Interview with Beth Marshall

Beth Marshall

Twitter: @Beth_AskHer

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beth-marshall/

Interview

Where are you in your testing journey?

I’ve been testing for many years now, but am still learning something new most days - I’ve worked in jobs where every day is the same but this never ending journey is one of the many reasons I love testing!

The best bug you have ever found?

Bruce @undevelopedBruce spoke to me about Team Bugs. This is not functional issues you can find in a piece of software, but a way of identifying something in a team which could be improved and working together to fix it. I’ve had a lot of wins on this front throughout my career, be that making hiring and onboarding processes more positive for new people, increasing the role of exploratory testing in addition to more automated regression checks (e.g. changing the “automate everything” mindset) or developing close and productive working relationships between different teams.

Advice you would give to Testers?

Be proactive. Opportunities will start to come to you, but first you’ve got to go to them. Reach out to folk, get involved, attend or speak at meetups, write blogs. Do that proof of concept for a tool which would help your team, or find a way of making things better without needing to be cajoled, prompted or nudged. This will not only keep you in a job, but help the longevity of your testing career.

What does winning mean to you?

Sharing. There’s no better feeling than hearing someone says they learned something from you and its helped them. Testing isn’t a competitive sport.