December, celebrations’ month, has started with a holiday, Romania’s National Day. As it was more like a short holiday, Altoms decided to celebrate it the next day, on the second of December with a special lunch, when we all brought traditional meals from made by us or by our families.
This November I attended the EuroSTAR Conference. The conference takes place once a year in different cities of Europe, and gathers around thousand people interested in testing. I was involved in running the Test Lab. Further on I will write about the Test Lab, in general and this year’s EuroSTAR Test Lab in particular, and then in the second part I’ll share how I felt at the conference and my takeaways. I will also insert the names and twitter handles of testers connected to the topics of this blog post, because I think that being aware of the ideas shared outside our workplace bubble, plays an important role in our career development.
November at Altom was challenging: conferences, anniversaries and upgrading the office.
So, the first days of November came with a newly decorated office, a greener one. Our wall covered in plants makes the office look better, be healthier and it reminds us of the beautiful nature whilst inside four walls.
The week starting with October 26th I attended the courses Rapid Software Testing (3 days) and Rapid Software Testing for Managers (1 day). It was brilliant! I feel I learned so many from both the course material and the trainer James Bach. Further on I’ll detail three things I learned and find valuable, and also mention other things I loved in this course.
October has been a pretty busy month for Altoms: attending conferences and organizing two in one week is not an easy job. But one value that characterize us is teamwork, so we managed to get everything done and spend the last day of the month celebrating Halloween together.
Those bad Bad habits, who doesn’t want to get rid of them?…
Let’s consider the following hypothesis: small habits that slow me down in my work or stand in the way of solving problems could accumulate and have quite an impact on my work. This could mean that they are the silent, unnoticeable factors that influence my testing in a bad way. One such habit may not make a big difference, but when dealing with more, they could have a considerable influence.
This is a really hard question and gives me a lot to think of. Not because I don’t have bad habits, but because it’s really hard to recognize them. Even though I know that there is a lot to learn about testing and a lot of improvement to do on my skills, it’s difficult to figure out what I need to do better while I’m doing my job.
But this is the first step in improving my testing skills. If I manage to recognize what my bad habits are while testing, I will know what to improve next.
Summer at Altom has been full of challenges. Some of these have showed up in previous posts on our blog. This post is an introduction to a challenge focused on writing and sharing of perspectives on testing matters that matter to us.
The idea was launched during one of our Friday lunches and the Altoms embraced it: let’s each propose one or several topics related to the testing experience that we consider significant/ would love to explore, write/ read about, then organize a poll, and write articles on the most-voted topics.
September, the first month of autumn has come and go and the summer atmosphere was still felt in the air, as days were still long and warm.
But the Altoms didn’t waste any minute and were as active as usual: working and finishing projects, taking part in competitions and organizing the Autumn Camp together with other colleagues at Tabăra de Testare.
So let’s take them one by one.
The next BBST Foundations class organized by Altom starts on November 15.
Altom is offering a Today Software Magazine reader the opportunity to take the BBST Foundations course for free by participating in a contest: post on Facebook or Twitter your expectations for this course using #BBSTAltom.