blogging

Blogging Helped Me Reflect

Jesper Ottosen Enterprise IT, Family and fun, Softwaretesting ,

This is my blog post 300 since the start in early 2012. 🎉I blog to reflect on the world happening around me, at work, at conferences, and in the global testing community. Sometimes blogging helps me articulate patterns and trends I sense, other times I reflect on reality based on things I have read (Go bookclub! 📕). Here are my 20 most used tags:

agile atWork business change collaboration communication conference context decisions exploratory goatsbook knowledge leadership learning skills test_strategy unknown_unknown value wardley wicked problem

Originally, I set aside an hour every other Friday afternoon to spend an hour blogging. The last hour of work was never that productive anyway, so spending a few percent of my work time has surely paid off. It was my personal 20% rule (just 2%). Setting aside continuous timeslots for learning and creation has helped me many times when I have had to spend dedicated time on creating something. If I skipped one slot I always had another slot coming up soon. My experience is very similar to Alan’s in This is Me Trying.

I love every time my posts are shared by curators of testing news, and then share my articles with thousands of testing professionals around the world. My posts have been frequently featured in:

Currently, I don’t have a blogging schedule – I blog when I have time and the urge to write. Both time and urge are required, though. It’s no help in having ideas if you don’t have time – and have time without the urge. I run a “blog backlog” in my personal tasks management system, which is more of a stack (First-in-Last-Out). I have the next 2-3 ideas already – but I’m currently focussing on my second 🗺📕book. Three hundred blog posts in almost 12 years correspond to 25 a year and on average 2 each month. Over the last couple of years, this average has been quite consistent. Full Stats below – this blog though is a side project besides work, family, and life in general.

I do not make a living as such from blogging. Indirectly blog posts have led to successful conference submissions. I have been fortunate to have one yearly conference presence since 2016. In 2022 I realized I could turn many of my blogposts into the foundation of a book. The royalties from the book have helped pay for other books in the community and an upgrade to a commercial-free version of WordPress. Thank you, if you have purchased my 🐐📕 book.

The choice of platform and the name have both been a bit lost over the years. But I stick around here because it’s a platform that is portable. I own the content and the cadence. It’s not paywalled nor does it require a login.

All-time (2012-2023) top 5 blog posts are:

  1. Visualize the test strategy
  2. Go Read Accelerate
  3. Pink LEGO is not new to the Friends Theme
  4. Seriously Joking or joking seriously
  5. Test ALL the things
stats by year on psts, comments, likes and words
94.000 words apparently!

Testing is like … vacuuming

Jesper Ottosen Family and fun, Softwaretesting , , ,
  • It’s better to do it often, than to let it pile up
  • It’s a tedious task that robots can do (partially)
  • Automation can catch some base level hairy stuff
  • Bigger hairy catches should be hand-picked
  • It’s always involves using tools
  • It’s better when it’s a whole team approach to cleaning
  • If everybody does their area, it all adds up
  • There’s always the usual spots …
  • .. And the spots to see after you thought you were done
  • In a hurry, you use the snow-plow method
  • It catches bugs

This is an analogy blog post – consider it an experiment, not a wholesome truth, but rather a model. And a model is always false, but sometimes useful.

This blogpost is also coming from a community outreach from the  Bloggers Club on the Ministry of Testing. There are regular challenges that aim to share community thoughts. This month, the challenge is to share the personal perspective about “Testing is like…”

The analogy is inspired by Heathers post about their new vacuum robot below. If you want to consider how to test a robot vacuum, go see the club post: How to Test a Robot Vacuum?

[Image of “Floor-a” with permission from Heather]