What pushes us to organize training? In the first place - the need for quality improvement of work and staff development. As a rule, employees themselves are interested in developing. Often, however, it turns out that a person does not know where. He just wants to grow, but does not understand how he needs growth - "horizontal" or "vertical."

At the exit, the business, first of all, wants to get qualified employees - “special forces” from the world of testing. What problems do we face?

Problems with the organization of training

1. The company may be missing coaches as such.
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What to do if there are no trainers? In fact, this is not a problem. You can personally share information. Another option is to make coaches colleagues. For example, if you need to organize programming training, try to approach one of the developers and say: “Oh, Great Superman, illuminate me with your knowledge, teach me how to program!”. It might work. A case with regular beer supplies may also work. In a word, there is always a solution.

You can also use publicly available content. Of course, I do not propose to tell colleagues: “If you want to develop - look for a training manual on the Internet, and you will be happy.” You can make some kind of information kit for people who are eager to start working on automation, testing based on Selenium and Java - for example, in the style of “Java for beginners”, “Selenium for beginners”, including a number of interesting reports and articles. This content on the network is more than enough. So why not use it when there is a need?

2. There may be no motivation.

Difficulties with motivation are also solvable. First of all, you need to explain to people that self-realization, both in life and in work, allows us to develop and creates the prerequisites for the company to trust employees with more complex tasks and projects. Clearly outline prospects for him, for example: “If you want to be the leader of the group - be it! But in order to become a team leader, you need to learn how to manage the people with whom you need to work. If you want to manage automation, testing, but you don’t know how to automate testing, first study this area, then how to manage people. This knowledge will open the way for you to the position of the automation team. ”

It happens that in response to your initiative about training, staff members object to you, they say, “There is nothing to learn.” This is a normal reaction: a person occasionally jumps in the assessment of baggage of knowledge and experience. A vivid example: you have finished school, and it seems to you that you know this world “from” and “to”, you have nothing to learn. You go to college and understand that there is still something to learn. Finish the "tower" - and again: "Ha-ha, victory, now the world is at my feet!". Two more years of work in the company take place, and you understand ... Summary: a person should never stop developing - even if at the moment it seems to him that he knows everything, after a while the situation and his assessment may change. How to develop? Increase the load. Search for ways to optimize. Use the knowledge gained through training to make the process more efficient. Example: if you have listened to the test design training, start writing test cases, read testing optimization training, start submitting test cases to manual testing to automatists. Thereby you can save time. The value of you and your employees will increase, the process will become more efficient.

3. Lack of time. This argument can be cited by both employees (“We have a personal life”) and bosses (“We have a release in two weeks, what kind of training ?!”). It turns out that the training is the 25th hour in the day.

Does the business say that training will take away the time needed to fulfill their job duties? Explain that a series of trainings will take the department, say, 20 hours (this is the time that testers will spend on attending training or classes during working hours) and tell us that in the coming months you will save 10 hours on this knowledge every month. Thus, the training conducted will pay off in 2 months. It is very important for business to know that the investment in its employees will pay off. No one wants to give money in to dissolve in the void. In addition, people who have been trained will be able to share knowledge with colleagues: in many companies, it is common practice when, after attending conferences, employees tell colleagues that they learned what was interesting, new, good that they had adopted.

Employees themselves also often complain about the lack of time. For example, "I do not have time to paint test cases." I recommend using the theory of "small deeds" - when you are doing very large, seemingly very heavy, workload with very small pieces. For example, writing a test case takes 15 minutes. On such "quanta" you can divide a mountain into a thousand cases, which you seemingly never move. But if your testing department consists of 20 people, and each signs out one test case per day, in a week you will get 100 painted test cases. And it becomes a lifting target of a thousand. You know for sure that in 10 weeks you will achieve the desired result. This technique is useful both in work and in general in life - I recommend.

Problems after training

So, it seems to have turned out to motivate people, trained employees, they put it into practice, but ... not everything is as smooth as we would like.

It is worthwhile to mentally prepare for the fact that employees may have increased requests. There are cases when a person, just listening to, for example, an internal automation training course, immediately comes up with the question: “Well, where is my money? I am already an automator, now I want more money from the company. ” At this moment, it makes sense to remind you that first it is worth returning the investments that the company has invested in it (money and working time spent on training), and after that we will talk with you about the direction in which you and your money will grow ” .

In addition, I was faced with such a problem when the acquired knowledge entered the daily life of testers, and it seemed to them that they were engaged in super-heavy work. For example, earlier they all wrote bugs in the comments in the problem. After training, we came to the rule: for one bug - one ticket. And this began to cause confusion - after all, this approach required a little more time. "How did it happen? I wrote 50 comments to the problem earlier. True, then I spent 4.5 hours to figure out which of these bugs was fixed. But now it is inconvenient for me to put a separate ticket on each bug. ” But in the future, a person realizes: how great it is that I don’t need to wool these comments again, thanks to the “one ticket - one problem” system. But to realize this fact takes time.

Well, for the employees themselves you should have both a carrot and a carrot. I was faced with such a problem that, having shown the children opportunities for development, that is, having organized automation trainings, I showed them the “carrot” and said: “If you learn, everything will be great!”. They understood that sooner or later they would start paying more money for it. But at the same time there was no whip - no one knew what would happen if the training failed. As a result, we were faced with the fact that some of those who signed up for automation trainings regarded them as “an optional part of the program”, deciding: “Ah, I did not succeed, I will not bother with this anymore.” We spent our time, the time of the coaches, the employees themselves spent their working time, but did not get any results from some. As a whip option in this case, training programs can be made to KPI for growth within the company - both in position and in salary. That is, you say to the employee: “If you want a salary increase, you need to go through these trainings. And successfully pass, and not quit halfway. KPI is not fulfilled - no money. ”

Business problems

Another complication that may arise is management fears that the cost of training will not pay off. It is important for business to explain that it is cheaper to train an employee than to hire a “ready-made” specialist with similar knowledge. Yes, and to assess the knowledge of the newly hired candidate will be possible solely at the level of resume and interview. In real work, he will show himself only in 2-3 months. If your managers say: “We don’t have the money to raise the salary of your employee after training,” remind you that if this person leaves, it will be more expensive to find a relevant candidate in the market.

In addition, you need to be mentally prepared for the fact that staff development inevitably leads to increased interest in them from competing companies. To successfully counter this, provide employees with a practice, not just train theories. If a person within the company has undergone some kind of training, but has not yet had the opportunity to consolidate the knowledge gained in practice, then the price of this knowledge is zero (or very close to zero). The mere fact that he took a two-month course in test automation does not make him an automation tool: He must try this in practice, fight in the battle for the quality of the products. If you explain to a person that he will have the opportunity within the company to get a practical consolidation of the theoretical skills that he has received, this will really make him a higher paying employee, take him to a better position - and give him a reason to stay in the company, rejecting offers of transition.

Continue learning

If you have done primary school testing, then do secondary education, secondary special, higher, graduate school. Keep developing your employees. This will maintain their loyalty and trust in the company. And they will be less affected by the evil influence of recruiters.

It is not enough to get superficial knowledge about how to put bug reports competently, for example. It is necessary to supplement, deepen your knowledge. Just think: maybe it is still necessary to make sure that the components are indicated, the version in which the bug was found? Things may be obvious to many of you, but for people who have just been trained, this will be a boon, a step forward. They will deepen their knowledge in the process of practical application of these skills.

“I already know everything!”

Often a person says: “I have studied everything and know exactly how to write test cases.” Check it in practice - for example, send a person to a neighboring project to find out how test cases are written there. The theoretical basis will be identical, but in practice completely different situations, subtleties and details may arise depending on the context of the tasks being solved. Therefore, it is necessary to visually demonstrate to the employee that there are areas where he can develop.

The important point is very easy and pleasant when there is a teacher who tells you what to do and how to achieve a certain result. However, it is much more useful when help is not given to a person, but only a vector is indicated: then he understands that his knowledge is not as complete as it may seem.

Results

In the end, we got a strong team, that is, a team of qualified employees with extensive knowledge and practical skills. Some of them are already starting to train young colleagues. We got the trust of the staff. Because a company that is involved in the process of self-realization of its employees - in a professional or personal field - is a good company. Organization of training increases work efficiency, and at the same time employee loyalty: it's nice to have such a “mentor” (represented by the company) at your side, from whom you can ask for help and maybe some resources or at least a hint where, how and what better to learn in this large and immense world.

The post was prepared according to my report on SQA Days - 16