When learning about the product you're testing, sometimes it can be helpful to read support and developer forums. This of course assuming your product has those forums. If not, call center logs and FAQs can also do the trick. A lot of people only use information like this to see what doesn't work or where the product might have issues. And it's good for that. But you can also learn:

• Where have people become subject matter experts?


• Where is there a lot of energy for the product? (Think of this in terms of traffic for a particular forum or topic.)


• What new features (as opposed to bugs) do people ask for?


• What are people doing that's not done the way the designers expected?


• What other products are often mentioned in association with this product?


• etc...

You can learn a lot in forums, not only about the product, but about the culture of it's users.

Most people are familiar with the concept of lunch and learns. They are also sometimes referred to as brown-bag sessions. It's where a group gets together over lunch and someone presents a topic to the group. I like lunch and learns a lot, they are a cheap way to get people thinking and talking about testing concepts.

Another alternative to having one person present for the entire period is to have everyone bring something small to the table. Give each person five to fifteen minutes (depending on the size of your team) where they present a test tool, project artifact, test technique, software development idea, or new application functionality.

This is a good way to shake things up. Sometimes it's difficult to get someone to want to present on a topic for an entire lunch session. Here the commitment is much lower.

If you can, spend some time working in the production system. I recognize that this isn't possible for everyone, but if it is, don't pass on that fantastic opportunity. It's probably not something you have to do every day, but if you can work with your software in it's production envrionment (perhaps even side-by-side with a production user) you can learn a lot about how it works, it's issues, and some of the challenges the software faces.