2018 is a new year

Happy New Year. As 2017 closed out and 2018 began I had some really lofty goals on my New Years Resolution List. At least one was related to pushing forward the Quality Center of Excellence initiative. I had been told previously that it was mine to own and that I should lead it as I saw fit, only conditions, there was no distinct budget and participation is voluntary from others. I was determined to put as much effort as possible outside of my current responsibilities to make sure that I was not a blocker to the potential improvements ahead from this program

Voluntary for me was never a blocker, I had spent over 6 years in emergency services as a volunteer firefighter and paramedic when I lived in Maryland. I had even taken 24 college credits during that time to obtain my national paramedic certification. Not to mention the many hundreds of emergency calls and the thousands of hours of time that I spent on a fire engine or ambulance or on training or at the firehouse waiting for the next call. Oh yea, all of this was for no pay while working full time as a software testing professional!

Why would I do that many would ask? Putting my life at risk, spending time away from my family, what was the benefit? I think for me it served many purposes, I was able to give back to the community that I lived in, many of the people that I saw while on emergency calls were from the nearby community, citizens that were having a bad day and in need of help. I also had a knack for science and math, two things that help when you are doing drug dosage calculations in your head as a paramedic or when you are the operator of a fire engine and need to serve multiple hose lines with enough pressure and volume of water to quickly put out a fire. I am extremely methodical and process oriented, all of the paramedic courses taught medical procedures through flowcharts and algorithms. Lastly, I wanted a challenge, to be able to walk into any situation with numerous unknowns and intervene to hopefully bring stability and a better outcome for all involved.

If you have never been in an ambulance or fire engine heading to a call it is an amazing rush of emotions, excitement, worry, maybe even a little fear. While en route you get information through the radio about the call, whether it is a patient or a motor vehicle accident or a fire. That information paints a picture of what you are going to walk into once you arrive on scene. Once you arrive there is more data to digest, you have to reevaluate your initial assumptions and use sight, sound, touch and smell to get get to the most important information to make decisions and stabilize the situation as quickly as safely possible. Put out the fire, rescue victims, stabilize patients and transport them to a hospital for more definitive care. There are so many acronyms and mnemonics to help remember important actions and assessments in the face of high stress emergency situations. Such as how to assess a patient for traumatic injuries, DCAP-BTLS, or on the fire ground RECEO-VS to help prioritize actions to limit risk to life then to property.

Those six years in emergency services helped me to see that everything being done was to limit risk and to help to normalize the outcomes, increased patient survivability and reduced property damage. These are the exact things that software testing professionals are trying to do in our jobs to make sure that customers using our software have a positive experience with it and keep coming back for more while telling their family and friends about it. I want to make 2018 a great year for testing and quality at my company and plan to volunteer as much of my time as possible to both make myself more knowledgeable and to push forward important initiatives related to the Quality Center of Excellence.