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How my challenge turned into a team challenge

My name is Dasha, and for a year now I have been working as a test engineer at Digital Design.
During this time, our QA department has grown, many new people have come, but we were not able to become friends right away. I did not feel that we were a close-knit team. In the end, tired of enduring this disgrace and decided to fix the current situation! And then the fourth quarter was advancing, and there was a lot of work promised ...

Why not combine these two problems? To unite the team and survive the fourth quarter is fun and playful? I had a goal, an opportunity (a week-long vacation in the third quarter) and the desire to realize all this!



To begin with, I decided to find a tool that will be available, require minimal body movements, and may also be of interest to everyone (well, most). Our QA-team is “motley”, everyone has their own hobbies, different views. But, in my opinion, this is even very good, because teams where people are alike will not have a diversity of opinions and as a result there will be no new ideas. Therefore, the task was difficult but interesting.

At the moment, all kinds of challenges have become very popular. So why not our team join this popular trend and become fashionable, stylish and youth?

On the network you can find a list of tasks for any occasion - from the Challenge of Home Coziness to the Month of a Healthy Person. For QA, there are also those where you can pull up your skills and try something new in our field (30 Day Testing Challenge). Initially, I wanted to take it (why come up with something that works so well), but after looking at this list, I realized that it does not suit us, since the tasks are quite specific and in practice are not very feasible. Therefore, I decided, based on existing tasks, to make them more close to our realities. So the first version of the DD Testing Challenge appeared. Having created a list of 29 tasks (with a margin, or we’ll suddenly break, lose), I began to look forward to the end of the vacation.

Start (Denial, anger ...)


Encouraged (and VERY proud of myself), I came to work and began to transfer all the items to the board in my office, without explaining to anyone what it was for and what the list was for. And this was my first fatal mistake, all the same, it was necessary at first to at least mentally prepare the team for the fact that there would be some kind of “movement” ... Everyone could not understand what was happening and for whom it was intended. My guys were wary and suspicious of the proposed tasks.



I was very upset by such a response ... But then, after reviewing the assignments, I came to the conclusion that my goal was to get to know people better and share my working experience, and not to perform standard testing tasks! And so every day we only test and test.
Armed again with a pencil, cookies and, connecting the maximum of my imagination, I created a new list. Here I focused on the discussion, more issues where everyone could speak out and think about things that, in ordinary life, might not have arisen. For example, “Tell us about your testing tools?”, “Invite for non-QA testing” and so on. After all, people like to talk more about themselves, and we do not need to complete tasks for the sake of the task. So a new test list was born.



But these were not the last changes that we made ... (well, as in any documentation)

Everyone who did not want to take part in the challenge could refuse, no one forced anyone (I did not use threats and torture!). To make the guys feel involved in this matter and we began to interact with each other, I gave them time to familiarize themselves and then suggest what they would change, and there was also one empty point that they had to come up with later (it just connected here: a great way to mask that my idea generator has stopped working). The beginning has been made!

We had to decide how the item number would be selected and at what time it should be done. To be relatively clear, we decided to make it random. They wrote numbers from 1 to 28 on the sheets and put them in a package (the last item was for summing up after the end of the challenge). Since I was the "instigator" of this event, I had to pull out the number. And every day before lunch, we agreed to begin to carry out tasks. But in fact, of course, we began to carry out tasks after lunch, even closer to the evening :)

Equator (Bargaining, depression ...)


The first few days, someone (even I ...) always said: “Well, let's just not this item?” / “Let us leave this for later?” - this is how hard and not very fun our first week went. Those who agreed to carry out the tasks were easier, numbers with complex tasks were sent back to the package. The answers we had were monosyllables or non-expanded, everyone was somehow shy.



In the second week (after making the next changes) they began to actively connect to the selection of the item. But what struck me more was that the guys themselves began to remind about the passage of the challenge and to participate more actively in the discussion of a particular topic. Even our conversations have become more lively and active. Conversations already became not my monologues (I like talking, when I don’t eat especially), but dialogues, where almost all the guys took part.

Completion (Accept!)


For the third week, interns came to us who were selected after the School of Testers program, and our challenge was a great opportunity for them to get to know the team, and for us to get to know them better. Local jokes have already begun to appear in the office, more talk about work or in general. Such a free and relaxed atmosphere yielded results: as it turned out, I worked with lively and very interesting people, and not with QA robots.

The last week of the challenge flew by unnoticed and quickly. ... Already there were fewer items on the list, and we decided that there would be no random choice, but sequential execution.



findings


The most interesting were the points where you just need to talk, discuss some kind of problem. For example, there were questions such as “Burnout at work”, “Tell about the most remembered defect”, “How does QA work affect life?” or "What public / telegram channels do you read (IT sphere)?". And I also remembered the task where we checked the veracity of the gif that women can lift a chair from the wall, but men can’t.
(By the way, the ability to lift a chair does not depend on gender, but on the proportions of the body ...)

Our team has acquired new “traditions”, for example, “Mem of the week”. Each week, an IT meme (preferably associated with a QA) is selected and glued to the door, and next week it moves to the wall of past memes.

The guys liked the format so much that now we are preparing a new list of tasks! At the end of the challenge, she invited the children to go through a small questionnaire, in which there were 5 questions.

Poll Results:
  1. Do you like to challenge?

  2. Want to arrange it again?

  3. Did the challenge affect the overall atmosphere in the team?

  4. Which task was completed the most? (write a topic or describe a task)
    Mostly I remember the points where it was necessary to discuss some issue.

  5. What topic do you want more tasks on?

  6. What would you like to change in the next challenge?
    Add items to conversational topics and remove items where you need to leave your workplace.

People at work in the team spend most of the time, therefore, I believe that it is very important to know the people with whom you work, live in one project. This gives strength and confidence, and you can also share and receive in return the support that everyone needs so much.

Good luck
_____________________
The first list of tasks:
1. Select a ringtone for a colleague (for notifications too)
2. Take a picture and drop into the dialogue / instu / VK (choose one for the team) what is now displayed on the screens
3. Listen to the podcast about testing
4. Write a test message in a block where there are no testers
5. Read and comment on the post / article - this means a blog, a portal for IT
6. Perform monkey testing
7. Find a bug when testing security
8. Download the mobile application, find 5 bugs and write about it in technical support
9. Create a mindmap (print / draw, and then we can hang it on the wall)
10. Find an event to visit (online or personal)
11 Take a picture of your team
12. Draw a problem / bug in the doodle style
13. Find the UX error
14. Get out of the comfort zone (we can change jobs for an hour, but go under our account)
15. Order food at the office and have lunch together
16. Go to a non-testing event
17. Find and share a quote that inspires you
18. Find and use a new testing tool
19. Find a good place to conduct security testing
20.
21. Share your favorite testing tool
22. Help someone with testing
23. Team up with a tester who has not worked before
24. Prepare and conduct a discussion (the topic is related to the testing process )
25. Invite a non-tester for testing
26. To say something good about what you are testing
27. Write a short summary of 140 characters.

The final list of tasks:
1. Choose a ringtone for a colleague
2. Take a picture of what work and send to the general telegram chat
3. Listen to the podcast about testing
4. How does working as a QA engineer affect life?
5. Advise a film / book where the main character is connected with IT
6. What would you like to change your own trait?
7. How do you fight procrastination?
8. What would you like to change in the workflow?
9. What inspires and empowers?
10. What superpower would you like?
11. Take a picture with the team
12. Tell us about the coolest bug
13. Find the UX error and talk about it
14. What do you like about QA?
15. Share something tasty
16. Find a funny meme about testing, print and hang it in your office (this is how we got the tradition of “Mem of the Week”)
17. Share a quote that inspires you
18. Check the veracity of the gif that women can lift a chair from the wall, but men can’t.
19. Talk about burnout
20. Make exercises
21. Tell about a useful tool that you use when testing
22. How do you organize your workflow?
23. Tell about the most interesting task
24. What kind of public / channels are you reading (IT sphere)
25. Invite a non-tester for testing
26. To say something good about the project / team where you are working now
27. Speak out the error found out loud

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