my husband and I need!  The hardest part was my youngest, 11 months, who was and seems to have grown even more attached to me.  It felt like he was constantly glued to me, probably because he was!

Was I in a different mind set?

Yes. I didn’t think too much about the day to day stuff that needed doing.  I was managing a couple of small testing projects. Ensuring new subscriptions of The Testing Planet were going smoothly. And attending to some @testingclub marketing type activities that we do.  It was all mostly managed via email which was handy and we had constant access via my iPad, so that worked out ok.  The positive thing for me was the ability to think about things a bit more deeply.  It’s a bit of a time of reflection as it is just a short time after our first training event and conference/TestBash via Ministry of Testing.  It’s important to reflect on these things, take a step back and see where we can go next.

I didn’t really have much time to read.  But I did do some writing.  A few blog posts here and some more personal/internal stuff.  Good stuff.

The holiday itself was great, mostly about catching up and meeting family members – it’s all too easy to let the years roll by without seeing important family members.

Did I only work when nothing else was planned?

95% of the time.  There were a couple of occassions where I was responding to important emails whilst I was out and about on excursions, but mostly it was all done in the evenings, spending around 30 minutes catching up on emails or whilst my husband was driving

It was definitely more of a holiday than a work time.  We travelled over 4,500 miles just within the US in a period of just under 4 weeks.  It was a pretty busy time, always something to do or be attending to.  It’s really nice to be back, it still feels a bit weird, but I love being back ‘at work’.  The work I do for @testingclub really motivates me and lifts me up.  Looking after kids full time has always been a challenge for me…I’m constantly trying to find the right balance between work and family life.

Inbox Chaos

One thing became more obvious, my email inbox gets a load of cr*p.  Not checking emails as frequently and being in a different timezone made this even more apparent.  I really need to filter, sort and unsubscribe to lots of stuff!

It’s something I would like to do more of and should get easier as my youngest one grows up a bit!

There’s always plenty of debate relating to software testing certification.  For me it’s a bit like a tired vinyl replaying itself over and over again.  The pros. The cons. Why it exists. Etc. #yawn

If you focus on something, it becomes much more apparent. Focus on certification and you will end up being surrounded by topics, things and people related to it.

But if you don’t like it, don’t talk about it. Ignore it. Move on to another interesting testing topic and write/think/learn about that. Surround yourself with what you do want. Then spread the knowledge/word about it.

And who knows, perhaps overtime this whole certification will move on, or at least in your world it will move on, and your world is what matters. If your world doesn’t give a damn about certification, then what does it matter what they do?

Time is precious, move on.