Let’s Test 2015 – conference at a glance (from a distance)

Just to get up again and write something, I decided I’d do something I’ve done before. I really want to join the Let’s Test 2015, but it seems I cannot. This blog post is similar to those I’ve done before for it is a “Conference at a Glance” kinda thing. So this is

Let’s Test 2015 – conference at a glance (from a distance)

It seems the conference is a 3 day thing with 2 key notes, 33 sessions or various kind. Since I’m a lazy person, I shall do the following:

• Tackle both key notes
• Choose one session from each day based on my familiarity of the speaker
• Choose one session from each day based on my interest in the title
• Choose one session from each day that I pick randomly

That should bring me to a total of 11 sessions that I try and grade. If you (as a conference speaker or as anyone else) feel like I should do more, just ask me in the comments section.  I try and keep it simple.

I will use a heuristic grading system (introduced here) to determine what would be the best session for me. I will grade the stuff with Angry Birds ™ grade – 0-3 stars per area – on five areas:

• Person-to-person (How will the person and his/hers work affect/inspire me or the people I know?), 
• Session value – short time span (How much can I get out of the session tomorrow – next year?), 
• Session value – longs time span (How much can I implement o my work and teach to my colleagues, my community?), 
• Steal-ability (How much of it am I willing to borrow and further develop to make it better and, more importantly, mine?), and 
• Challenge-ability (My past knowledge on the topic and my willingness to challenge the session contents.)

Ben Simo’s “There was not a breach – There was a blog”

Based on the description on the webpage, I quickly came to think I should have done something like that. I should have started blogging about something that is affecting major public. Like the Finnish Railway renewal or something else of a similar matter. Having not thought of the idea, I shall keep my eyes open the next time something big comes up. So “Thanks Ben for giving me a great idea. Don’t mind me copying it in the future!”

As we’re talking about a keynote here, I don’t think during-session-challenging will occur. As this is kind of an experience report, I feel I can absorb huge amount of wisdom and ideas from it. If only reading through the description gave me so many ideas already, attending the keynote might blow my mind. Alas, it might not happen. So my head is safe for now. Challenge-ability might be a bit low, but if you think the challenging as in self-challenging, things I can challenge in my own thinking processes, ways of working, how I present myself to others. On those parameters I see a lot possibility to challenge.

On that note, the steal-ability just went through the roof. As for long term value, I believe that short term value comes from bringing the conversation to the coffee tables for those who are not American nor have the exposure to HealthCare.gov. The long term effects lie in the the steal-ability I mentioned before. If I can introduce some public service kind of attitude towards my own behavior, it’ll really make a difference.

P2P-level is a bit tricky. Ben has been on my radar for years. I’ve been following him and reading his blog sporadically, but I never really came to realize how much of an influence he has been. There hasn’t been too much communication between him and me save for a few tweets now and then, or some random facebook comments to each other’s posts. I must say I should have been more in his face about stuff. I shall change that and get to know him better!

As for score (should I be at the conference I would attend the keynote whatever it might be):

• Person-to-person: * (I wanted it to be ***)
• Short time value: *
• Long time value: ***
• Steal-ability: ***
• Challenge-ability: ** 
• Total: 10/15 stars

Antti Karjalainen’s “Detecting the Heartbleed Vulnerability”

The description might not provoke my vastest interest, but I was part of the Heartbleed scene in a sense. While working at F-secure I heard about it weekly during the “hip season”. I didn’t particularly have anything to do with fixing nor working with it, but I was there to spread knowledge about it.

The thing is, I am the kinda guy who shies away from über cool tools, fancy technology and protocols. I have some interest in security testing, fuzzing and analytics, but I’m more comfortable to leave those to the people who know them better. When it comes to knowing what fuzzing does, I’m comfortable in what the Wikipedia says. That is to say with no disrespect towards the fine men and women who dapple with such technologies. Hats off to all of you!

P2P is a challenge for me, since Antti is a Finn and I might have run into him at some other conference. I can’t put my finger on it, however. I have never talked with him about fuzzing nor about tools (“the shying” and other excuses). The thing is, I don’t think I could talk with him about the fancy stuff. I might have a few cool comments like “that looks cool” or “whaddaya know”. The thing is, however, that I cannot say for sure. I wish there would be a common ground on which we could build a conversation and then work from that.

The short term value might be in form of an interest into fuzzing tools. Or to some yet unknown aspect of fuzzing I could use in my testing. I feel that the topic is so tool/technology oriented, I might not get enough. It also affects the long term value for I don’t think I am capable of transferring that knowledge to my community or colleagues. I don’t say there won’t be any inspiration during the keynote – I might change my way to think testing and tools.

And since my knowledge on the technology and the tools are so diminutive, I feel the steal-ability and challenge-ability are scored low also. This isn’t to say that Antti doesn’t rock most of the listeners’ world! I believe that he is the kinda guy we need more of. Just like Ben, helping regular people with their daily lives is what counts!

• Person-to-person: *
• Short time value: *
• Long time value: *
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: *
• Total: 6/15 stars

1st day sessions:

Ilari Henrik Aegerter’s ”A Tester's Walk in the Park” (based on familiarity to speaker)

Ok. Having read the description, I’m torn in half: A session without a clear outtake or a fountain of good ideas. I don’t know quite yet. I do appreciate that the problem solving is the key to it, but are we talking about artificial, abstract problems like “where is testing going”, or concise practical problems like “how can I convince my manager to pay my trip to Sweden”? The uncertainty intrigues me in a way that I wouldn’t dare miss this session. If we can coax people like Michael Bolton or Ben Simo to join in with their problems, it can be a hoot. It could be a hoot with just me, Ilari and three guys I don’t know. The thing is “I don’t know”.

I have spent some time chatting with Ilari. He has coached me on different things, latest today (the April 1st 2015) on how to approach a testing communication problem. I know this guy and I like him. I have to admit I haven’t paid too much attention on his whereabouts the last 18 months, but I reckon that all will be changed.

The value of the sessions is a tricky one. I cannot say what value I can get for I don’t know the contents that well. On short term it might arouse good conversations and comradery between the people attending. Experience reports in the form of problem solving might be a good take-away. In longer time span, the technique itself might be a good thing to learn. The introduction of philosophical thinking and approach to software testing is actually quite intriguing. Challenging the session might be a tough one, since it feels like an experience report of a sort.

• Person-to-person: ***
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: *
• Total: 10/15 stars

John Stevenson’s ”A Journey Towards SelfLearning” (based on interest in the title)

WOW! This sure sounds cool! A sessions in a form of a game show! Count me in! I am interested in learning and how people learn. I am a continuous learner myself and I think it is time to up that interest in me once again. If this session could make my learning more structured, I would get more out of the time I have at hand.

I know next to nothing about John Stevenson, but lately I have spotted some of his tweets. He could be one to chat more deeply about learning. Him and James Bach might be a good dinner guests if I wanted to talk about learning and teaching. Since I hope to be a teacher of a sort someday, I think they could give me valuable ideas.

The value I see from this session is vast, both long and short term. While stirring me short term, it could make me think about my life on a longer run, my education and my striving towards being a teacher (though Finnish teachers are paid really poorly). Since I know something about learning, I think I might even be able to challenge John on his ideas. Though I don’t think I can introduce any particularly new and fancy to his curriculum, I might be able to increase the value of the session by making him express thing in different ways to be more easily approachable.

• Person-to-person: *
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: ***
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: **
• Total: 11/15 stars

Louise Perold ’s "Non-violent Communication" (random pick)

Well well well. NVC. I must say I had need for those skills today when I argued with a developer on why the test cases written for manual execution are a poor excuse of a test automation. I did seek some coaching from Ilari (like mentioned before) but I wasn’t able to convey my point to him in a way that would have left both him (the dev) and me in a mutually enjoyable place of mind. Having said that, Louise’s session might be the one for me.

I don’t know her at all, though I might have traded tweets in the past. I’m intrigued meeting her, though. Should I not be able to come to conference, I really want to talk to her about Mortimer J. Adler’s book “How to Speak How to Listen” which I’m reading sporadically now and then. Also what I found out from Daniel Pink’s book “To Sell is Human” might contribute to the Non-violent communication.

Values from this session might be really high in short term and long term. I might not be able to transfer them to my community in a way Louise could, but I bet the example and behavior might influence my co-workers and other people as well. My knowledge on listening and conversation skills might enhance the challenge and steal –abilities, but I would have to let the time indicate what’s beneficial and what’s not.

Non-violent starring would be as follows:

• Person-to-person: *
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: **
• Total: 10/15 stars

2nd day sessions:

Laurent Bossavit & Michael Bolton’s ” "Defense Against The Dark Arts” (based on familiarity to speakers)

Critical thinking, they say. Very well. I would expect something like this from Bolton and Bossavit. Given Laurent’s book “Leprechauns of Software Engineering” it is about time to teach us Earth dwellers them skills to tackle possibly harmful (and perhaps even rigged) information.

I know both of the speakers and I love spending time with them. Both incredibly intelligent fellas with excellent ideas and views of the world. It seems almost a loss that I might have to miss their workshop. But I shan’t weep! I find their session really intriguing so I might badger for a coaching sessions should I need to miss the event.

As for value of the session, I see high value altogether. Critical thinking skills and the practical application of it are worth gold in the testing industry. Whatever I can bring home from that session would be valuable material for my colleagues in ways to think critically.

Since I have some former knowledge on critical thinking, I feel the challenge-ability is high. Also I see that the whole session is about challenging, I feel compelled to challenge much of their material. Steal-ability is high in a sense that I want to educate my colleagues on that particular subject.

My god, I’m looking at quite a session:

• Person-to-person: ***
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: ** (it’s really 3 stars, but I cannot give the highest score yet)
• Steal-ability: ***
• Challenge-ability: ***
• Total: 14/15 stars

Huib Schoots’ “How to be an Explorer of Software” (based on interest in the title)

Mr. Schoots talks about creativity? The guy who had a conference sessions in which he mostly played music talks about creativity? I think this is the stuff everyone needs to see. The title pushed me in a quite different assumption on the contents of the session. I thought that it would be about hands on exploring something, but since the description kinda gave the impression that it’s about how we document and observe, it actually fulfills the title quite well. Interested I surely am.

Huib is a great fella and he could be one of the top 3 reasons for me to attend. He is the bloke that makes people smile on their worst day. All that and a world-class tester! Say no more! I have seen Sami “the Monkey” Söderblom talking about exploring, read (the beginning) Elisabeth Hendrickson’s book on exploring, so it would be nice to see another take on the subject. The value is hard to define, since I feel the values are more personal than community wide spreadable thoughts. To be able to more concisely test and document a software is a great skill to have.

To challenge Huib is something I think he would enjoy more than anything, so I think I must get in touch with him and get my hands on the material if I can’t attend. I might also be able to steal something that I later present something as my own, but I ain’t gonna let him know. It’s hard to put a finger on the stuff that I’d like to steal, but I bet there are loads of stuff.

The exploration of stars…

• Person-to-person: ***
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: ***
• Total: 13/15 stars

Erik Davis’ "Effective Practice Manager" (random pick)

A practice manager. That’s a new term for me. Based on the description I didn’t get what is a practice manager. Is it like a skill coach or a competence manager? Either way I feel this is an experience report with some educational features. Oh it’s an experience report with discussion. Maybe we have some cool practice manager problems we can help solve for him. Challenging might come to play while there’s a discussion in the session, but I do know so very little about the subject beforehand.

I was intrigued by the “increase their own impact at work” bullet point. That is something I want. I want autonomy and to see my own passions and skills realize in my daily work. In that sense this session might be a good catch. It would definitely have long term effects but I couldn’t get the short term value out of the description. Maybe it lies in the “whatever else comes out of the discussion”.

I don’t know Erik at all. He might be one of those blokes who have avoided my radar so far. Based on his personal description I think I he would be the guy to get to know. Maybe I’ll ask him for a beer at the evening activities. His interest in educating testers and building their skill set is something I want to do also.

• Person-to-person: **
• Short time value: *
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: *
• Total: 8/15 stars

3rd day sessions:

Jari Laakso’s ”Security Testing” (based on familiarity to speakers)

Before I have even checked the description on Jari’s session, I must say I am intrigued by this. He is my first touch on security testing on my Finnish blog years back. Unfortunately, I haven’t met the guy. I know he’s intelligent and capable tester, but I haven’t been in contact him for some time. Maybe I have to rekindle that connection to get the latest.

Ok. The description. Very well! Hands on security testing! Where do I sign? This is like one of the essential stuff that people are asked to when doing exploratory testing. SQL injections are in every text book on testing, but this guy actually shows how to do that. Nice! I can see the value skyrocket! The thing is, to be able to share this knowledge I should know even more about the subject. I might lack the interest in security testing in general, so I might not be able to teach these skills to others (I’d ask Jari to do it for me).

To challenge him might be difficult due to the fact that we are talking about technical stuff once again. Things like cross-site scripting are founded on protocols, REST-calls and whatnot, and I don’t feel I can challenge him on those. I might wanna try, tho. ;)

• Person-to-person: ***
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: *
• Steal-ability: *
• Challenge-ability: *
• Total: 9/15 stars

Alexandra Casapu’s “Examine Your Testing Skills” (based on interest in the title)

Hands on testing and discovering our testing skills. I like it. In EuroSTAR test lab I had the chance to dapple with Mr. Lyndsay’s machines and I really want to have another go! Besides I’m interested in how my skills map out. I don’t know Alexandra, but I’ve heard of her. She is one of those people I want on my “meet these people in the Testing Scene” list.

The idea of having various non-technical skills to help you with testing is interesting. I would like to know other peoples’ skills and if I can borrow their passions and learn what they know. I’d be able to steal ideas from the participants and from Alexandra. Very nice! Since I have been doing some reading on skills, I might be able to challenge her and my previous views quite easily. And skills practicing in practice is always something to take home to.

• Person-to-person: **
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: **
• Total: 10/15 stars

Scott Barber’s  ”Experiencing Product Owners”  (random pick)

Random in deed… Scott, if you’re reading this, you might want to check the description on the website. ;)

A big star on the effort, though.

Conclusion

Having surpassed the pain of starting to write again, I feel joyous on how I managed to rate 10 (Scott’s doesn’t count) sessions on five heuristic parameters. The toughest thing is ahead of me, though. I need to convince someone to pay my trip to Sweden.

Vi ses!
Peksi

Conference at a Glance, part I – My glance on the Monday tutorials

The EuroSTAR 2013 is knocking on my door. It's about time get some scribbles to my blog about it.

Quick word about what I’m doing here: I’m trying to get my thought on paper both to ease my burden of choosing the talks which to attend and also to write out my thoughts before the conference (as after the conference I might have a bit of a "information hangover" and I'm not that keen to write on stuff I didn't attend). If you think I have mistaken, misinterpreted or been outright wrong, please comment and discuss about it. I also encourage all the speakers, who I mention here, to comment on my expectations. I might be off by a mile on what the true content of the tutorial is, but please correct me if I’m on the wrong track.

I will also try a heuristic grading system to determine what would be the best session for me. I will grade the stuff with Angry Birds ™ grade – 0-3 stars per area – on five areas:

• Person-to-person (How will the person and his/hers work affect/inspire me or the people I know?), 
• Session value – short time span (How much can I get out of the session tomorrow – next year?), 
• Session value – longs time span (How much can I implement o my work and teach to my colleagues, my community?), 
• Steal-ability (How much of it am I willing to borrow and further develop to make it better and, more importantly, mine?), and 
• Challenge-ability (My past knowledge on the topic and my willingness to challenge the session contents.)

This doesn’t mean that 0 stars would mean “I hate it”, instead I’m looking for personal value against my beliefs, biases, former knowledge and worldview. I’m not saying that I won’t attend a low scored session, no, I might change my mind after talking to people at the conference and to the speakers. So I encourage you to talk to me about your session and comment what I have written about you.

James Lyndsay’s “Insights Into Exploratory Testing”

As a first thought, James Lindsay isn’t the one person that I recognize as my personal idol. He ought to be, because I read his blog once in a while, but I haven’t really gotten into his stuff. I love the blog series in which he describes different ways to manage exploratory testing! Kudos for that! However, I think I need to see him in person to suck in the charisma that he might have. After that I might regard him as my Top-3 testers. Right now, he’s a bit of a mystery man to me. And I always mix him for James Whittaker! *grin*

I’ve done exploratory testing a while now, so to answer the question: “What’s in it for me for tomorrow/this year?” I think hands on testing practices could be a remedy for my “sohpomoristic” (I have knowledge, but not enough experience implementing my knowledge to practice) way of approaching testing. The analyzing nature of the workshop could help me be a better tester on a daily basis. I was struck by a realization on few pair testing sessions with people who I really look up to. They were so much better hands-on testers that I, but they had high expectations on my skills.

Because I need to bring something back the “Ye olde Sweatshop” at Helsinki, I need to look for stuff that are good for my colleagues. The nature of the workshop could sprout some lightning workshops or sessions with my testing fellows, so I’m keen to see how to run a successful workshops with different backrounds of people. I’m also keen to see how I can use my skills to use attacking and exploitation in my everyday testing, ‘cause I work at a security software corporation. So I might be able to bring that home with me. Over all, all the things in exploratory testing might be good for my colleagues. The focus in my company should continuously veer towards exploratory approach. This workshops could give a lot – that’s for sure.

As I always tend to look on the bright side of life, I do want to be able to challenge James
and his topic. So what areas might be prone for me disagreeing? Workshops usually bring new course to the testing buffet, so I would have to taste the dish before being able to make hard decisions about it. I can’t say what would be the areas where I would disagree but I would definitely ask about how you could implement exploratory approach on a company that uses mainly test case driven approach. Let’s say there’s a company that uses only outsourced testers and they have one test analyst whose job is to design proper tests for that group of testers. How could one use exploratory approach to make their testing more efficient, creative and manageable?

What could be the next step after having this workshop? Personally I would try this on a larger scale. Oh! That’s a good question to James: “How will I be able to scale this up? How do I manage a team of these explorers?” Personally James Bach workshop could answer some of these questions. If it was somehow possible, I would attend to both workshops and then combine then seamlessly together. The next step would be to combine Lyndsay’s techniques to a broader audience and to organizations where testing is still in baby shoes (i.e. über controlled, test case driven, hierarchial, to name some).

I have one more thing to say. Mr. Lyndsay, if you happen to be at Gothenburg on Sunday evening, I would like to have a pint or two with you and talk about testing and your workshop. I might not attend it as there’s so much to choose from, but I’d like to talk to you about this particular workshop. You can give me a shout at Skype or Twitter, if you want to. ?

As for James Lyndsay’s Monday tutorial “Insights Into Exploratory Testing”, I would score like this:

• Person-to-person: **
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: **
• Total: 10/15 stars

James Bach’s “Rapid Test Management”

Personally, I know James Bach and I’ve spent some time with him face-to-face. I attended his RST class on 2012 and the Rapid Testing Intensive course. I was exhilarated to be invited to the course as a special guest and it was one of the most joyous events of my end-year of 2012. I had the opportunity to have dinner with James and to get face-to-face coaching. He’s a radiant person who some people misunderstand as angry or frightening – choosing to see behind the façade gives you the opportunity to see a multi-dimensional, empathic person who’s a power to Testing craft all around the globe. I know it sounds like I’m secretly in love with him, but trust me: he can turn your world upside down.


As for the Monday tutorial, I feel the topic is slightly too narrow for me. I did learn a lot on the RTI course last year and I think this tutorial might repeat some of the stuff that I learned that year. For short time value the tutorial might not be in the top-3. I have a lot to learn about test management, yes. I do think, however, that I can get more by starting finally to implement the stuff I learned year ago. The opportunities to do that have been scarce. I think I need more advices on how to implement the lessons to my work instead of repeating the theory myself.

What could I do to make my colleagues life better using the lessons learned from the tutorial? I have experience already from the RTI, but my situation after that session forced me to forgo the implementation of the stuff I learned. The job as a maintenance manager also did not fully support the further teaching of the methods. At the moment I am in a position where I could help my team and all Quality Engineer at F-secure to make their testing both better (using exploratory testing) and ways to manage it properly.

I am quite biased in challenging James’ tutorial because I wish I was the one with skills to pull off a tutorial like that. I have seen the traps and pitfalls at least partially already, but I think I need a different perspective to the tutorial altogether. I like to think about the scaling of the methods and also the managing of outsourced testing. How will the methods James purposes will scale across rigid and wide spread organization? How could I manage a team of tester in Kuala Lumpur according the principles? I would have to delve a bit deeper into his material. That would give me pointers on the terms and techniques he uses and possibly I could find some holes in his reasoning to sprout a fruitful conversation.

When I think about areas I’m willing to steal, the whole material could be worth stealing. The concept of managing exploratory testing using the Rapid approach gives me new tools and tricks to make our testing at F-secure more efficient and manageable.

The next step with this presentation would be almost the same as I described earlier. The approach needs to be implemented on a team to see where it might go wrong. In addition to this tutorial, one might benefit from different coaching and mentoring lessons so that the problems are found early and dealt with – almost like testing you test management.

On my Birdy scale, James’ “Rapid Test Management” would scale as follows:

• Person-to-person: ***
• Short time value: *
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: ***
• Challenge-ability: *
• Total: 10/15 stars

Paul Gerrand’s “How to Create a Test Strategy”

Paul is one of those people whose name pops up every here and there – he seems to be able to do everything. Personally I don’t know him or his work, but it seems it’s about time. The description at EuroSTAR page describes him to be attending lots of events so it’s clear why he’s a well-known person. It's hard for me to develop an understanding of Paul’s achievements on a personal level but after a few YouTube videos and some googling, I think he knows his way around testing. I may not agree with some of the stuff he speaks for, but I cannot put my finger on any specific topic. Hopefully I can get some challenging happening about hit EuroSTAR tutorial.

The first thing that comes to mind is a hint of worry – he’s using a template. I know from past experience that templates are seldom abused and used to hide incompetence and lack of interest. They look good, though. Is there something fór me in this tutorial that I could use in the near future? I wish I had taken this tutorial 5 years ago when I was struggling to tears with a testing strategy to cover a whole organization’s testing. I did do some short and efficient testing strategies on a project-by-project level, but the framing, all-encompassing strategy was a vague scribble that I loathed where other loved it – I knew I could do it better, but I didn’t have the motivation to really get into test strategies at that time (or the time to do it, I might add). As for “past” value, I would rate this really high, but now I don’t see too much value to my work. This could be one of those inspiring and challenging tutorials to attend but I don’t see short term value to me here.

How could I use test strategy workshop in my company? I’d have to say: in a punch of ways! The opportunities provided by honing the existing strategy and being able to make high and low level strategies would be helpful. The test strategy does push you towards organized testing and even give credence to ones testing if one has a strategy which to follow. On that aspect, I might even benefit from it.

I try to find something worth disagreeing or to challenge in all the tutorials, but in Paul’s case the answer is clear – templates. I loathe templates as base of documentation. They usually lose the meaning as a template and become “fill form and deliver” –documents. So I am eager to challenge template in every aspect I can. I would rather have a set of skills to enable me create my own template than a readymade one. Does Paul provide ways to create a skill set for that purpose?

I would like to be able to understand a bit more about the techniques Paul Gerrard uses to create the testing strategy. I guess that the only way is to attend the tutorial. For now I don’t see much else worth stealing than the concept of improving test strategy thinking. I’m not sure if this actually increases or decreases my willingness to join Paul’s tutorial, because I might be lacking in knowledge to actually make that decision.

Personally I would focus more on the skill set instead of the template. If he does encourage in a mindset change then that would be one of the topics I’d like to steal also. This tutorial would benefit from getting the test strategy to context and possibly the implementation to a testing project. I hope Paul has some concrete material on how the strategy implementation has worked in the past, if he has used it before.

On my Birdy scale, Paul Gerrard’s “How to Create A Test Strategy” would scale as follows:

• Person-to-person: *
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: *
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: ***
• Total: 9/15 stars

Torbjörn Ryber’s “Boosting Your Test Design Powers”

I know Tobbe just a little. I have met him face-to-face, but we haven’t actually had a long conversation at that point. What lingers in my mind from our talk is a single phrase: “High-6” I hope I get a chance to talk to Tobbe at the conference at least once for he’s a great character. He has a tremendous knowledge in test design and critical thinking, besides he’s funny as hell! So I encourage all you, go and talk with him – you won’t get bored!

The tutorial seems, at a glance, to be run-of-the-mill presentation on test design. I have Tobbe’s book on test design and it is THE book for every tester! If you don’t have it, join the tutorial – you will receive a complimentary copy of the book “Essential Software Test Design”. Just like James Lyndsay’s tutorial, this one would be a fun thing to join as I know already something about the topic and to increase skills in test design cannot be harmful. Besides, ways to design testing with tools (i.e. charts, graphs, mind maps) would help me on my daily work. I do hope that we are able to get some hands-on experience on using the design techniques.

I have already promoted Tobbe’s book here at F-secure and I lend my book to one out Quality Engineers to get some advice on her work. I would like to have all our testers to join the tutorial as a wakeup call. As this is elementary for any tester out there, I encourage every pudding tester and developer to join the tutorial. For those that have been doing test planning for long time, this could act as a reminder of the good practices in test design.

Disagreeing with Tobbe’s topics can be difficult because I believe in the most parts. I do however see an opportunity to play devil’s advocate and challenge Tobbe and his claims. I do however see more beneficial to get into a debate on a separate occasion to let him bring out the most of the tutorial to people who need the knowledge. I’m not saying I don’t need more knowledge, but I will restrict myself from spoiling the fun from others.

I did a similar class few years ago where I taught test design on our testers and developers. My point of view was however a little more exploratory testing oriented and heuristic driven. I could try to steal some pointers from Tobbe to support my own material.  I could then arrange a workshop here, at out office, to spread the joy.

The next step after this tutorial would be a walk to the test lab and to use these skills in practice. In that sense the schedule of this tutorial is perfect. Later in the conference people could try their newly learned or reminded skills to test stuff. I think Tobbe would appreciate the feedback that practical use of those skills could bring. For example, what areas require more attention in the future?

On my Birdy scale, Torbjörn Ryber’s “Boosting Your Test Design Powers” would scale as follows:

• Person-to-person: **
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: **
• Total: 10/15 stars

Matt Barcomb and Jim Holmes’ “Becoming A Testing Craftsman”

To be honest, I don’t remember any significant details about either of these guys. I seems that matt is a busy conference speaker (according to his blog), but I did not yet find the tone in which would be in harmony with my own thoughts about testing. I do see that he’s a coach so I could try to approach him via Skype and ask for some coaching and to chat about the conference topic. Jim also seems to be quite a veteran in conferences. I scrolled through his blog and the slides that he shares are excellent! I love the way to make things simple and bite-size. If the duo is anything like what I learned from them, I would definitely want to meet with them and talk about coaching, motivation, innovation and testing topics.

On short term, this tutorial is like candy to me. Little programming excersises? Sign me in! Building your tools? I’m there! I also see that these guys focus on skills to get things done – automation is the extension of human mind, not the only solution to testing. This is by far the most fitting tutorial for the first day for me and my development, short and medium term. I am getting into trouble at my work by some tedious manual repetition that could be made easier with a shell script or a python script. I hope these guys can brrring it!

When I think about how to educate and help my fellow testers, I’m not actually sure if I could bring enough to the table. I believe, though, that the attitude towards being a craftsman instead of rank-and-file- employee could be beneficial to both them individually and to the company as a whole.

I would like to learn more programming and tool building before I could confidently teach how to build them. There’s a hell of a group here who can make tools, apps, what-do-you-need to make testing easier. I’m willing to see the applications of tool building and the test data creation/management and possibly try to teach that to my fellows.

This is an interesting topic, because I have little experience in actually building something functional for others (for myself a few scratch-built scripts, but nothing serious). If I was to choose what I would like to hear, I would like to hear more about the attitude towards craftsmanship and how we can spread the word around. I believe that craftsmen aren’t supposed to hold the secrets to themselves but to share their wisdom, like Matt and Jim.

I’d like to see these teachings to be implemented on some practical hands-on session, test-lab or something, so we can really get our craft to shine. I would also promote testing to other than testers – I think managers, documenters and all software project stakeholders could benefit from craftsmanship attitude.

On my Birdy scale, Matt Barcomb and Jim Holmes’ “Becoming A Testing Craftsman” would scale as follows:

• Person-to-person: *
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: *
• Challenge-ability: *
• Total: 8/15 stars

Afterword

I’m still teetering on which tutorial to join, but I will try my best to decide. I know I need to make decisions fast so I can book my seat before they run out. I will let you know which one I chose after I book the tutorial. As for now, I will keep on writing about the conference. I’ll try to cover every conference day at least on some level, but I do not guarantee anything.

As you might know I am speaking at EuroSTAR on a Wednesday. I would like to hear what you might get from that session if you are to attend it. I will also hold a preliminary practice talk here in Helsinki, so if you’re interested to join, give me a tweet. ?