You lean back in your expensive executive leather chair puffing your H. Upmann cigar smoke in the face of your subservient employees and then you laugh far too loudly while lifting your legs and placing your expensive bespoke brogues on your desk.

You have successfully changed sides. Yesterday you were a tester, now you are a manager of testers. Great, isn’t it? And while you indulge in complacency in your splendid new corner office, what might soon happen to your testing skills shall be exemplified with the following image:

image credit: http://j.mp/wHvCiA

It was in November 2007 when I was promoted line manager of my test team. We have four different roles: Testers, Test Engineers, Software Developers in Test and Test Managers. The size of the team has always been between 13 to 19 Testers. My team is great, I love them all. And being a line manager is very rewarding.

If somebody asked me I would say that I follow the Servant Leadership style. I am familiar with DISC (myself being a strong I and D with a significant share of C) and Process Communication Model (Base: Workaholic, Phase: Rebel). I concentrate on the “what” and I am agnostic about the “how”, “when” and “where”. I constantly try to keep on learning; currently I am an avid listener of the Manager Tools Podcast.

So, where is the problem?

There is a fundamental difference between being a tester and being a manager of testers. Given the size of your team is big enough, the line manager part of your job becomes a full time activity. Now, what does that mean? Well, if it is a full time job, then obviously you are no longer testing that much yourself, are you?

And what happens if you do not practice anymore? You become fat and ugly.

I don’t want to be fat and ugly. In the same fashion as many people start jogging after Christmas gluttony, I decided to start my own little jogging program. Only dwelling in propositional knowledge won’t make you better at all. These are some of the things I have started:

• Regular Skype coaching sessions with James Bach (next session: tonight)
• Registered with uTest.com and started testing to reeducate myself (And they even pay you but I think I am going to donate the money to charity)
• Challenge my brain with Lumosity, Khan Academy and Code Academy
• Vowed I will submit session proposals to at least 3 conferences this year
• Try to learn from testers who are active on Twitter
• This blog is actually a result of my reasoning about testing (writing == reading your own thoughts)

Here’s an invitation: If you are from Switzerland and you are serious about testing, please read on. And by “serious” I mean:

• You regard testing as an intellectually demanding activity
• You are context driven
• You strive to become really good at software testing
• You value honest feedback
• You sneer at useless certifications

PLEASE do contact me, I want to talk to YOU. Let’s form a context driven school of software testing group in Switzerland. Let’s get better at Exploratory Testing. Let’s solve puzzles. Let’s challenge each other. Let’s become world class together.

tags: skill, management, craftsman, learning