brand: A brand is a product, service, or concept that is publicly distinguished from other products, services, or concepts so that it can be easily communicated and usually marketed. (Source: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci211703,00.html )
“Are others able to positively distinguish me from other testers?” – I try to answer this question everyday and in whatever I do as a tester. I get different answers for different tasks that I accomplish. It helps.
Try answering this question for yourself.
Hi
I started to ask myself the question but it lead to another question. Is testing a brand? In particular are the sub brands well defined? I am a performance engineer but there seems often little differentiations between what a performance engineer does, what a performance tester does and what a load tool scripter does in many people’s mind. Looks like we need a lot of brand management!
Regards
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
Welcome to Testing Perspective!
You have started an interesting thread of discussion.
In most circumstances, the three categories you mentioned are hardly differentiated. Another angle to the same is that performance testing/engineering is often treated as synonymous for client-server/web performance testing/engineering. There is very less literature talking on performance as a generic subject. Same is the scenario in recruitments of performance testers/engrs.
I guess this is hidden in the phrase “whatever I do as a tester” :-). A proper branding would be about positioning oneself for what one wants to do as a tester or for what one is capable of doing as a tester. Because there are so many things out there to test in so many different ways, that’s hardly the case.
A good answer to your point is the implementation of CoE’s in some organisations. This model works out wonderfully for testers who want to specialise in a given skill. I have worked in one such org where it was as granular as Oracle Perf Engr, Dot Net Perf Engr, Java Perf Engr, LoadRunner expert, WebLoad expert etc.
Regards,
Rahul