How to handle Context-Switching as a tester? — Pragmatic Software Testing

In today’s workplace, most companies require you to do multitasking? correct. The answer is yes for most of us. Well, I will say that rather than moaning about it you must admit and then accept that we can not avoid it fully.

if you are a test engineer who is being interrupted by a chat system (MS teams/slack/google hangout etc.) or your colleagues tapping on your shoulder or getting emails “production issue or urgent **** etc.”. it is likely that you might be doing less important work first. Then trying to fill extra hours to do more urgent later in the day or extending hours into the weekend! Well, you are not alone!

You can do what I have been able to do for my own works while being working on more than 1 project to do better context-witching. True me, I tried it to avoid it but then you are gonna make lots of your clients, colleagues, boss, or office unhappy.

1. Prepare the daily and/weekly task list on colorful sticky notes. I categorize them into three colored categories based on the mental strength (MS) required to complete each task.
   Level 1 Task require complete uninterrupted time from me. Level 3 are easier or repeated work remember by muscle memory and brain can do multi-tasking easy. Level 2 which fits in between 1 and 3.
   Task Level 1 (Blue Sticky Note) ,
   Task Level 2 (Turquoise Sticky Note),
   Level 3 (Beige sticky note).
2. Start my work day with tasks that are level 1 early in the day while I have my golden hours of the day and do the level 2 or 3 later in the day. I also block my office calendar in advance so that no one can book those golden daily hours.
3. I also put my WhatsApp group or telegram app or non-work related slack channels notification off so that it does not disturb me. I only check non-work related messages during lunch time or later after 5:00pm.
4. Keep adding new work item assigned to you from meetings to running to-do list immediately and “move” these new tasks to color coded sticky notes.
5. Make it clear to the colleagues, if they need any help from you, give them post lunch meeting invite so that you can focus on finishing more important work in the day and can do Level 3 task while you are also helping your colleagues. Try to keep your golden hours to most important task on daily.
   During team stand up, if you think any of your colleagues might struggle on the task/story he/she has picked up, set the expectation to the Scrum master or manager and colleagues that you can help them later in the day but If your colleague's task/story is blocked & is also team’s top priority, please do not hesitate to inform your scrum master that you are happy to help as soon as possible but it might delay the important task you were working.
6. Writing or Re-writing my sticky notes each day in terms of priority and project helps me figure out what I need to do and by when.
7. As tester, You should also be very critical about the scope of test work you are doing. You should not unnecessarily increase the scope of the test.
8. You should also try to automate as much manual testing work you are doing using testing framework and integrating it into the CI/CD pipeline. That will also help you save time from repeated work which can invoked at the click of button.
9. You can also squeeze small “task” like reply to colleagues’ email or providing just small info over chat to your colleague(s) between small break you want to take when you are overwhelmed with the Level 1 or Level 2 task(s).
10. Personally, I also try to talk about non-work related talks over e-lunch meetings specially on Fridays. It help me to beat the stress of the work and feel more refresh.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to comment.