Interview with Marc, Director of the Consulting & Training

• Congratulations Marc! You've just become the new Director of the Consulting and Training Division, after having been a consulting engineer with QESTIT for almost a year. How is the transition going?

So far, so good. It's only been a few days, so the changes are minimal because I haven't quite got my hands dirty yet. But I've already got lots of projects and goals in mind, so everything will happen soon enough!

• Can you tell us more about QESTIT's Consulting and Training Division?

The Consulting and Training Division is a part of QESTIT and consists of testing experts. We can therefore intervene on an occasional basis to meet your testing needs, but we can also train and pass on our knowledge. That's why we've opened the QESTIT Academy, to provide training for tomorrow's testers. So, as its name suggests, the division not only provides consulting services, but also training!

• What role(s) do you play as director? Are you going to continue testing?

In fact, most of my work doesn't change much from my previous position. I joined QESTIT as a consulting engineer, so my expert hat remains on. I'll continue to work on test projects, train testers, give talks and write articles for my blog. What's extra is managing the offers, the budget and the Consulting and Training team, which will be growing in March. It's already changing!

• What are the first projects you'd like to implement or the first changes you've made?

Among the first changes to come, we will soon be unveiling the new training catalog, which I have restructured to respond more effectively to the market needs and the changes in the testing profession. And on the consulting side, our expertise offering will also be evolving.

• You're talking about updating the catalog. Can we have a few hints?

To meet our customers' needs as closely as possible, we will be offering new formats to respond to time and budget constraints, and thus be flexible. And we'll continue to adapt to current trends by regularly offering new training courses in line with market developments. We'll be telling you all about them soon!

• Marc, today we know you mainly through your blog la Taverne du Testeur (Tester's Tavern), but how did you get into testing?

As an end-of-study intern! Basically, I have a degree in telecommunications engineering with a major in transport, and it was during my time with Courriers d'Île-de-France (CIF), which belongs to Keolis, that I discovered testing. I was brought in to work on a transport-on-demand system where we had to digitize everything, and having reached the end of the project, I managed the tests. And that's how I discovered testing. I made my little test plans on Excel, then I executed them, found my anomalies, did the analyses etc.

• How did you launch your blog "La Taverne du testeur"?

In fact, I started from an observation. At the time, I was doing a lot of monitoring. And that's when I realized two things. The first was that very little was being shared about testing. And the second was that everything was in English! And in France, even if some people speak it very well, it's not our mother tongue, which makes reading more tiring and, above all, we don't always understand the nuances. That's why I wanted to make the test more accessible. So I started writing in October 2016 and then launched the blog in November 2017. And slowly these articles allowed me to make expertise and have more responsibilities.

• Since you joined QESTIT, you've run a number of training courses. Was this your first time as a trainer?

Not at all! I've been giving university courses since 2018. I've been designing workshops on testing for even longer. In particular, I presented a tutorial on understanding agile testing at the 2020 JFTL! Sharing is really important to me!

• What's your best memory as a trainer?

To be honest, it's all the exchanges with the people I train and especially the satisfaction at the end of the courses. For example, recently the feedback from Sanaa on her certification ISTQB Advanced - Agile Technical Tester made me very proud and happy for the trainees.