A Year Of Editing With Ministry of Testing
When Rosie Sherry gave me the opportunity to edit content for Ministry of Testing I was elated. I was over the moon. Then I was in a mild shock for a while. She was letting me take on what continues to be an important part of Ministry of Testing: the article content.
We talked about what she wanted to achieve with the article content. She wanted very high quality, valuable, detailed information for testers to use. She didn’t very much care if it took time to create, she wanted it to read well, and give valuable information. Rosie’s obsessed with bullet points that mean something and articles that have detail. She’s the product owner, and her obsession became my obsession.
We did a call for writers, which a large number of people answered, and then a call for submissions, which more people answered. By the beginning of 2017, we had a large group of writers and even a few stories started to go through the editing process. Because of this wonderful mass of new, the editing staff thought it would be a good time to introduce a few tools for writers. One of them was the writer’s guide, along with guidelines for submitting articles. Before, the staff simply explained the process and where a writer’s article might be in that process. As we started repeating the explanation of our editing process, several times over, the staff realized we needed a better way to communicate about what we were looking for in an article, and what kinds of things we expected.
The first six months were mostly helping people find their voice. Claire Reckless, Heather Reid, and Gem Hill, wrote some of the first articles submitted and published with me as their editor. Every time an article would enter into the community consciousness, I felt a sense of pride seeing a new voice emerge.
I’ve also been editing on some of the Ministry of Testing partner projects. TestSphere was one of them. I’m very proud of the contributions I made to the card deck and proud of Beren seeing his dream, his vision, of what TestSphere could do for testers come alive and spread across the testing community.
Articles for Software Testing Clinic was another partner project I’ve assisted with editing. Dan Ashby and Mark Winteringham are doing great things with their clinic, and I’m glad to help in some small way.
There are folks that I have worked with which for one reason or another, whom never saw their article published. These are not failures in my eyes. I think some might see them that way, but I like to think of it as someone trying something in earnest, but maybe it didn’t work out as they expected. Or the timing was off. Or life got in the way.
Matt Frampton submitted an article. He and I worked on it for some time. We came to the conclusion that it probably wasn’t going to work like we thought it would. It was a broad topic, and one that was extremely tough to tackle. We decided to put it aside.
Matt and I remain in contact on a regular basis. He continues to work on his writing skills and even started his own blog because of his experience with Ministry of Testing editing process.
The editing staff and I spend time working and developing things with people because that’s in the DNA of what Ministry of Testing represents.
My approach to feedback is to think about how I would want someone to tell me about my work. Feedback is given with respect and from the perspective that there is an attempt try to understand the writer’s point of view. The editing staff and I work really hard to promote the best version of someone’s idea. This comes from the desire to have staff interactions with writers to be positive experience. This past year has been a great one for me, and for others on the staff as well. It was a building year. A year to get our footing underneath our team. It was a proving ground for many people.
This tweet from Rosie says it all:
The number of folks on the list Rosie mentions who are speakers, is not a coincidence. I take a lot of pride in the fact that I’ve worked with all of the writers on the 14 Most Popular Articles Of 2017 list. I know all of them personally and it makes me pretty happy to know a majority of them have moved into public speaking, and continue to write articles for Ministry of Testing.
I take my own medicine as well. Articles I write go through the same editing process. I remember having feedback on one particular article which caused me to rewrite it three times before it passed the first editing check. It was important to me that my work had the same level of scrutiny and perspective which I try to give to everyone when they submit an article. When someone asks if the process they are going through is normal, I always point out that article and talk about what it means to have positive critical, constructive, and honest feedback. It’s still a good article, but I know the writing and the effort for everyone, including myself, can only become better as we grow our content on the Dojo into something every tester can use and be involved with no matter what the skill level.
Rosie set a goal for us to publish 50 articles in 2017. The team managed that with, a few weeks to spare! I set a goal for our team to publish 75 articles in 2018. It’s a big goal, but I know the community is out there, eager to learn and to read. The staff and I hope many of you are eager to write and be published on The Dojo this year. I’m looking forward to all the article submissions!
