A Professional Readme - An Aid For Joining New Teams

 I recently changed teams at work. Inspired by the manager.readme posts I've seen by Alan Page on The Tooth of the Weasel and other sites, I figured I'd do my own readme for my new team. It seems like a pretty useful thing for folks to do, especially when they're changing teams or jobs, so I figured I'd reproduce it here.

 

Hi, I’m Aaron

I’m looking forward to meeting and working with you. This document is not intended to override or replace anything official, but to give you an idea of how I think and work.

My Role as a Test Engineer

Test Engineer, Software Test Engineer, Software Development Engineer in Test, whatever you want to call it, they all mean the same thing. I like to think of my role as a developer whose only client is the rest of the team. That means that when you run into some process that you hate, and you have to do it multiple times, and it’s highly repetitive, it’s time to call in an Aaronstrike! I don’t believe that automation is the answer to every problem, but I do believe that it is incredibly useful in freeing up humans to do creative human things, while computers do the boring repetitive things.

Most often, I will be working closely with my Test Analyst(s) who identify test criteria, write test plans, and create test cases that I can turn into automation. However, I very much enjoy writing one-off tools as well. Sometimes I’m kind of like a dog with a big bone – give me a big problem to chew on, and I’m happy!

If you’re looking for some more specifics than that, here’s a few examples of past work that I’ve done.

• ·[WORK SPECIFIC ITEMS REDACTED] 
• There was also the time I had to learn Unity to develop the BVT for RoboRaid, and received a crash course in asynchronous programming.

I’m also a big proponent of SpecFlow for automated testing where possible.

Feedback

Is the tool I wrote missing something? Do you have an idea that could make it better? Do you feel I need to speak up more in meetings? Whatever it is, if you’ve got feedback or suggestions for me, please let me know, preferably in an IM, text, email, or phone call.

Schedule

I’m located in Sioux Falls, so I’m generally in the office from 8am – 5pm, Central time, with lunch between noon and 1pm. I do have five children, so sometimes I end up working from home. Usually that’s because my wife needs to be somewhere with one or more of the kids during work hours, but my four-year-old daughter is alarmingly persuasive when she gets up early, gets a sad puppy look in her big, blue eyes, and says “Daddy, I want you to work from home today so I can be in your office with you.”

I’m also a big proponent of Bullet Journaling, and translating Agile development principles into other areas of my life. This means I tend to work one task to completion, but jump from topic to topic as needed throughout the course of the day.

If you have an idea

Let me know! The best used tools that I’ve ever developed have all come from someone telling me they had a problem, and asking me if I could build a solution.

My interests (or The Fun Part With Pictures!)

Having a big family means I spend a lot of time at sporting events, and other kid-centric functions.

(Seriously, how do you turn down the opportunity to share an office with a princess?)

When I’m not doing child-related things though, I like to ride my motorcycle. Fun fact, if you happen to see one lonely motorcycle sitting in the office parking lot on a day with crummy weather, it’s probably mine.

 I also do a bit of writing as a side hobby, wherein I’ve written for a gaming website, an aviation website, a motorcycle enthusiast site, and occasionally manage to get a short story published somewhere.

Oh, and I run distances. Because I had to work this in somewhere.

Caveat

Take this document with a grain of salt: I wrote it! I have never had the experience of working with me, (although my oldest son seems to take after me to an alarming degree). If I’m your team’s TE and something seems off, bring it up to me over coffee or on Skype.