
Starting a [Gratitude Jar](https://josierobinson.com/journal/how-to-use-a-gratitude-jar) is a wonderful way of giving THANKS. Thank you [Anne-Marie Charrett](https://mavericktester.com/2020/01/02/the-gratitude-jar/) for spreading this nice idea and in particular triggering me to think and set aside a couple of minutes and starting my gratitude jar right here.

So I open my jar and put in the following slips:
> _I am thankful to have such wonderful close human beings around me._

> _I am grateful for all the things I am able to do right now._

> _I am blessed with a job which I am very passioned about and love doing._

> _I am happy that I can learn from all the people around me, no matter where they come from, what they are doing and what they are passioned about._

> _Thanks to my employer for making it possible to experience all the different roles in all the projects I have been a part of so far._

> _Thanks to my employer for giving me the freedom and richness to learn from all the different teams, people, cultures, challenges and perspectives._

> _Thanks to my #PowerLearningGroup and every single members of it. Thanks Lisi, Lilit, Mirjana, Viki, Diane, Toyer, Joao and Dragan for being here and learning with me. You are all an inspiration! (I am already looking forward to that moment when I meet you all person one day)._

> _Thanks Sandra for reaching out to me and though triggering another journey of learning and sharing for this year._

> _Thanks to Lou, Cindy and Matthew who welcomed me with open arms at their conference._

> _Thanks to my learning partner Parveen who initialized our #LearningPartnership last year. I am so much looking forward to the upcoming month._

> _Thanks Gerald for riding with me in the world of performance testing the last few years._

> _Thanks to the team I have been a part of at my past customer project, you are all amazing, continue like this._

> _Thanks to all the conference paper reviewers, you do an amazing job and I know it isn't easy to make a choice when you get tons of great papers._

The Gratitude Jar


A year of my life has passed and I would like to reflect and look back what happened. I somehow feel the need to let go form 2019 and already welcome some new things of 2020. The last twelve month were an intensive learning phase of test automation, pairing, learning languages and getting rejected at conferences. One thing I learned once more over the past twelve month was: 

> _[Failing and getting rejected](https://simonberner.com/2018/10/28/I-failed/) over and over again is hard to take and can be very frustrating. But giving up on something which I love doing, was and never will be an option for me._

It is a déjà vu, all my life long I had to fight, work and learn hard in order to earn my successes. It belongs to me, it sticks with me, it's a part of me, I know it, life wants to teach me a lesson. May be because of some happenings in my [earlier lives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation)? I am not frustrated any longer from failing, I have learned to live and learn from it.

### 2019 - 11
Here the 11 highlights which stand out the most from the past year (they are not in any particular order):
1. I started learning the version control system Git. First I was very confused but the more I used it the more I got passioned about it. Today I am a Git fanboy who loves to teach and infect others with it.
2. In March this year I participated at the [SoCraTes Conference Switzerland](https://www.socrates-ch.org/), where I did a session about my first steps and experiences with the version control System Git. The session wasn't that super good from my perspective, but it taught me a lot about myself and how I can improve my presentation and teaching style.
3. I applied for speaking at many software testing conferences. [A lot of rejections and just one single success](https://simonberner.com/2019/12/15/Let-s-Test-2019-Africa-Speaks/).
4. I started working on creating an online course.
5. I started doing pair programming (traditional and strong style pairing) at work. I worked constantly in pairs every day for a full month, which was an intensive an exhaustive time. Afterwards I reduced it to 2 days per week.
6. I wanted to facilitate a mob programming session with my team at work, but I never reached the point of actually doing it. My team mates blocked me and I finally blocked myself too.
7. I facilitated my first workshop all alone at a testing conference.
8. I started working on my first full-day tutorial.
9. I applied with two workshops at a developer conference for next year.
10. I continued relearning the Java programming language.
11. I relearned French at my (by now past) customer project.

### 2020 - 13
Next year, the following 13 cool new things are already waiting for me:
1. Beginning of January, I will start a new project and a new job as a Mobile App Test Automation Engineer / Mobile App Tester!
2. A bit later on, I will release my very first online course! So stay tuned!
3. In the middle of the year, I will facilitate my first full-day tutorial at a conference!
4. I hope to have the possibility to do more full-day tutorials and workshops at conferences during the year (a few papers to conferences are already out).
5. With my future new Mobile App Team, I would like to gain experiences in Mob Programming and facilitate my very first Mob!
6. With [Sandra Kambo](https://twitter.com/sandra_yri) who I met at [Let's Test SA](https://simonberner.com/2019/12/15/Let-s-Test-2019-Africa-Speaks/), I would like to start a learning partnership all around Mobile App development and testing.
7. I want to learn the Mobile Test Automation framework [appium](http://appium.io/).
8. With my learning Partner [Parveen Kahn](https://twitter.com/Parveen_Khan10), I would like to learn heaps of new stuff in the testing worlds and give a pair talk with her about our learning journey at [AgileTD 2020](https://agiletestingdays.com/).
9. With the Power Learning Group, I would like to learn new fancy stuff, sharing experiences and finally meet all of these lovely human beings in person at a testing conference.
10. I want to face and pass the exam to become an [Oracle Certified Professional, Java SE 11 Developer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Certification_Program).
11. As writing is probably the most difficult thing for me, I want to try to release small blog posts more frequently.
12. I want to do more coding by using [freecodecamp](https://www.freecodecamp.org/) and [codepen](https://codepen.io/).
13. I want to learn to use the [QWERTY keyboard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY), as I heard it is very convenient for coding.


Now I wish you all a happy new year and may healthiness and happiness be on your learning path! And don't forget:

>>>> _It's a long way to the top if you wanna Rock 'N' Roll!_

Live, Laugh, Love and Learn

Catch you later!
Cheers

From 2019 Into 2020


What scares me most in my professional live and in my personal development is, to receive negative feedback for things I'm passioned and love doing. It's funny, but that's a thing which always scared me, from school up till today. But why? I think it's the circumstance, that someone may have "paid" for the things you're talking about or delivering. As soon someone has invested their time and/or money, they have automatically high expectations and I hate to disappoint people. But on the other hand, we probably have to be honest and confess that making everyone happy is only possible in an unicorn land.

This year I've reached a point in my life were I no longer need to appeal to someone - I've put that pressure long enough upon me. I no longer have to compete with someone else (unless I like to). That merely means: I don't have to do things because others are believing, doing or saying so. I don't have to do things which I'm not interested in, just to be liked. I don't have to accept a job, assignment anymore just to have a job - I did that several times in the past. A lot of times I was drooling over positive feedback and recognition from others. Of course it's charming and also important to get some nice feedback for the things you're investing your precious time. But what I value even more is to get some individual, honest, constructive, direct feedback for improvement, because I think there is always room for doing so.

**Received feedback this year**  
This year I received on every conference talk I did some negative feedback. What scares me the most on this is, that I unfortunately never received a deep enough verbal or written feedback upon it. No single feedback which let me do some changes, rework, bug fixes on my talks. Did we tester loose the ability to give reasonable feedback to someone? Just we testers should actually now how to give feedback right? Maybe it's also the conference organiser which could do better to make/push this to happened? Or maybe it's the speaker who should plan ahead and give in particular this possibility at the end of a talk?

Nevertheless, I like sharing stuff with the community and maybe one day I'll receive some feedback which is a testers worth ;)

**Looking for feedback: my challenges for 2019**  
For next year I've got a few new challenges in the queue, which hopefully will generate some feedback:  

* Doing my first coding workshop (all alone)
* Doing my first conference talk with some live coding
* Finishing a certification which I've started years ago

All this should help me to gain more confidence in coding for the things I'm requested to do by my customers and of course to learn a lot of new exciting things. But wait a second, first I've to be accepted to speak at a conference, right? No way, there are also so called [unconferences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference) where [everyone](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diversity) is invited to propose a topic, no matter how fancy or not the topic looks like.  
So my first conference I'll attend and contribute to next year is [SoCraTes Switzerland](https://www.socrates-ch.org). Which is a perfect opportunity for me to get the critical eyes of developers as first reviewers on my coding experiments! I'm so excited and very much looking forward to this!

There are other topics in the queue which just wait to be unleashed and touched in more depth:

* Software development design principles (DRY, KISS, [SOLID](http://www.tjmaher.com/2018/12/what-software-design-principles-do-you.html), [etc.](https://www.tutorialspoint.com/software_architecture_design/index.htm))
* Software development design patterns (Factory, Composite, Decorator, etc.)
* Software architecture in general
* Have a look at the [adventofcode](https://adventofcode.com)
* Do some [coding katas](https://github.com/emilybache/GildedRose-Refactoring-Kata)

**Finding the balance**  
Finding the right balance between a professional life and a private life isn't easy, especially when you're passioned about all the things your job and the software community has to offer and you want to swallow everything at once whenever possible. I often find myself in the situation where I see a lot of people out there hopping from one conference and event to another and sharing their knowledge. Then I ask myself: do they have more time than I have? Don't they also have to work at some point? Don't they have a private life? Then I recognise, no, that's not my way to go, I couldn't handle meeting that many new people at once and I also love doing other things in my spare time which have higher priority.

**Conclusion**  
My challenge for next year is: extending my technical toolbox by #LearnToCode and sharing and teaching freshly gained knowledge with and to others!

**One more thing #1**  
But how do I measure any success and #achievement from all of this?

As feedback is inevitable for measurement and fundamentally needed to do any further improvements, I'll actively call out for getting feedback during each talk/workshop I'll do next year. The first two people who give me an in depth, honest verbal or written feedback (until the end of a conference) will receive a surprise! So better watch out before you miss an outstanding opportunity ;) All others will receive a smile and a nice discussion.

Looks like that I'll use a bait for getting feedback, right? Yes it is, but I tell you, a bait which is worth it to provide feedback for ;)

**One more thing #2**  
If you have any feedback for the people you care about, please let them know! Take care, have a wonderful advent season and a happy new year!

What Scares Me Most


I failed in school at a lot of intermediate examinations.  
I failed the exams in school to go to the secondary level.  
I failed the exam for university entrance.  
I failed in getting my first apprenticeship.  
I failed at jobs.  
I failed at friends.  
I failed in learning my first programming language.  
I failed in getting a certification.  
I failed at my first master thesis.  
I failed in speaking in front of people.  
I failed in giving workshops.  
I failed in getting feedback.  
I failed in getting accepted.  
I failed in listening.  
I failed in stating my opinion.  
I failed in telling what I really want.  
I failed in speaking to people for years.  
I failed in software testing.  

I'm grown older now, more experienced, maybe a bit wiser, but there is one thing I've never stopped: failing.


I'm tremendously grateful.

> _Challenging yourself is never giving up for the things you are passioned about and love doing._

I Failed


You know what the cool thing is when you're passioned about something? You LOVE to learn all day long! The day even becomes to have too less hours for all the awesome stuff which is happening every single minute out there!   
So, there is this learning group thingy happening out there, initiated by [Lisi Hocke](https://twitter.com/lisihocke) and [Toyer Mamojee](https://twitter.com/tottiLFC). They started it as power duo and over time they formed it to a group of extraordinary ladies and gentlemen by extended it more and more and taking other people in their online learning group - what a nice inspiring idea I thought.  
Some time has passed since then and today I joined in for the very first time.
[Joao Proenca](https://twitter.com/jrosaproenca) has setup this session very nicely with a [lean coffee](http://agilecoffee.com/leancoffee/) table where we all have put in our topics beforehand. The majority of us chose the topic 'Code Coverage' which was posted by [Mirjana](https://twitter.com/mirjanakolarov).

**A word on code coverage**  
*Code Coverage* on its own doesn't mean a lot to us in most cases. Code which is covered by automated tests, gives a bit more context but still not that much, that testers (and probably developers too) could truly understand it. What one first has to ask is WHY it might be a good thing to measure how much from the code base is covered by tests.

> *Code coverage is the percentage of code which is covered by automated tests. Code coverage measurement simply determines which statements in a body of code have been executed through a test run, and which statements have not.*

[source](https://confluence.atlassian.com/clover/about-code-coverage-71599496.html)

For developers which are working daily on the productive codebase, this might be an interesting and helpful guidance towards the awareness of creating checks for the code they write and where they are lacking. For testers it might be a good thing to have an overall view, to know which areas are already covered by checks and which not. All major IDEs these days provide useful features to create visual code coverage reports of the code which is touched by checks and which not. 

**Our session**  
Now back to our session. Joao started off the topic by telling his experiences and the things he is doing around code coverage in his team. They use code coverage in his team to see in which areas of the code they are lacking behind of having automated tests in place. But instead having discussion around "How good is the test coverage of your code", he rather prefers to have discussion around risks and how to finally mitigate it. Toyer mentioned there should be a clear distinction between code coverage on code level vs functional test coverage on feature level. Then [Pooja](https://twitter.com/TechGirlPooja) stated her point of view on the topic by clearly saying that there has to be a clear distinction and one should be able to make a statement regarding automated tests that cover lines of code, exploratory/automated tests that cover the functional aspects of a system and so on. In her current context, the developers are responsible for writing unit tests but the QA department is accountable for gathering the information and show what the coverage metrics for each area looks like. What they also trying to do is get some test coverage from monitoring and logging with tools like [New Relic](https://newrelic.com/) by recording and tracking the events which occur. Here Toyer hocked in and mentioned the tool [Instana](https://www.instana.com/) which he uses for monitoring the system while executing performance tests. I then talked a bit about my experiences and mentioned that whatever you are doing on which (let's call it) test level, it is important to visualise and show your team and stakeholders why, how and what you are doing while testing. The mutual conversion went on till the end and it was interesting to listen and ask further questions.  


**Retrospective**  
It is very energising to be part of such an awesome bunch of testers. The cool thing is that we all come from different nations to learn and growth by exchanging experiences and opinions.
Thanks to all for taking me on board! Looking forward to the next session! Let's ride!

Power Learning Group Session - Discussing Code Coverage


Very seldom you stumble upon an post which is so extraordinary, that you have to share it with the whole world. Such a post is this one here:

[The Origins of Opera and the Future of Programming](https://the-composition.com/the-origins-of-opera-and-the-future-of-programming-bcdaf8fbe960)

As in the past also in the future, software development lies in people forming teams, collaborating and working very closely together. We develop software for human beings and not for machines. [AI](https://www.ted.com/topics/ai) may help us with that, but not replace us!

Thank you Lisi for bringing that post up!

Symmathesy



A while ago, I came a cross [this](http://blog.eviltester.com/2017/09/overcome-imposter-syndrome-public-speaking.html) enlightening blog post from [@eviltester](https://twitter.com/eviltester) where he is talking about the [impostor syndrom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome) in relation to public speaking. Upon that I asked myself, isn't every human being to some degree affected by it?

> All the people around me are anyway more intelligent, competent, knowledgable etc. than I am. I've no story, no opinion, no namable experiences and experiments, no outstanding knowhow and passions to share with others.

I think everyone has at a certain point in his life such self-doubts, some have them stronger, some have them less. Ever since we carry this with us, it belongs to us that we compete with and fight against each other to get satisfactory, credibility, Ruhm und Ehre. In the testing community we don't go onto that. We much more share, challenge, support, unite and collaborate. One of the best places to do so is going to conferences - I'll get back to that in a minute.  
But still, the impostor syndrome is all present. (Watch [this fabulous talk by Claire Reckless]() if you're a dojo pro-subscriber.) But how do we overcome this "fear"?  Fear of not being listened to, fear of not being good enough, fear of failure. Well first of all, this is a personal thing, not everyone wants to get out of it. Second, there is also nothing bad about it - it's just sad when someone has a brilliant idea or has made some fantastic experiences and researches which she could share with others, but because of the imposter syndrome got stuck to do so.

[This](https://www.ctohanian.com/blog/2017/11/24/stepping-out-of-your-comfort-zone) is another great post about the topic fear to speak in public.

That's it for today, have fun out there!

Thoughts on the Impostor Syndrome


![TeamStar Letter](assets/posts/170918/teamstar-letter.webp)

**Preparations**  
In June [Maja Schreiner](https://twitter.com/majaschreiner) setup the 15th edition of [Agile Testing Meetup](https://www.meetup.com/Agile-Testing-Meetup-Zurich/events/241197315/?comment_table_id=483425579&comment_table_name=event_comment) with the intention of having discussions around the topics Continuous Delivery and DevOps. As I'm currently working in this area, I signed up my self for being the second speaker of this event. At that time, the two of us had no idea that at the same time the [TeamSTAR Competition](https://conference.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com/teamstar/) was happening. 
In July then, [Diana Flores](https://twitter.com/diaflonew) gave us the hint about it - thanks Diana for that!
So after aligning the description of the meetup to the theme of the this year's EuroSTAR Roadshow, we were in the game and ready to host our local _"The Magic Of Testing"_ meetup on the 28th of August.


**The meetup**  
We've had around 18 participants which joined us on this evening. It all started a little bit in a chaotic way, as we've had some problems in getting the Wifi Beamer working - a clear lack of taking the time to get that thing running on time. Because of that, Maja had to give her talk in a freestyle way without having a slide deck which backed her up. This was quite a challenge but she was brave and dove into it. Well done Maja! She talked about her experiences with _Continuous Delivery using Crowdsourced Testing_. Crowdsource testing is an untouched area for me within I've no experiences at all. Despite the fact that I was desperately trying to get that damn Beamer running, I was able to catch some words and sentences in between. Some of the participants bombarded her with some challenging questions - she did well and mastered them. Unfortunately I wasn't able to write these questions down. For those who are further interested in this topic, can either see her live on the [next stage](http://questforquality.eu/speakers/maja-schreiner/) at the beginning of October, or get in touch with here via whatever channel you prefer.  
Then was my turn to open the coffin and unleash the beast. Of course I don't wanna spoil too much about my topic in here, as I'm planning to apply for some conferences in the future with it. What I can reveal is, that I spoke about my current ongoing project experiences, where we put automation in testing in a deployment pipeline in order to satisfied the need for having a fast feedback loop. I guess I was talking for around 30min and then out of that some nice Q&A discussions arose which took another 20min.

I want especially say thanks to you Maja, for organising this lovely meetup! A big thank you also goes to all participants who contributed with their constructive questions to it. I'm already looking forward to a follow-up! (Next time we'll have the beamer working from the beginning on.) Last but not less important: thanks [Ronan Healy](https://twitter.com/TESTHuddle) for sending us the EuroSTAR swag!

**Testimonials**  
Besides the feedback we got right away at the meetup this evening, we also got a few feedbacks from the participants via twitter:

TBD

**Further Reading**  
Maja also wrote a [blog post](https://testmotion.wordpress.com/2017/09/17/15th-agile-testing-meetup-zurich-the-magic-of-testing-devops/) about our meetup. Click and have a look at it!

Be happy and go on with testing!

TeamSTAR Competition 2017


A very long time I always struggled to build up my own site and start blogging. I've read dozens blog post written by others so far and always thought: *No, I've nothing special to add from my side*.

But then, a few days after the recent start of [Aleksis Tulonen](http://www.aleksistulonen.com) new fantastic blog site, it suddenly hit me. Thanks Aleksis for the inspiration! I hope I don't hurt your feelings by using the same nice little frameworks. I know, it looks now almost the same as yours ;-)

So here I am and ready to blog.

