One of my recent endeavours has been to create a "career model" for the testers within my organisation. I sat in my office at home and designed "the testing wheel". I wanted it to be simple, inclusive and offer questions but no answers. Careers are long and winding. My own career has not been a linear progression, so building a linear model seemed wrong to me. But, this brought me into conflict with the ideas of others. My experience report will show the highs and lows of this model after introducing it into the wild. People still tried to measure and rank with it, got mad people got when I refused to answer the questions it posed. Finally how it spread and entered battle with wider organisations career models.

1. Ash Winter
Short stuff here:
@northern_tester
Long stuff here:

2. Wizarding Wheel of
Testing!

3. Problem…
•Hire loads
at once,
lose loads
at once.
•“Pushing
tickets”

4. Careers - weird & swirly…
Models are linear…

5. A new new model…
• Whole
career
• Open many
doors
• Buccaneers
• Questions
not answers

6. Definitely not…
• Complete
• Comparative
• Immutable
• Only career
model

7. Friday afternooner…
• Core of
a tester
• Circles
not
lines
• Outer
segments
bigger
• Less job
titles

8. First contact…
• Job titles
• Shit taken
literally
• Tell me
what it
means!

9. Another go…
• No job
titles
• Made it
prettier
• Moved
stuff
around a
bit

10. Try again…
• Painful
defining of
things
• Genuine
discussions
• Lets try it
in One to
Ones…

11. Measuring madness…
• Scored
selves
• Scored
each
other
• Comparing

12. Straight lines…
• Only
working in
one area
• Trying to
“fill in”
segments

13. Also big positives…
• Security as a
specialty
• Tool Assisted
Testing CoP
• Front End
Performance
CoP
• Overlapping
versions for
other
disciplines…

14. Wider organisation…
• Other managers
got confused.
• ”How do I
measure people
with this?”
• HR got mad.
• “This isn’t a
competency
framework!?!”

15. Personal learning…
• Lots of me
• No topics
change
• More skills
than
behaviours
• Take ownership
of career
tools…

16. Use it for…
• Unlocking
stuck careers
• New starter
direction
• Team skills
• Evaluating
test strategy
• Evaluating a
product

17. Questions?