Month: January 2015

2014 Year in Review

I’d love to write a witty post recapping the last year, but right now I just don’t have the time. So a brief summary will have to do for now.

Job Change

In February, I decided to leave Brock Solutions and work for uTest as a full-time consultant. I spent the next 8 months working for SalonCentric (a L’Oréal devision) as a business/test manager as they built and launched their new eCommerce website. That was wonderful time. I make some fantastic friends and learned a lot about testing eCommerce, particularly on the Demandware platform.

I was promoted to an Enterprise Test Team Lead which is essentially a contracted Test Project Manager. I was assigned several customers and project all of which were delivered successfully and received praise and accolades.

uTest

University – I wrote or co-wrote several courses for the uTest University

Forums – I stayed quite active on the forums as usual. I’m almost at 2,000 posts.

  • I started a really fun series titled Analyze This where I posted a testing “truth” and we debated it. Although technically I started this in 2013, the majority of the posts happened in 2014. So far I’ve started 13 topics, all of which earned at least 2,000 views and several are approaching 10,000!
  • I also made a very controversial proposal to change the uTest rating system to eliminate rating hits. There’s a lot at stake so I understand uTest’s hesitance to move on it, but I still think this is the right thing to do.

Blog – I wrote a few posts for the uTest blog, two of which were selected for The Best of 2014: Top Posts from the uTest Blog. “Certified and Proud?” was one of uTest’s most popular posts of the year, earning the largest number of comments and social shares. Even a few A-list testers read and talked about it!

A.C.E – uTest started a new initiative to provide testers with organized, mentor-based training. I helped put together the pilot program and was one of the mentors for it. A large portion of the materials we used were things that I’ve written for uTest over the years. I’m now working on converting all of my previous articles and papers into more structured courses as the A.C.E. program continues to evolve and improve.

Awards – uTest created a Hall of Fame website and introduced quarterly awards based on votes from the community. In the two quarters that this as been going on, I’ve won 3 awards

  • Outstanding Forums Contributors
  • Outstanding Blogger
  • Outstanding uTest University Instructor

AST-BBST

In September, I successfully completed the Foundations Course. That was quite an experience. I hope to find some time to write about it one day.

In November, I passed the Instructors course and will be an assistant instructor for the first Foundations class of 2015.