2019 – A Long Look Back

The year 2019 is slowly coming to close.  So, This Is an excellent time to look at what I have done this year. I will share with you my achievements, things that I am proud and plans for next year.

My Goals For This Year

First, let’s look at the goals I have set at the end last year

  • 6 conferences.
  • More meetups
  • Certification. Certification is the one I failed – I’ve started preparing to Azure DevOps developer, but I am not ready yet to take the exam, and I won’t be prepared for a while. As for events, I had 5 meetups and  7 conferences, so I think I was close to my goals.
Selfie with Kamila Polańska and Dawid Pacia at TestCamp 2019

Events in 2019

I wanted to tone down after 2018. I had too many events that year.  For a first glance, this year was as packed as last but since I was a little more strategic with spreading them in time made it much easier for me.  As for my main presentations, this year was much more technical – my main performance was  "How Selenium Finds Elements?" which was deep dive into how Selenium actually works – it was a well-researched presentation that took over 160 hours to prepare.  And this presentation happened mostly thanks to pushing from Emila Ledzion and Marta Firlej. At the end of 2018 Emila was looking for Heavy technical presentations for ConSelenium – a conference where she was in committee. She motivated me to tackle this subject.   As for Marta well, she made it quite clear: for someone technical, I don’t have enough technical articles and presentations out there to show my expertise. She challenged me to tackle much harder subjects. I am thankful to her for pushing me in this direction. As for meetups – this was an excellent place for experimentations for me, I was meetups as a sounding board to test different ideas I had. Some worked great, and others need a lot more work.

Blog

Marta’s advice had also affected my blog leading to a few technical posts: Starting with the one about debugging Selenium test in .net framework and its follow up I also have two posts on how to deal with configs in both .net framework and .net core. I am especially proud of an article about .net core. It took some research, and it was also useful for me while making training courses. And that’s not all, I also had an article about interfaces and method chaining

I had a few much longer articles. Which require lots of research, drafting and reviews. But they were fun to write, and most of them got an excellent reception.  My first such article was my thoughts on test pyramid.  Followed up by an article on Recruitment process.  The last one was the largest. My Rant-o-Essay on starting carrier as Tester called So you want to automate This article took almost 2 months to write. It had a lot of review and redrafts.    I wish to make more of them next year, but the sad truth is they take a lot of time to write and research – but let’s say I still hope to write at least 3 next year.

As I mentioned, Those articles couldn’t be possible with all people who helped to review them: Ola Kornecka, Areti, Java Girl, Kamila Polańska, Jan Kędzierski, Katarzyna Heltman and many many others…

Articles outside my blog

This year I was also visible outside my blog. I’ve shared my opinion as an "expert" for Testing Trend 2019 Sad part is my prediction didn’t come to fruition – I was expecting AI tools to be more visible on the market. And Outside of Mabl, I haven’t heard about much movement in this field.

I also wrote two articles for just join. First one was about Testers writing code it leads to a very heated discussion on Polish Testing Group on Facebook The second one wasn’t as good. Let’s say there was some bad taste left after they publish an article that was not ready (it wasn’t yet proofread). Unfortunately, that was my regret cause it was an article about modern testing. I’ve also been part of testuj.pl Webinar about test automation. I had written a few more articles for different sites, but they are waiting for publication, so I won’t discuss them yet. It is also worth noting I have set up an account on Ko-FI (platform similar to Patron difference is it is for small payment hance they motto "Buy me a coffee"). And Even I managed to interest two people enough to buy me coffee. I know it is not much, but it meant a lot to me.

Modern Testing

Fragment of my Mind Map

I had first found creators of modern testing before they had yet coined this term. From the beginning, I thought they are on point. I stayed with their podcast for the whole time they were creating the principles. While preparing to write the article, I had re-listen to all key episodes connected to Modern Testing Principles, and I’ve created this mind map.  I think this mind map is one of my most successful creation. I’ve got a lot of feedback from people who used it. Including creators of modern testing.  I’ve also talked with Alan In his side podcast ABT 343.

Work

Photo from Aleksandra visit to Objectivity

Last year I took the role as Community  Leader of Test Automation Community. But I think this year was the time for me to grow in this role. Since I can’t talk about everything.  But I was part of a group that improved our recruitment process for Testers. Even before this I but a lot works into recruiting new Testers to Objectivity. I’ve started to be recognized as Domain expert of automation a lot more people were coming to me for advice. The community had grown, as much as I am a little dissatisfied that engagement level – it is not Where I want it to be. I have to say the community has grown very well. Soon my post on this subject will be published on Objectivity Blog. I also had the opportunity to work as let’s say, Project Manager. In February I had Idea for Workshop on Testfest, but instead of doing it my self I helped others with making it. What even better they had also done this workshop on another event. I was so proud of them.  Also, some contacts I made outside of work were coming to fruition. Thanks to it Aleksandra Kornecka came to visits as and done a 3hours long panel where we discussed a lot of different issues.

Retreat

From Top Left: Przemysław Libudzic, Tomasz Olszewski, Marta Firlej, Dawid Pacia. Zbyszek Moćkun, Emila Ledzion, Daniel Dec, Kamila Polańska, Michał Buczko, Adrian Gonciarz, Michał Krzyżanowski, Kamil Goryń, Maciej Wyrodek, Łukasz Pierucha, Piotr Wicherski, Alsekandra Kornecka – Photo By Aleksandra.

So I met Aleksandra last year, but my bond with her and many other great testers grow on Retreat. It was a short getaway where some influential testers from Poland had the opportunity to meet each other and discuss the difficult subject in a small intimate group. We’ve met twice so far. It had a lot of positive impact on me. Still, most importantly it allowed me to network with such great people.  To be honest, I am astonished that they even invited me.  Huge thank you to Marta Firlej for starting this initiative.

Other Projects

I did also start a few additional endeavours: The biggest failure was my attempt to make paid mentoring service – for now, it didn’t work. I had a few attempts, and it brought me some money, but it didn’t really work. I need to rethink my idea about what I want to achieve with it and start again. I’ve also made my first nuget package to help with selenium test it called TableElement at the moment of writing it has over 400 downloads. The project itself was fun. I had built for it both a pipeline and sonar cube. That wasn’t all the programs I have written this year. At October I’ve started 12 program challange. And so far Delivered 2 programs – 3rd is on the way.

What is next?

So the certificate is not off the table my goal is to do "Azure Developer Certificate" before the end of 2020 I will continue with 12 program challenge. As for the blog, I will add a page with the services I offer, and there will be a new layout.  And at least 3 big well-researched articles. I have a few more goals, but they need more work before I talk about them.

That’s all

Thank you for visitng my blog and being with me this year.

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