Improving Recognition

I’ve been hearing lately that Mozilla QA’s recognition story kind of sucks with some people going completely unrecognized for their efforts. Frankly, this is embarrassing!

Some groups have had mild success attempting to rectify this problem but not all groups share in this success. Some of us are still struggling to retain contributors due to lack of recognition; a problem which becomes harder to solve as QA becomes more decentralized.

As much as it pains me to admit it, the Testdays program is one of these areas. I’ve blogged, emailed, and tweeted about this but despite my complaining, things really haven’t improved. It’s time for me to take some meaningful action.

We need to get a better understanding of our recognition story if we’re ever to improve it. We need to understand what we’re doing well (or not) and what people value so that we can try to bridge the gaps. I have some general ideas but I’d like to get feedback from as many voices as possible and not move forward based on personal assumptions.

I want to hear from you. Whether you currently contribute or have in the past. Whether you’ve written code, ran some tests, filed some bugs, or if you’re still learning. I want to hear from everyone.

Look, I’m here admitting we can do better but I can’t do that without your help. So please, help me.