QA/Testdays/Strategy/Kick Off Post

Testdays Are Broken

I do not think it'll surprise anyone who has participated in the QA community in recent months when I say, "Testdays are broken!". They have their vigor and are not the once powerful events they once were for a variety of reasons. We have lost sight of the value these events present to Mozilla and our volunteers. We need to refocus these events on mentorship and establishing relationships, to teach new skills, to connect people, and to enable people to contribute in meaningful ways. We need to build a vibrant and unique program that is more welcoming, more lively and more purposeful than they are right now and have been in the past.

A couple of us have been brainstorming, internally, over the last few weeks and we have come up with an extensive list of identifiers describing what within the current event program is working and what is not, and some ideas of new things to try. However, we need your help and support to make these events a meaningful opportunity.

Our goal for this quarter is to get help from you, our community, to determine our vision of what testday events can and should be, and to solve some of the lowest hanging fruit to achieve that vision. We see our first priority as creating a platform where conversations can take place, so we can start sharing our experiences and so we can start working together to solve our problems.

Calls to Action

1. Fill out our meeting survey so we can determine a day/time for a new weekly meeting. This meeting will be a place for everyone with a vested interest to voice their concerns and to get their questions answered.

2. Review our wiki to get a sense of what we've brainstormed so far. We'll continually review and update this strategy as feedback is collected and as things evolve.

3. Update our etherpad with your feedback, questions, and suggestions. We will be reviewing this periodically to integrate into the strategy. Here are example some questions to help get you thinking:

• Why don't you host your own testdays?
• What do you like about testdays?
• What don't you like about testdays?
• What would you like to see in testdays?

4. If you plan to participate in the upcoming QA work week we'll be having a session to review the feedback so far and to kick off some discussions. Think about what you want to contribute to our vision and bring them to this session. We'll try our best to make this session remotely accessible for those of you unable to attend in person.

Never Stop

I want to emphasize that even though we are making considerable effort here to change what these events are about, you should not stop contributing if you already are. We want to make iterative improvements to these events without any interruption to the great work that's already happening. Please continue to organize and participate in events. These contributions truly matter.