Month in Review: March 2022

Zoopla Work

This month, I continued supporting my current product team with story shaping tickets and also adding Pact Webhooks to other APIs that we are responsible for. I also spoke about Pact Webhooks to the wider engineering meetup to explain the benefits of using it.

We have also onboarded a lot of new people to help us with different projects so from a quality perspective, I did a session on how we currently do Quality Engineering in Zoopla.

During the last week, I've been helping the mobile app team to help them define their quality and testing strategy amongst other things. This is my first time working with native apps but I was able to carry on the same principles that I've been practicing from testing websites and APIs.

We also had a team building event this month! The Engineering Managers at Zoopla had a "Insight Discovery Workshop" which is a workshop to help people better understand themselves as leaders, team members, and as individuals (I am predominantly an earth green!). The workshop was then followed by mini golf, drinks, and some food 💜

Community Work

This month was also really busy with community work and I have to admit, I overdid it this month. It wasn't the best idea to have all these events closer to each other and also contracting Covid, it has been a stressful month 😅

To start, I spoke at CypressPH meet up group to talk about my favourite Cypress features. I also gave a talk and a workshop about contract testing as part of Worqference and this was the first time I've done this workshop. There were some issues with my code during the live demo (always the case! 😂) but it was still well received. If you're interested to see the project repo that I am using for contract testing, you can find it at Pact JS example.

During International Women's Day, I also participated in a panel hosted by ECS (Global Logic). I had to join remotely instead of in person due to testing positive for Covid. It was an amazing panel and it was a great privilege to be part of it and listen to other amazing women! If you want to watch the recording, you can find the video below.

I also recorded a talk as part of TestBash Leadership to share the lessons that I learned as a brand new Quality Engineering Manager. If you have Ministry of Testing PRO membership, the recordings are now available to watch.

I've also been reviewing abstracts from AgileTD and Ministry of Testing and it's been great to see great submissions from the community.

Finally, I attended TestBashX Brighton which marks my first physical TestBash! It was great to see a lot of familiar faces, learn from other professionals and participate in the group activities. After the event, we were also treated to the British Airways i360 and had the best view of Brighton. I can't wait to attend my next TestBash in person!

Personal Development

🏋🏻‍♀️ I signed up to the gym and started going once I felt better. I also kept up with my daily movements and steps apart from the week that I was recovering from Covid.

📚 This month, I finished reading Kristin Jackvony's The Complete Software Tester book and also finished reading How To Talk So Little Kids Will Listen by Joana Faber and Julie King.

🎧 Consistently listened to my daily podcast episodes.

March Favourites

• Day trip to Cambridge

• Treated myself to a deep tissue massage

• Dinner date with my good friend Rafaela

• Pizza making night with Gabby

• Zoopla team building event (crazy golf)

• Unlimited dim sum!

• Seafood night with good friends

• Mother's day gifts from Gabby

• Attending my first TestBash in person 💜