
Core skills are essential skills that one needs to have in order to be able to impress at a job interview.
Of course there are also other things like experience, talent, personal appearance which might be important to get your dream job.
I this post, I will solely focus on skills you should have in order to fullfill certain job requirements.
As I am working in the software industry, I intentionally point to jobs in software development. But nevertheless,
the two particular skills I am talking about in this post, are also important in many other industries.

At first, I like to go over some (not all 😉) roles in the software industry and have a brief look at what some of the core
skill requirements* are for them.

### Project Manager
- Leadership
- Planning and forecasting
- Risk management
- Budgeting
- Tracking and Monitoring
- Project management methodologies
- Communication
- Collaboration

### Product Owner
- Leadership
- Knowledgable about the context
- Storyteller
- Collaboration
- Communication
- Decision Making
- Problem Solving

### Business Analyst
- Communication
- Collaboration
- Facilitation
- Analytical Thinking
- Problem Solving
- Decision Making
- Negotiation

### UX Engineer
- Visual Communication
- Collaboration
- Communication
- Protoyping
- Curiosity
- Empathy

### Scrum Master
- Leadership
- Teaching and Coaching Abilities
- Problem Solving
- Conflict Facilitation
- Lean Thinking
- Collaboration
- Communication
- Facilitation

### QA Manager
- Leadership
- Problem Solving
- Time Management
- Communication
- Collaboration

### Test Engineer
- Communication
- Problem Solving
- Collaboration
- Broad technical knowledge
- Serendipty
- Empathy
- Asking Questions
- Creativity

### Developer
- Programming Languages (OOP/FP)
- Data Structure and Algorithms
- Version Control
- Cloud Computing / Container
- Database
- Problem Solving
- Communication
- Collaboration

(*This skill list is not complete at all) 


Do you see the pattern? The two skills which appear in all the different roles? Yes, it is collaboration and communication!
These two are fundamental core skills one must have to excel at job interviews and later on. As we all work with humans together,
we use communication and collaboration daily and thus the better you are in applying them in all kind of situations, the better
your working outcome and satisfaction with yourself will be at the end of the day.

That is why I have excellent and exciting news to share with you! [Lisi Hocke](https://twitter.com/lisihocke) and I are pasissioned about
collaboration/communication and how we can improve our abilities to apply them in our daily work.
So we came up with the idea of creating a workshop to deliberitly practice these two skills in a safe environment.
We recently have launched our [full day training at Ministry of Testing](https://www.ministryoftesting.com/news/level-up-your-collaboration-skills-with-this-1-day-training-course-from-lisi-hocke-and-simon-berner)
and the first run of it will be on the 9th of July this year! 🚀

[![Collaboration Course](assets/posts/210517/collaboration-course.webp)](https://www.ministryoftesting.com/news/level-up-your-collaboration-skills-with-this-1-day-training-course-from-lisi-hocke-and-simon-berner)

As this will be our very first full day training on this topic, we are already super neverous and looking forward on how the
participants will percieve and respond to it 🙂

If you want to know more about the topic and the things we are teaching in this training/workshop/course, we have recorded a podcast
a few days ago in collaboration with Ministry of Testing. So head over to it and tune in!


And now all to say is: sign up (for a bit of money) for our training and join us on this first ride! (fyi: Lisi's and my earnings
of this course, will be fully given back to the community (in some sort which we haven't figured out yet) 😉)


Cheers, take care and live, love, collaborate, communicate and learn 🙂

#ItTakesTwo #collaboration #communication #pairing #workshop #fulldaytraining #podcast

Collaboration is a Core Skill


**Intro**
[Lisi Hocke](https://twitter.com/lisihocke) is a shining star in the testing universe. I've never meet her in person f2f so far, but all the energy she spreads is crazy amazing. She is all over the place on twitter and has an [absolutely crazy speaking frequency](https://www.lisihocke.com/p/speaking-engagements.html)! On Friday the 24th of August, I've had the honour to join her on her [testing tour stop #17](https://www.lisihocke.com/2018/08/testing-tour-stop-17-pair-evolving-a-mind-map-about-pairing-and-mobbing-with-simon.html).

**When Time Stands Still**
I have to admit I was a bit nervous around 10 minutes before I went online. Not that I would've expected to face the devil in person, no, but because I didn't know which energy will hit me ;) We first started by introducing each other. And that's a thing which I think is absolutely necessary when two people meet for pairing on any topic they want to work on. Already there I recognised, that Lisi is one of those human beings who can listen. Yes just listen, you read it correctly. As simple as it sounds - listen - listening very closely, listening and not thinking anything else, being totally focused, listening that the time is standing still for a moment. Giving the other the full attention and the feeling of being important. That's probably one of the most valuable gifts you can give to your counterpart during a conversation. Lisi is gifted with it.

> _Listen so that you can hear the flowers grow_

**Learning About Pairing And Mobbing While Pairing**
Then we started the [Mob Timer](https://agility.jahed.io/timer.html) and dove into our strong-style pair session. The object under test was <a href="/files/PairingAndMobbing.xmind" download>a mind-map</a> with a collection of information around Paring and Mobbing, which I created prior to our session. First we had a look at [the different styles of pairing](https://medium.com/@maaret.pyhajarvi/styles-of-pair-testing-18970bbad833) which exist out there. When it comes to explain the strong-style driver navigator principle, I like to use the *Rally Drive* metaphor. An excellent way of visualise how strong-style pairing works! The Driver is there to drive the god damn car and the navigator, well he navigates the 4WD. I just recently started with strong-style pairing with one of my teammates, but it's not easy because both of us are new to it and have the tendency to easily fall back into the driver observer habit. Maybe the Mob Timer will help us out here in the future.  
Then we moved on our discussion on the topic of Mobbing and how to get started with it, what the optimal size of a mob can/should be, how time management can look like and how you should treat each other in a mob. *Kindness*, *Respect* and *Consideration* are very important pillars. The first two are quite obvious and don't need any further explanation. But *Consideration*, well this one isn't that obvious in the first place. It's that thing which I mentioned earlier: listening. The driver has to listen very carefully. Of course all the others too ;)  
We were running out of time. Still so much to discuss but so little time. So at the end I asked the question: What are things that one shouldn't do in a Mob? First: don't force anyone to work in a mob, but tell them about it. Second: don't force anyone to stay in a mob, let the person go whatever she prefers to do. Just make sure she is reachable in case of questions and know-how exchange.

> _Don't force, inspire_

**Retrospective**
It was a wonderful pair session around the topic of pairing & mobbing. A very natural and soft blowing breeze followed us throughout the entire session. I didn't feel any uptightness or artificial moment in it, despite the fact we used the Mob Timer. Thank you Lisi, it was magical - our path will cross again.

> _Don't put yourself in a box even when the clock is ticking, go with the mutual flow_

**Book Recommendation**  
One of the most valuable books on this whole topic which I highly recommend is [this one here](https://leanpub.com/mobprogrammingguidebook)!

**Toolkit**
Finally I also have to mention the toolkit we used for our online collaboration, because without it, it wouldn't had worked: [zoom](https://zoom.us/). What I experienced with it so far is great. Great video & audio quality, a super easy to use UI and its [basic plan](https://zoom.us/pricing) is totally free! A really cool piece of collaboration software!

**Twitter Feed**
TBD


collaboration

Collaboration is a Core Skill

A Magical Pair Session