I have been in the SW industry for more than 17 years now and I still learn something new all the time. I realise I cannot know everything and because of that it is important to be able to learn new things fast when requried. It is equally important to understand how to think, analyse and solve problems in general. My goal is to constantly keep on learning in order to be consistently valuable for anyone that wants to have my services. Both because a find it thrilling to solve problems and in the end - I need a job!
Part of this plan is to participate in at least one new class every year. I does not have to be in Testing but in something I find useful in general. Last year I finally took the Effect-Managing IT class which was great. The class before that was Corporate Story-Telling. I have taken the RST-class twice and learned something new also the second time.
If you are a tester and feel that you need to get inspiration and learn about solving problems fast, I recommend taking the RST-class in November in Gothenburg. We have manged to get James Bach to do a class again. Read this blog post from a very satistfied student.
A more specific testing problem is how to effectively manage Exploratory testing. You do not only have t be able to test but also to plan, analyse and continually make progress. How DO you plan and manage today? In Scrum we do retrospectives in order to get better. In ET we do debriefings in order to get better at testing. If you are a tester or a test manager and want to get a hands on experience with SBTM - Session Based Test Management - take a look at the SBTM Clincic we arrange with James in November in Stockholm
Hope to see you there!