What does a test report really tell you?

What

Talk

Topics

#heuristics

Evolving Our Testing: Assessing Quality Throughout The SDLC

Description

Experiences and lessons learned from working with developing software since 1999 resulted in the “Would Heu-risk it?” concept. It all started with a workshop with Lisa Crispin but has since evolved into a card deck, blog posts, articles and a book draft in 2020.

“Would Heu-risk it?” is centered around risk analysis, heuristics, patterns/anti-patterns that affect us in designing, building, testing and running software. They are grouped into three distinct categories: Traps I see testers fall into, Tools I see testers use as super-powers and weapons testers could use to focus their work (also known as common weak-spots in building software).

This talk will be a compilation of my main learnings from 20+ years of building software, seeing the complexity from a developer, a tester, a test lead and a manager perspective.

We will use the 30 cards as a focal point to try and focus on what I believe are my most important learnings.

Learning Outcomes

Testing heuristics as super-powers
The importance of bug advocacy
Up-skilling yourself
Involving yourself in the entire process to shift left, right, up and down
Different perspectives to software quality

Speaker

Lena Nyström

Engineering manager, Author and Public Speaker

Lena has been building software since 1999. After a decade of coding they found their heart in testing and that is close to their heart even today when they focus on building organisations and growing people rather than the software itself. Continuous improvement is a core value and they believe we should all strive to keep up to date and challenge ourselves, our assumptions and the way things are done. Lena is the author and creator of "Would Heu-risk it?" (card deck and book), avid blogger, speaker and workshop facilitator. On top of that, Lena combines skills learned through the years in their day job as Engineering Manager. Lena lives outside of Stockholm, Sweden with teenage kids, partner and way too much games, sewing machines and books.

What

Talk

Topics

#models

What is Quality Coaching, Why Should Testers Care And What Difference Does It Make For Our Teams?

Description

Imagine a world where testing was properly understood and invited throughout the full lifecycle of building software. A world where quality was not just perceived as “correctness” based on the software meeting the requirements. Imagine the state of the world if this was the case, with people relying more on complex software every day.

People expect high quality software, with quality being an accumulation of the goodness of the experience in using the software, the correctness in its operability, and the value they obtain from the software. In order to evolve the craft of testing to assess quality in line with this, we need to break out of the mindset that testing only relates to assessing the software.

In this talk, I will explain my view on testing and it’s purpose of assessing quality, in line with my views of quality being beyond the correctness of the software. Additionally, I will illustrate the value in expanding testing activities throughout the entire software development life cycle:

That testing ideas can prevent wasteful development and uncover risks.
That testing designs and requirement artefacts can discover ambiguities and risks and prevent assumptions and waste.
That testing architecture and code design can be the fastest possible feedback loop (much faster than test automation) on the quality of the code.
That much of the output of all of the above testing can dramatically improve the quality of the testing we do when we test the software (improving both scripted and exploratory testing), from us using the risks we discover to better structure our testing.

There will be examples, there will be models, and there will be stories which I hope to excite and inspire you to reflect on and evolve your own testing towards that imagined world of really showing the true value of testing from assessing quality throughout the entire development lifecycle.

Learning Outcomes

Investigate ideas, requirement artefacts, designs, and processes as part of the SDLC
Discuss the testing feedback loops across each activity
Understand what activities are involved within an SDLC

Speaker

Dan Ashby

Director of Quality Services

Proud father. Quality and Testing enthusiast, teacher, coach, mentor and servant leader. Director of Quality Services @ Ada Health. I blog at: danashby.co.uk and I'm a co-founder of the MoT Essentials (formerly the Software Testing Clinic). I love being involved in the testing community (and other communities)!

Using Empathy To Guide An Exploratory Accessibility Testing Session

What

Talk

Topics

Description

This is just a fancy name for “Testers”, right?

Maybe, maybe not. Let’s talk about it and find out!

We’ve been leading, mentoring and coaching quality teams for over a decade.

They’ve even been known to do that work together over the years! During that time, they’ve seen attitudes to testing change and evolve.

One recent change is the increasing amount of “Quality Coach” and “Quality Engineer” roles appearing in companies.

Is this a fancy name for the same kind of “Tester” roles that exist already, or is there something significantly different between them?

We believe there are and will highlight the differences during the conference!

Learning Outcomes

Define Quality Coaching and Quality Engineering
Compare the difference between quality coaching and quality engineering roles versus traditional testing roles
Contrast how their current approach differs from a quality coaching and quality engineering approach
Choose from more options to deal with quality and testing challenges that crop up in their work

Speakers

Stuart Day

Head of Quality - Dunelm

Software delivery professional with over 23 years of experience as an advocate of delivering high-quality value to customers at speed. I am a Quality Coach, Cert. Agile Coach and international speaker with a wealth of experience in both Agile, Digital and Business Agility transformation. I have a real passion for people and their success. Focusing on enabling and supporting their personal development and their career journeys. Currently, I am the Head of Quality at Dunelm Soft Furnishings, building a Culture of Quality and enabling continuous quality throughout the organisation’s technology landscape

Vernon Richards

Quality Coach / Senior Quality Engineer

I’m a Quality Coach & Tester that helps orgs, teams & individuals understand the relationship between quality & testing to help them build better products & deliver more effective services. I’ve been testing since 2002 starting with video games on PS2, Xbox & PC. It may not sound like a real job but it’s the truth! By day I’m a Senior Quality Engineer at a health tech night I run Abode of Quality. Here is one of my core values: “The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude (& how you’re thinking) about the problem.” - Captain Jack Sparrow (the part in brackets was my addition though!) I believe that quality & testing problems are actually people problems in disguise! Often the cause of these problems is misaligned goals, different perspectives, low empathy for colleagues, and the list goes on. Using my coaching skills in the quality & testing space, I believe the most effective way to serve the business, is to help teams & individuals gain new perspectives about themselves & their teammates.

What

Talk

Topics

Growing A Culture of Quality (and Making Testing Fun)

Description

I do not have any accessibility needs when it comes to using computers. However, for about 2 years, I was at one point reliant on a wheelchair or crutches to travel. This helped me develop an appreciation of how the smallest thing could impact someones quality of life.

Accessibility testing is often an afterthought. This is not surprising as, unless someone has first hand experience of a disability, they will not be able to fully understand what design issues could limit someones ability to use a website.

Before accessibility testing, we should first at least try to understand the various accessibility needs a user might have. We should then attempt to use the application the way a user might use it, such as using screen readers or checking the contract settings on a website. Most of the tools a user might use are freely available in chrome extensions.

In this session, I will demonstrate the various tools available that can be used to support accessibility testing. As well as this, we will also analyse the tools that a user might use to access a website. Using these tools, we will carry out a live exploratory accessibility testing session so that we can understand the challenges a user might face and use this to identify accessibility issues.

Learning Outcomes

Develop an understanding of the various challenges people with accessibility needs face when attempting to use a website
Learn about the different tools that might be used by someone with accessibility needs so they can access a website
Run an exploratory testing session on a website using accessibility tools and tools that might be used by users to identify potential accessibility issues that might be preventing someone from using a website

Speaker

Louise Gibbs

Senior Automation Tester

Louise is a Senior Automation Tester at PebblePad. Her main job is to review and maintain the automated tests that are run overnight, and investigate the causes of any failures. She has also worked for companies in the e-commerce, scientific research and automotive industries, and runs a personal blog at louisegibbstest.wordpress.com, where she talks about her experiences as a software tester. She enjoys improving her testing skills and her main method for achieving this is by speaking to other Testers and discussing ideas.

Simon Prior

What

Talk

Topics

Description

Since joining an airline during a pandemic, myself and the QA teams have been on a journey.

From only being considered valuable to involved once development has been completed and PMs telling us they can't afford us to be involved earlier to now being seen as advocates of Quality and being at the table for discussions about any technical changes.

The transformation has been tough, but we are now reaping the rewards for all our hard work.

This talk will talk through how we embraced the culture shift during the pandemic and used it as a vehicle to embrace a more collaborative way of working, bringing people together to discuss Quality and Testing and show ways to improve how we provide feedback on the products through more inventive ways of testing, changing the way we test for the better.

I'll show how I used my passion for Quality and my external network to engage the QA teams across the company, empower and nurture the existing teams as well as bring new people in to disrupt the status quo and move us forward. Ultimately enabling me to advocate for the teams and raise the awareness of Testing/Quality across the organisation and enabling us to transform the way we work.

Did I mention our Test Parties? Find out more in the talk.

Learning Outcomes

Raise the awareness of the testing teams and the work you do
Change the culture by building allies across the business who advocate for you
Make the day to day work more enjoyable with collaboration and a sense of fun

Speaker

Simon Prior

Head of QA @ easyJet

Simon is heading up the QA teams at EasyJet. In his career he has worked in various roles across IT from C++ developer, Scrum Master, Build Engineer before finally finding his passion in Testing. He's worked in various domains from CyberSecurity, Gaming/Gambling and now the Airline industry. He has a keen interest in finding ways to improve the testing process and ensuring products are released with the highest possible quality. He also loves coaching/mentoring his team to be the best they can, enabling them to use all possible tools and skills to get their job done to the best of their ability Simon is a well known speaker and meetup organiser in the Software Testing world, a Podcast co-host (check out TestingPeers.com) and also a keen advocate for companies to consider Neurodiversity as part of their inclusion programmes. Simon was recently awarded Testing Manager of the Year at the European Software Testing Awards, with a mention to his great people management and contributions to the wider testing community.

The Power of Habit

What

Talk

Topics

#learn

The Hidden Logic of Thinking for Testers

Description

How simple habits can develop, drive and support a learning culture for you and your team.

Join Alex Reynolds as he brings to life the teachings of Charles Dhugg and James Clear, and how he used them to create his own learning Habit.

At the session, you will discover why we are indeed 'creatures of habit' and how you can use this knowledge to introduce a learning habit for yourself and your team.

Learning Outcomes

Learn how habits are formed and why we favour habits (yes even the bad ones) over anything else
Develop a greater understanding of your own habits and how to use this to create new ones
The problems with setting goals and aiming too big
How to apply the laws of Habit formation to create and maintain a learning habit

Speaker

Alex Reynolds

Quality Engineering Community Lead at Lloyds Bank

Quality Engineer in Lloyds banking group, who started off life as a software engineer working on Radar Systems and made the logical move into the finance industry! Alex leads the QE Community in Lloyds bank with over 600 members and an active community of testers and quality engineers. Alex has a love of learning and helping people to learn and develop their own careers. He also has a keen interest in Mindfulness and Meditation and has been practicing for over 25 years. He was one of the founding members of the Mindfulness and Meditation Community in LBG 3 years ago which now boasts over 2500 members.

What

Talk

Topics

Don’t Be a Fool With a Tool ‒ Fundamental Knowledge for Proper Test Automation

Description

Ability to think deeper is one of the most valuable skills that every tester needs, and yet it is rarely taught in universities and even in workplaces. In today's world, problems are becoming more complex with the addition of new technologies, tools and approaches. To deal with these challenges and remain competitive we should start to think about thinking and build a framework that helps us to face any testing challenges thoughtfully and require a new toolset or framework for thinking. At its core, it must be a framework that helps with problem-solving & provides a structure for our solutioning process. For this, learning and understanding how to spot gaps in our thinking process play a significant role.

As explained by Daniel Kahneman in the book "Thinking, Fast and Slow", our brains have two thinking systems, 'System 1' which is faster and intuitive and the slower and contemplative 'System 2'. The interaction of the two systems often helps us to get things right or fail at times. Understanding the way we use these systems to think helps us in better decision making and problem-solving. Connecting all the dots around thinking, I have figured out some hidden logic that we still need to explore and analyse. This talk will get you thinking about how you naturally think and unleash its full potential to be a skilled tester by leveraging those hidden logic & approaches.

Learning Outcomes

Explains the importance/role of different thinking types in testers
Improve your ability to think, analyse and interpret using those thinking types
Guides how to generate a unique art of thinking(Incorporate thinking with metacognitive skills) for testers
Learn to spot "gaps" in the thinking process
Role of design thinking & Empathic thinking in the craft of testing

Speaker

Nithin SS

Head of QA

Nithin is the founder of Synapse QA, a community space of test automation professionals and software quality advocates. He has nearly a decade of experience in the IT field with a focus on test automation delivery of web and mobile-based applications. Nithin actively runs test automation workshops, helps other professionals share their thoughts and knowledge in the Synapse QA community, and works as Engineering Manager, QA at Fave.

What

Talk

Topics

#programming

The Power of Storytelling as a Tester

Description

How is your automation journey going? Are you a beginner or have you already started your journey, but are still struggling? In both cases, this talk is for you! I will share my own experiences and struggles, and you’ll learn how to bring your test automation to the next level.

Many people get into test automation without having a profound background in programming or without receiving any proper training. They have some idea about what tool to use, gathered some basic knowledge, and managed to create some automated tests with it.
At a certain point, you suspect that something is not quite right with your automation. Your code feels messy and maintaining it is hell, costs a lot of time and frustrates you.

This talk has you covered. You’ll learn about:

How to create a proper strategy for your test automation;
How to use object-oriented programming principles in your test automation;
How to recognize and eliminate code smells

I will present practical solutions to problems I see a lot of people are facing too. I encountered them too. You will walk away with practical advice you can use in your daily work. This will reduce the stress and pain of working, by significantly improving the quality of your automated tests and reducing maintenance efforts.

Note: The talk is not meant to cover all topics in-depth, but to make the audience aware that certain principles and concepts exist. Those will be presented & explained in what context they are useful, so the audience has a starting point for further studies.

Disclaimer: This talk is not about any specific tool or framework. The principles described are generic, and I've seen them work in different contexts.

Learning Outcomes

Learn fundamental principles and strategies that can improve your test automation projects
Get guidance on where to start improving your test automation code and receive pointers for further studies to continue your test automation journey with less trouble
Learn about ways to make test automation code less messy and easier to maintain

Speaker

Christian Baumann

Principal Software Tester

Christian is a principal software tester with 15+ years of experience in the field. He has successfully held different roles in the context of testing: Test Automation Engineer, Agile Tester, Test Team Lead, Test Project Manager and Exploratory/ Functional/ Manual Tester. During his career he worked with various test (automation) tools such as Cucumber, Selenium, Watir and others using programming languages like Java, Ruby and C#, but also applied certain development/ testing methodologies such as Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) and Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD). Furthermore he successfully applied different manual testing techniques, such as Agile Testing, Rapid Software Testing (RST), Black Box Software Testing (BBST), Exploratory Testing (ET) and Session Based Test Management (SBTM) or ISTQB. Christian is strongly driven by his context, always searching for the best fitting solution for a given situation. He´s able to understand business´ and people´s problems, and is always eager to learn and improve himself, while staying curios, open minded and willing to share his knowledge.

What

Talk

Topics

#influence

Let’s Go Threat Modelling

Description

As a tester, we talk to a lot of people, we tell people a lot of things, but they don't always listen.

This talk will look at how powerful stories can be when trying to get our point across, whether that be raising bugs, talking about challenges we're facing or even talking about the testing that we're doing. It will call on times when I've done this well, and when I've done this not so well and the effects of that.

It will talk about how to structure stories, how to get people to buy into the story, how to tell a story short and succinct (think an elevator pitch) and how non-verbal communication can help amplify the story's reach and influence.

Learning Outcomes

An understanding of story fundamentals - How telling good stories can help you influence people and get what you want
How to apply that to testing and everyday life - In terms of telling people about bugs, or about challenges you may be facing to help them understand
How to make sure you get the important points across in the story - We've all been there when someone tells a story that goes on, and on, and on, and on... anyway, you get the point, we'll look at how to break down a story to get the key points across in the story
How to amplify your story telling through your non verbal communication - When telling a story, only so much is said through what is actually said, you can achieve so much more from a story when you factor in other aspects of communication

Speaker

Gareth Waterhouse

Principal Test Engineer

Seasoned Tester with over a decade of experience, father of two and Sunderland fan (please don't hold that against me). Always looking at ways to develop others. Regularly blog about things that I think may be of interest.

What

Talk

Topics

Our Famous 99-Second Talks - Day 1

Description

I will share how I introduced threat modelling to my team and how it is being used within my company.

Within the talk people will hear the basic theory of threat modelling and also look at how we ran sessions, handle the vulnerabilities found and how I convinced people to try it - using my Threat Agents card game.

Finally, I will make the case that not only is threat modelling for everyone on your team but as testers, we can be ideal people to get involved.

Learning Outcomes

A basic understanding of threat modelling
An idea of what threat modelling might be like "in real life"
The knowledge that it is something they can do and not just for security experts

Speaker

Richard Adams

Senior Quality Engineer

After my first full time job as a games tester, I've had a varied career from Gameplay Systems Designer to Software Engineer for security systems with a couple of roles in between. I've since returned to testing as I have a huge passion for testing and just love finding bugs! As well as being a Senior Test Engineer, I am also a Cyber Champion within my organisation. This means that I help drive good security practices and in particular I love getting the team involved in threat modelling. I also get free training on all things security! Out of work I love gaming and carrying on my interest in threat modelling, I have also created a card game called Threat Agents.

99 Second Talks

What

99 Second Talks

Topics

User Driven Test Reports, Based on Feedback and Feelings

Description

It's not a TestBash without 99-Second Talks!

The 99-Second Talks is the attendee's stage, an opportunity for you to come on stage and talk for, that's right, 99-Seconds.

You can talk about anything, a testing topic you want to share, a personal experience, an idea sparked by all the amazing talks you've just listened to... the stage is yours, for 99-Seconds!

Our amazing host Callum Akehurst-Ryan, will introduce you on stage and start the clock. As soon as the time's up, a noise will be heard and that's it: time's up!

What

Talk

Topics

Next Level API Automation

#test-reporting

Description

I'm going to talk about what changes we made to our test reports to change the perspective. During my 7 year career working for startups, charities and fashion retailers, I've seen many different styles of test reports!

Some benefits we gained from this, we got feedback earlier by inviting users to our sprint demos and also improved rollout of new features by including operations data.

By the end of my presentation, you will know how to add user based metrics such as user feedback comments to your test reports. I’ll walk through the process we used to come up with the user based metrics to include in our test reports.

Let me give you an example of what I mean.

What does a test report really tell you?

What do you mean the RAG status is amber?!

The most recent example is from a charity. I naively thought people looked beyond the red, amber, and green status, turns out if it wasn’t red the report wasn’t read by key decision makers.

I soon realised there was no clear understanding of what the risk was related to test cases executed and bugs found during development. It’s not the responsibility of the stakeholders to understand the intricacies of your test plan and testing process.

Often qualitative metrics are more powerful in relation to risk and feelings of confidence.

How to create user driven reports

User data makes test reports more relatable for the readers. In my current role at a startup, I ran a workshop to understand from my testers what they think we should report on, this is what they came up with.

The user experience team performs user testing on designs, so we include their feedback in our test reports. The users worked on the requirements, so we included their feedback in our test reports.

Bugs that weren’t going to be fixed before release became modifications to requirements by adopting a zero bug policy. When the code gets deployed to production, the test report isn’t important anymore. So we put the production issues in our test report.

All these changes meant the report was user centred and risk could be interpreted by the feedback and feeling of the users.

Involve everyone who holds information to the user
Use production data such as live issues, support requests, and user feedback surveys to outline how your bug fix impacts the users
Remove testing related terms from your reports such as bugs and test cases.

Are you going to add more user related data to your test report?

Learning Outcomes

Why stakeholders don't understand the risks of traditional test reports
Where you can get user data from for your reports
How you can remove bugs from reports with zero bug policy

Speaker

Lewis Prescott

QA Lead

I'm an experienced QA Lead at Cera Care (one of Europe’s fastest-growing companies), having worked across different industries including Healthcare, Non-profit, Retail and PropTech. I am also a course author on Test Automation University & Udemy, sharing my knowledge is a passion of mine.

What

Talk

Topics

Description

APIs are an essential part of an increasingly large number of applications that we use daily. APIs enable applications to exchange data and functionality easily and securely. As testers, we want to ensure that our APIs do not break and provide the expected functionality. We can automate our APIs to speed up the rate at which our checks are done. When automating APIs having tests to ensure that your API returns the correct message and status is great, however, do you test for and automate the negative and edge cases for your APIs? In this talk, I will show you how to get started with automating APIs, a checklist of things needed to automate an API, automate negative tests for your API as well as check that your APIs handle errors appropriately, follow the specified schema, and don't reveal data that it shouldn’t or has certain security gaps. I will also share how to decide which tests you should be automating for your API and how to automate workflows for an API.

API automation executes faster than UI automated tests and I have found it to be more straightforward to write. Join me to start creating these quick automated tests using Supertest (a JavaScript API Testing Framework) for the boundaries of your API. The tips that I will share can be applied to any framework that you use to automate APIs.

Learning Outcomes

Understand APIs
Negative scenarios to automate for APIs
Understanding and using schemas to validate your APIs
Testing APIs in Postman
Automate APIs in javascript
API workflows
API Testing Checklist

Speaker

Julia Pottinger

Head of Training and Development at QualityWorks

Julia Pottinger is the Head of Training and Development at QualityWorks with expertise in manual, automated and API testing and training which has helped companies enhance the quality of their software through improved test coverage, faster time to market, increased process efficiency and optimized use of resources.

Julia is passionate about sharing her knowledge and experience and contributes to the testing community through writing articles, and delivering testing content on Test Automation University as well as her Youtube Channel and blog. She also conducts testing bootcamps for persons interested in entering the field of QA.

Links

The Power of Example Mapping!

What

Talk

Topics

Description

Who writes the acceptance criteria for your stories- Product owners, Business analysts or the entire team? If the Given-When-Then scenarios are already prewritten and presented to the team, their thought process is curtailed. It might also lead to preconceived ideas and notions. This also tips the responsibility towards a single stakeholder which can prove to be dangerous. What is the alternative then?

Discover the Power of Example Mapping!

Example Mapping is a great way to motivate the team to adopt Behaviour Driven Development. The whole practice is about encouraging communication and collaboration between the various stakeholders. It is of prime importance in an agile setup that the Product, Dev and Tester share the same understanding and have equal partnership in the stories/features delivered. Example mapping facilitates these conversations and also goes hand in hand with the shift left approach. In a nutshell, it is a great team activity which results in substantial gains and increases in productivity.

We will find out what Example Mapping is, how to do it and also practise it in an interactive workshop.

Learning Outcomes

Understand the importance of Example Mapping and how the participants can use it in their teams
Tips on convincing the entire team to try this approach
Practical implementation with use cases for all kinds of stories whether it is a user story or a non-user story
What more could be done with this mapping approach
Limitations of Example Mapping and when not to use it

Speaker

Kiruthika Ganesan

Head of Quality Assurance

I am someone who is passionate about testing and approaches testing with a holistic view. I have over 17 years of experience in the IT industry, working as a tester, developer and a trainer. I believe in the power of people and collaborating to build a safe environment where the teams can thrive and work on creating great software. I enjoy teaching and getting involved in community activities like speaking at conferences, delivering workshops. I am one of the tutors in the Coders Guild and a core member of Synapse QA-a testing community. Also, a keen advocate of Women in Tech initiatives and a global ambassador! When I am not working, I love spending time with my kids and enjoy writing short stories.

Performance Testing 101

What

Talk

Topics

Throw Out the QA Strategy Documents and Build a Ways of Working

Description

Have you ever heard of the term Performance Testing?

Do you get confused as to what the differences are among load testing, stress testing and soak testing?

Have you ever been asked to perform client side and server side performance testing but you’re unsure how to get started?

If you’ve answered yes to these questions then this talk is for you! As part of this talk, I will cover the following things:

Why do we need to test for performance?
The difference between client side and server side performance testing.
An overview of what metrics to consider when doing client side performance testing.
An overview of what metrics to consider when doing server side performance testing.
A quick glimpse on how to measure the performance of your favourite website using Google Lighthouse for client side performance and k6 for server side performance.

After this talk, you should be equipped with the knowledge and tools to use to get started with performance testing.

Learning Outcomes

Understand the difference between client side and server side performance testing
Know the different metrics when it comes to performance testing
A quick overview on how to run performance test and analyse results from a Google Lighthouse report
A quick overview on how to use k6 Learn the technical skills to use k6 for back end performance testing

Speaker

Marie Cruz

Developer Advocate

Marie Cruz is currently a Developer Advocate at k6.io and Grafana Labs. She is a tech blogger at testingwithmarie.com and an accessibility advocate. She is also an online course instructor at Ministry of Testing and Test Automation University.

What

Talk

Topics

Observability Meets a Flaky Test

Description

Creating strategies and unifying an agile QA team can be difficult. Why not create a visual strategy? Or even better, a visual Ways of Working!

In this session, we will talk about the journey my team went on in transforming our agile processes, discovering our Ways of Working and figuring out how to stray away from long strategy documents that no one likes reading and focus on visual strategies that everyone owns.

Learning Outcomes

Understand what a Ways of Working is about
A whole team approach to QA strategies
How to create visual strategies instead of documentation

Speaker

Robbie Falck

QA Lead

South African / British QA Lead with over 10 years experience in QA and software development across multiple industries. Conference speaker, blog writer and bug smasher! Currently a QA Lead at Moneybox, in London.

João Proença

What

Talk

Topics

#observability

Leading a Test Automation Strategy

Description

“Observability”. A word that is quite popular in tech these days, but not always easy to understand what it means in the real world, right? “How is it not monitoring?”

I mean, we’re told that it’s about “unknown unknowns” and that you should be able to answer new questions about a system without having to ship any code. We’re also told that there are three pillars for observability, “logs, metrics and traces”, and that it’s much more than just monitoring. But how does that translate to real-life scenarios in a software tester’s world?

Well, one day my team was struggling with a flaky test in our CI/CD pipeline. The way we were able to unravel the mystery surrounding that test illustrates a few key observability concepts on the availability of data and the friction in accessing it.

In this talk I will tell you the story about that painful flaky test and how it showed us how (the lack of) observability could already be present in our daily lives, without us even realizing it! By the end of this tale, even if you know nothing about observability beforehand, you will understand a bit more. You’ll know some questions you should start asking about your own tests, and have some ideas that will let you find the answers quickly!

Learning Outcomes

Learn what “unknown unknowns” actually look like in real life and how they relate to observability
Find out how observability can be your greatest ally when dealing with flaky tests
Acknowledge that you may have a lot of useful information scattered throughout your systems
Understand the importance of having data stored in one place and multiple views of that data

Speaker

João Proença

Quality Engineer

João Proença comes from Lisbon, Portugal, and is a Quality Engineer at Ada Health. He has assumed various roles throughout his career in the past 16 years, including quality assurance, development, customer support and marketing. Finding innovative solutions for difficult problems is what drives him the most, so he is always eager to talk about how professionals are overcoming testing challenges around the world. Outside of IT, João is passionate about songwriting, movies and football. You’ll see him tweet about all of these topics using the @jrosaproenca handle.

What

Talk

Topics

Quality Coaching: Level 1

Description

Where to start and where to stop with test automation?

I will share in my talk practical steps for how to start defining a test automation strategy. By the end of the session, we should be defining a strategy together. The talk is suitable for both individual contributors and managers.

Learning Outcomes

Practical steps for setting up a test automation strategy
Technique for setting up a vision and a mission for test automation
The role of Test Automation Analytics in the success of your strategy

Speaker

Dana Aonofriesei

Director of Engineering

I started my career in Software Development 9 years ago and during this time I tried different roles and assignments, as Quality Assurance Engineer, Software Analyst, Scrum Master, Head of Product Quality, Engineering Manager in areas like banking, eprocurement, trust economy. I love working with teams, driving teams and individuals towards results and solving problems. A few keywords that describe me: sports, croissants, cheese, good coffee, competitive, positive.

Clare Norman

What

Talk

Topics

Pointless - TestBash UK Version

Description

Testing is a superpower don't keep it all to yourself!

I am a beginner quality coach and a self-confessed testing nerd. I started experimenting with quality coaching after reading the modern testing principles. I really love the ultimate goal of them which is to accelerate the team. In particular, they talk about expanding testing capabilities across your team as well as leading a quality culture. I had no previous knowledge and zero experience in this area but thought what's the worst that could happen?!

Being the only tester in the department I really liked the idea of getting the developers around me to help out with testing. Not only that but as I freed up time by stepping away from physically testing every single feature, I was able to become more of an advocate and evangelist of testing. I stopped physically testing and started talking about testing. To anyone who would listen!

So if you're asking how can I make the transition to quality coach? I'll share how little nudges towards a long term goal have worked well for me. Some lessons that I've learned so far include:

Don't wait for permission! Your job title doesn't need to say quality coach.
Find your allies. Locate the people who understand the need for testers.
Sell the benefits of this approach to your developers.
Make your testing work visible.

If like me, you're looking to experiment with coaching I'll talk about what techniques have worked in my team such as:

Talking about testing early. Give developers exposure to thinking about quality and testing before they write a line of code.
Asking developers about their testing. Continue the testing conversation during development!
Sharing testing knowledge with your developers. Pair testing has benefits for both parties.

I learned that knowledge isn't something you lose the more you share it. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I believe anyone can try this out and you'll discover testing nerds in your team that you didn't know existed!

Anyone can experiment with quality coaching as long as you have the right attitude. I hope to demonstrate that quality coaching isn't an area to be intimidated by and if you're truly passionate about helping your team improve it isn't as hard as you might think.

Learning Outcomes

You will see my story of how I introduced the idea of quality coaching in my team as a complete novice
Learn about some simple experiments towards coaching that you can start tomorrow
How to talk about testing early and engage developers in your mission
How to make your testing visible to increase knowledge sharing

Speaker

Clare Norman

Quality Assurance Analyst

I am a colourful tester based in beautiful North Wales. I fell into testing around 5 years ago and I've never looked back. I love the blend of logic and creativity required. I love to make sketchnotes of the talks I listen to within the testing community as a way of bringing some colour into testing. I love the human aspect of testing. In particular I love reading about psychology and working to understand how people use software. I'm currently the sole tester in my company and experimenting with some aspects of quality coaching has allowed me to have a bigger impact on quality than testing alone.

Game

What

Game

Topics

Our Famous 99-Second Talks - Day 2

Description

Ever wanted to know how testers and QA think that:

Excel is the most popular testing tool
Mind maps are the most popular approach to note-taking
Monitoring is just starting at a monitor until something breaks

Then our TestBash Pointless special is the game for you. Contestants will answer software testing-based questions. If their answer is the same answer as members of the testing community gave for the question, then they score a point for each matching answer. But the more points you get, the less prizes because the lowest score wins!

So come join our Pointless hosts Gwen Diagram & Mark Winteringham and find out if testing can truly be Pointless!

99 Second Talks

What

99 Second Talks

Topics

Description

It's not a TestBash without 99-Second Talks!

The 99-Second Talks is the attendee's stage, an opportunity for you to come on stage and talk for, that's right, 99-Seconds.

You can talk about anything, a testing topic you want to share, a personal experience, an idea sparked by all the amazing talks you've just listened to... the stage is yours, for 99-Seconds!

Our amazing host Leigh Rathbone, will introduce you on stage and start the clock. As soon as the time's up, a noise will be heard and that's it: time's up!

Post-TestBash Meetup

Mario Scriminaci

Meetup

What

Meetup

Topics

Workshop on The Power of Storytelling as a Tester

Description

This meetup is open to everyone, not just TestBash attendees.

Join us on the 23rd of September, from 6:00 PM for our post-TestBash UK Meetup, in the Galleries at The Lowry Theatre in Salford Quays, Manchester.

This post-TestBash Meetup is kindly sponsored by our TestBash UK Purple Belt Sponsor MOSTLY.AI!
They've also added some yummy canapés and both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks for you all!

More details on everything that is happening at his meetup will be added soon.
Tickets are limited to 200, so register now via the Meetup.com site and please, please, if you can't attend, make sure you cancel your registration to give it to someone else!

Agenda:
6:00 pm - Arrival (drinks and canapés)
6:30 pm - Talk: Guided Meditation on Test Data Generation by Mario Scriminaci, CPO at MOSTLY.AI

Are you suffering from data frustrations? Do you want to start a new life free from bad data habits. Are you ready to learn new, healthy coping strategies? Join Mario, a seasoned Synthetic Data Therapist for a journey into your mind where you will encounter life-changing insights and learn about tools that will help you along the way.
MOSTLY.AI pioneered the creation of AI-generated synthetic data. Watch the platform in action to see how it speeds up test data generation through automation, and better supports agile processes.

6:45 pm - Networking
8:00 pm - Finish

**IMPORTANT**:
If you want to attend TestBash UK on the 22nd and 23rd of September, you will need to purchase a ticket here.
Registering for the Meetup only will not give you access to the conference.

Speaker

Mario Scriminaci

Chief Product Officer

Mario joined MOSTLY AI in 2021 and owns responsibility for the company's products. Before joining MOSTLY AI, he worked for more than ten years at ContentWise, where his last position was VP of Product Management and Research. He started his career as a software engineer and data scientist before pursuing his passion for designing beautiful products that bring value to their users. He holds a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Computer Engineering for Intelligent Systems from the University of Palermo.

99 Minute Workshops

We're bringing 99-minute workshops to the classroom. These workshops are short, focused and targeted.

What

99 Minute Workshop

Topics

#influence

Description

Storytelling is a skill that needs to be practised and refined like any skill. It also can be applied to Software Testing in a number of ways.

Learning Outcomes

Why Stories are important as a tester
How to structure a good story
How and When to use a story
How you can amplify your story

Speaker

Gareth Waterhouse

Principal Test Engineer

RiskStorming Workshop

Beren Van Daele

What

99 Minute Workshop

Topics

Replacing Strategy Documents with a Ways of Working

Description

Learn how to build risk mitigating strategies in an interactive, visual and fun way.

Learning Outcomes

Understand and practice moderating a RiskStorming session
Facilitate prioritising quality aspects as a team
Identify and define risks
Explore different practices to prevent, mitigate risks or plan contingency plans

Speaker

Beren Van Daele

Businessman

I lead a company: Isle of IT

Together with like-minded people who value communication and transparency above all else, we wish to grow a company that enables people to be themselves. Experts to the outside, a fellowship on the inside.
Each member has the freedom to pursue their own merit, whatever that looks like, while also bearing a responsibility to the continuation and growth of the company. With full transparency, we aim to facilitate communication between members to find a balance that makes sense for themselves.

I am a Consultant:
I am a consultant who shapes software delivery teams to improve on their work and their understanding of quality. Once a Software Tester, sometimes a Product Owner, I travel around, meeting software crafters all across Europe to learn from and teach.

I create things:

TestSphere, a testing card game that inspires and supports knowledge sharing
RiskStorming, a workshop that focusses the team on quality and risks
RiskStormingOnline.com is RiskStorming for the remote world.

I do conferences:

BREWT is peer workshop for testers. (organiser)
ITMatters is a conference for Diversity and Inclusion in IT (support)

What

99 Minute Workshop

Topics

Continuous Testing Throughout the SDLC

Description

Creating strategies and unifying an agile QA team can be difficult. Why not create a visual strategy? Or even better, a visual Ways of Working!

In this session, we will focus on identifying and analysing the activities that QAs are responsible for throughout the agile process. We'll learn from each other and work together to create a visual Ways of Working that every team member can buy into.

Learning Outcomes

Identify key activities that QAs are responsible for before, during and after an agile sprint
Analyse the activities QAs are responsible for to identify best practises
Create a visual ways of working strategy of how QAs go about testing

Speaker

Robbie Falck

QA Lead

What

99 Minute Workshop

Topics

Discover Accessibility Testing Through Exploratory Testing

Description

How comfortable are you with all the processes and activities surrounding building software?
Think about how software comes about as a team:

It all starts with an idea
We collaborate around the idea to form requirement artefacts
We collaborate to for design wireframes for US and UI and pad out our requirement artefacts with this info
We use all of the artefacts to stem architecture design, platform design, code design
We write the code
We have operational software that we can assess
We deploy the operational software to production
We then observe, support and maintain that software in production

And then we do it all over again for the next feature ideas.
So why do many testers over focus their testing just on testing the software?
What happens when you test the feature idea? Or the requirement artefacts? Or the design wireframes? Or the architecture and platform design? And the code design and written code too?
Doing this actually really helps your team build quality in to the product as they perform these activities. It's the tightest possible feedback loops throughout each activity, and refactoring throughout each of these activities helps to prevent problems and bugs in the next activity.
Come along to this 99 minute workshop so that you can:

Outline the various stages of the SDLC that you can apply your testing to
Describe the value and importance of testing throughout the SDLC
Use different techniques to actually test throughout these activities before a line of code has actually been written

Learning Outcomes

Outline the various stages of the SDLC that you can apply your testing to
Describe the value and importance of testing throughout the SDLC
Use different techniques to actually test throughout these activities before a line of code has actually been written

Speaker

Dan Ashby

Director of Quality Services

What

99 Minute Workshop

Topics

Description

Historically, accessibility testing isn’t something that has always been encouraged within development teams. However, as organizations become more aware of the benefits of developing inclusive software, accessibility testing is becoming an essential skill for software testers. The problem is that many testers are unsure of where to start.

Fortunately, with many of the required tools freely available in browser extensions, learning about accessibility testing could not be easier. However, like any usability-based testing, it is mostly about gaining experience. This workshop is designed to help you get started with accessibility testing by learning about some of the tools available and using them to develop those initial accessibility testing skills.

In this session, we will start to develop our accessibility skills by first discussing the challenges some users might face when attempting to use a software application. We will then run an exploratory testing session on a software application of your choice, using different tools available in the browser extensions to learn more about how they can be used to support accessibility testing. Finally, we will create an exploratory testing charter using what we have discovered which you can take back to your office and use to help your colleagues run their own exploratory accessibility testing session.

Learning Outcomes

Discuss different accessibility needs and how poor accessibility can impact someone's ability to use an application
Investigate how accessibility tools can be used to support an exploratory testing session with the aim of identifying accessibility issues
Develop a list of common accessibility issues, and accessibility tools that can help support accessibility testing

Prerequisites

A laptop with access to the internet
Any browser that allows extensions to be downloaded, but most examples I have are from Google Chrome so this is the browser I’d recommend using for this workshop

No prerequisite knowledge required.

Speaker

Louise Gibbs

Senior Automation Tester

API Automation

What

99 Minute Workshop

Topics

Description

This workshop is geared toward persons who are new to API automation, who want a refresher or want to learn how to automate APIs using Supertest (a JS framework). In this workshop, you will learn how to get started with automating APIs using Supertest (a JS framework). We will be writing test automation for the restful-booker and the SpaceX-graphQL API.

The workshop will cover how to automate common API requests (GET, POST and PUT), negative tests for your API as well as check that your APIs handle errors appropriately and follow the specified schema.

During this workshop, you will also learn how to automate workflows for an API.

Learning Outcomes

Automate common API requests
Negative tests for your API
Check that your APIs handle errors appropriately
Check that your APIs follow the specified schema
Automate workflows for an API

Prerequisites

In order to participate in this workshop, you would need to bring your laptop and have the following prerequisites:

Have an understanding of Javascript
Ideally (but not a must-have) carried out manual API tests before
Postman installed

Speaker

Julia Pottinger

Head of Training and Development at QualityWorks

Links

Test Automation Strategy Workshop with Cards Game

What

99 Minute Workshop

Topics

Would Heu-risk It? Workshop

Description

Everybody likes playing! So I bring to your attention a workshop with cards game!
During the workshop participants will design, debate and pitch a test automation strategy using a cards game which will facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing in a safe environment and hopefully the courage to challenge the test automation status quos.

The workshop is not addressing programming challenges but is touching the design and architectural thinking of a test automation solution.

Learning Outcomes

Test automation solutions
How to approach different test automation challenges
How to design or kick-off a test automation strategy

Speaker

Dana Aonofriesei

Director of Engineering

What

99 Minute Workshop

Topics

#heuristics

The Hidden Logic of Thinking for Testers Workshop

Description

In this workshop we will combine classic risk analysis with gamification, using the “Would Heu-risk it?”card deck. Gamifying your classic risk analysis helps us overcome unconscious biases and think laterally as we plan our testing. Playing may also entice non-testers to join the party and learn exploratory testing skills. Tried-and-true techniques combined with a new approach mean better outcomes for our customers!

Learning Outcomes

How thinking about the three categories can bring new risks to light
Techniques to uncover hidden risks while focusing on value for customers
How to uncover blind spots in design, solution and testing
How you could use games to come up with fresh testing ideas

Speaker

Lena Nyström

Engineering manager, Author and Public Speaker

What

99 Minute Workshop

Topics

Workshop: Let's Go Threat Modelling!

Description

As everyone does, we testers think too, as it is our nature. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed, or down-right prejudiced. However, the quality of things we do depends precisely on the quality of our thought. To systematically cultivate excellence in thought & for skilled application of the thinking process, we need to understand how our brain is modelled along with learning and exploring how to spot gaps in our thinking process.

In the workshop, we'll question how we naturally think; how we can unleash its full potential; the art of questioning; how to challenge assumptions; modelling the thought process based on Socratic questioning & The Phoenix Checklist; Application of design thinking & meta-cognitive skills into our thinking process; thinking tools that can help to manage them; work through some real-life scenarios that model different testing problems to evaluate our thought process and suggest approaches to solve them correctly.

Learning Outcomes

Outline modelling of thought process
Questioning the ability to think, analyse and interpret along with thinking tools that can help to manage them
Identify "gaps" in the thinking process and predict common critical thinking mistakes
Design own thinking framework to approach any testing challenges thoughtfully

Prerequisites

Just join with an open mind along with your experiences. We will learn, un-learn & relearn a few ideas.

Speaker

Nithin SS

Head of QA

What

99 Minute Workshop

Topics

Let’s Practice Coaching and Facilitation!

Description

Cybersecurity is an essential part of modern software and threat modelling is a great way to identify vulnerabilities.

People may have heard of threat modelling and S.T.R.I.D.E. but often have the question, how do you actually get started?

In this workshop, we will learn about the core aspects of threat modelling and then get hands-on experience in carrying out attacks and thinking about how the software could be more secure.

Hear about how I've introduced threat modelling to my team and how it is being used within my company. Know that regardless of your job title, you can get involved in threat modelling and help create more secure software.

Learning Outcomes

Match the most common aspects of threat modelling
Determine an attack on a data flow diagram
Collaborate to assess defences against the attacks
Propose threat modelling with their team

Speaker

Richard Adams

Senior Quality Engineer

Recognising and Eliminating Code Smells 101

What

99 Minute Workshop

Topics

Description

This all sounds wonderful chaps but now what?!

The challenge with Quality Coaching and Engineering roles is that they rely on a lot of interpersonal skills. We’re talking about things like:

Active listening
Team building
Leadership

These are easy things to grasp conceptually but difficult to learn how to do during the day job! Ideally, we’d have really safe, consequence-free environments to practice in. Sadly, most of the time we’re in some kind of high-stakes “live rounds” situation where it feels risky to try these things.
This is where our workshop can come in!

Using the world famous safe MoT environment as a backdrop, we’d like to give people a taste of the coaching and facilitation skills that underpin the quality engineering work. By the end of the workshop, attendees will be able to:

See how their current approach differs from a quality coaching and quality engineering approach
Have more options at hand to deal with quality and testing challenges that crop up in their work
Experience using coaching skills like active listening and open questions
Use techniques like 1-2-4-All to get all the perspectives of the team out into the open

Learning Outcomes

Experiment with coaching skills like active listening and open questions
Use techniques like 1-2-4-All to get all the perspectives of the team out into the open
Gather new perspectives on existing situations that they’re dealing with at work

Speakers

Stuart Day

Head of Quality - Dunelm

Vernon Richards

Quality Coach / Senior Quality Engineer

What

99 Minute Workshop

Topics

#programming

Exploring Example Mapping for User and Non-user Stories

Description

How is your automation journey going? Are you a beginner or have you already started your journey, but are still struggling? In both cases, this workshop is for you!

Many people get into test automation without having a profound background in programming or without receiving any proper training. They have some idea about what tool to use, gathered some basic knowledge, and managed to create some automated tests with it.

At a certain point, you suspect that something is not quite right with your automation. Your code feels messy and maintaining it is hell, costs a lot of time and frustrates you.

One reason for this can be code smells in your test automation projects. Code what? - you might say.

According to Wikipedia, “[Code] smells are certain structures in the code that indicate violation of fundamental design principles and negatively impact design quality.

Code smells can contribute a lot to the above mentioned factors of making working with your automation code feel like hell.

This workshop has you covered, it is a practical introduction on how to deal with code smells.

Learning Outcomes

Define what a code smell is
Identify certain code smells
Apply certain refactoring techniques to eliminate code smells

Prerequisites

Participants should:

have a basic understanding of programming
bring pen and paper, for note-taking and brainstorming

bring your laptop
have read and followed instructions on bit.ly/codesmells101

Speaker

Christian Baumann

Principal Software Tester

What

99 Minute Workshop

Topics

Performance Testing 101 Workshop

Description

Discover the Power of Example Mapping!

Example Mapping is a great way to motivate the team to adopt Behaviour Driven Development. The whole practice is about encouraging communication and collaboration between the various stakeholders. It is of prime importance in an agile setup that the Product, Dev and Tester share the same understanding and have equal partnership in the stories/features delivered. Example mapping facilitates these conversations and also goes hand in hand with the shift left approach. In a nutshell, it is a great team activity which results in substantial gains and increases in productivity.

We will find out what Example Mapping is, how to do it and also practise it in an interactive workshop.

Learning Outcomes

Understand the importance of Example Mapping and how the participants can use it in their teams
Tips on convincing the entire team to try this approach
Practical implementation with use cases for all kinds of stories whether it is a user story or a non-user story
What more could be done with this mapping approach
Limitations of Example Mapping and when not to use it

Speaker

Kiruthika Ganesan

Head of Quality Assurance

What

99 Minute Workshop

Topics

Create Test Reports Based on Feedback and Feelings

Description

In this workshop, you will understand what performance testing is and why you need to test for performance.

You will also understand the difference between front-end and back-end performance testing and know the different metrics that are important when doing these two areas of performance testing.

Finally, you will learn what testing tools you can use to measure the performance of an example website.

This workshop will have a hands-on activity where we will run front-end performance checks as well as back-end performance checks on a sample website and give you the knowledge on how to analyse the results.

Learning Outcomes

Discuss the reasons why they need to test for performance
Know the difference between front-end and back-end performance testing including the important metrics
Build up their technical experience on using tools such as Google Lighthouse and k6

Prerequisites

In order to participate in this workshop, you would need to bring your laptop and have the following prerequisites:

The latest version of Chrome browser installed
A free account in k6 to use the k6 test builder

Speaker

Marie Cruz

Developer Advocate

What

99 Minute Workshop

Topics

#test-reporting

Using the Power of Habits to Develop, Drive and Support Your Learning

Description

Ever felt like the normal test reports don’t hit the spot? Are too data-driven or don’t get read properly? In my experience, this is often the case and can feel like a waste of time.

This workshop shows how to build user-focused reports including feedback which reflects the real user experience. We will find the relevant sources of user metrics, the difference between qualitative and quantitative metrics and also shared experiences of test reports.

Not only will you learn a new way to tailor your test reports but you will create your own user-focused report to take back to your team.

Learning Outcomes

Understand what user metrics are
Describe the difference between Qualitative & Quantitative quality metrics
Write your own user metrics for your team

Prerequisites

Just bring your experiences, ideas and wonderful selves.

Speaker

Lewis Prescott

QA Lead

What

99 Minute Workshop

Topics

#learn

Deconstructing Your Thought Process!

Description

We all have habits, good ones, bad ones and many we don’t even realise we are doing every moment of every day.

In this workshop, you will examine what habits are, how and why they are formed in our minds, the strength of habits and how we rely on them every day.

You will then learn how to create and develop a new habit for learning, as well as use strategies from some of the Habit Experts to make it easier to stick to your new learning habit as well as review its success.

Learning Outcomes

Increase your understanding of what habits are and how they are formed
Understand how to hack your habits to your advantage
Establish clear learning intentions using your knowledge of habits
Have a solid understanding of the 4 laws of Habits and how to apply them

Prerequisites

Bring your curiosity, a willingness to learn and a pen. Oh and your habits, all of your habits, even the bad ones.

Speaker

Alex Reynolds

Quality Engineering Community Lead at Lloyds Bank

Activities

Activities are hands-on stands with activities and challenges for you to complete.

What

Activity

Topics

#biases

Tester Hands-on with Sauce Labs

Description

Curated by Nithin SS

Even the most seasoned testers are vulnerable to cognitive biases and thinking traps when they test. As Testers, we need to employ our intelligence, imagination, and creativity to gain empirical information about the investigated prototype or system. Since Testing is a curiosity-driven, critical, impartial and dynamic activity, we must constantly challenge ourselves and question our methods, techniques and core beliefs. With this activity, we will explore how truly understanding and embracing the scientific methods of thinking can make us better at questioning our assumptions, staying impartial and being more credible testers. You will also learn to recognize bias and experience the importance of questioning assumptions.

Instructions:

A prototype/system that can be referred to generate testing ideas would be shared with the group.

Presentation (5 mins): A brief introduction to the prototype/system under test and the materials and steps needed for the following activities.

Explore (20 mins): The group will then explore the prototype/system by asking questions, brainstorming, and generating their test ideas/scenarios. We will be doing it in 3 stages, with 3 small sub-activities.

Wrap-up:

The group will then present their thought process, how they approached, the assumptions they made, how they rephrased testing requirements & how they interpreted certain information.

Also, they will reflect on the risks associated with the reasoning process along with the steps they used to mitigate common thinking traps/biases. What worked well in their process, what can be improved, ideas to reuse while facing a similar situation etc.

Resources:

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Critical Thinking for Testers by Michael Bolton on TestBash Brighton
The Socratic Questioning Technique by Jeremy Sutton
The Phoenix Checklist: Turning Complex Problems into Simple Solutions by Joseph C. Campbell
Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques by Michael Michalko
Nielsen Norman Group’s videos on Design Thinking

Learning Outcomes

Understanding on how to deconstruct the thought process.
Focus on five essential dimensions of thinking:
- the dispositions of thought
- the skills and abilities of thought
- the obstacles or barriers of thought
- the analysis of thought
- and the assessment of thought.

Speaker

Nithin SS

Head of QA

Andy Wyatt

What

Activity

Topics

Description

Bring your own laptop and log in with full-access credentials to be able to test your own native apps or website on the Sauce Labs platform.

‘Live’ test on real browsers on Sauce Labs VMs or install your own native apps onto Sauce Labs real devices and test on them with the help of one of our experts.

You can even run some of your own pre-built test automation to learn how to leverage Sauce Labs with your automation processes.

We will be on hand to help you get up and running quickly.

Learning Outcomes

Learn why you should test in the cloud rather than build your own testing infrastructure
See how easy it is to improve your test coverage
Learn how to capture your bugs and provide the information to your devs to get them fixed

Prerequisites

You'll need to bring your own laptop.

Speaker

Andy Wyatt

Manager Solutions Engineering, EMEA

Having over 30 years’ experience of working in IT, Andy has worked all over the world for organisations large and small and across nearly every vertical. Specializing in Application Development and Testing for more or less the whole of that period, it is in the last 8 years that Andy has focused solely on the cloud testing of digital applications across mobile and web platforms. This period has seen the dramatic transformations in mobile technologies across iOS and Android platforms and Andy has helped many organisations to solve the problems encountered by their development and testing teams in order to provide the best end user experiences that leverage the ever- increasing processing power available in mobile technologies.

Eliminating Code Smells

What

Activity

Topics

#developer-principles

Author a Fully Executable Functional UI Test From Wireframes Without Ever Seeing the App

Description

Curated by Christian Baumann

To eliminate a code smell, you first need to identify that there is a smell, and then you need to come up with a way to safely remove that smell. However, removing code smells can have many advantages, such as making your code base cleaner and thus easier to read and maintain.

Instructions:

Identify code smells (15 minutes)

Have a look at the provided code examples and identify anything that you think is a code smell. Also, think about why your finding is a code smell.

Eliminate code smells (15 minutes)

Eliminate the found code smells by applying proper programming principles, maybe by introducing meaningful names for variables or removing duplication.

Also, think about:

Advantages & disadvantages of your solution
How to ensure you didn’t introduce any bugs or other code smells?

Wrap-up:

Removing code smells is a good way to improve the code base in many ways. It speeds up development, decreases the risk of bugs & failures as well as technical debt. Also, it makes it easier to maintain the application in the future, by any programmer, including yourself.

Resources:

Test Automation Code Smells by Angie Jones
Your Code Can Smell! How to Fix It
Switch Statement code smell and Polymorphism, Hanuska Blogspot
Code Cmall 10 - Too Many Arguments by Maxi Contieri
Refactoring: This class is too large

Learning Outcomes

Follow good programming techniques & implement good design
Help speed up development
Decrease the risk of future bugs & failures
Reduce the risk of technical debt

Prerequisites

Read and follow the instructions here.

Speaker

Christian Baumann

Principal Software Tester

James Bent

What

Activity

Topics

User Stories Against QA with Global Logic

Description

As this catchy title suggests, you will be given a series of wireframes and use the Virtuoso tool to write a functional UI test. You will not see the app. You will have no information on IDs, selectors, or attributes. Just you, the tool, and a wireframe. We will then unveil the app and let you run your test against it.

You will then see how to continue writing your test while simultaneously executing it on a headless browser. You will make a few API calls, and see how to debug the app using DevTools on the headless browser you are running your tests on. The bug, the browser, and the DevTools are all in the same environment. It’s pretty cool!

Learning Outcomes

Write executable functional UI and end-2-end test from wireframes
Discover how far left you can shift testing
How to author, execute, and debug in the same environment

Speaker

James Bent

VP of Solution Engineering

James Bent is the "go to" Solution Engineer at Virtuoso, with a vast and detailed knowledge of automation. He keeps things simple even when talking about the most technical of topics or dealing with dynamic applications.

Ka Lee Gary Wong, Grace Tree

What

Activity

Topics

Description

User Stories. One of the many ways we and our teams interact with requirements. Understanding who, what and why before digging into the how. What if we used user stories to explore how we as teams address quality challenges?

In this interactive card game, we will create user stories that explore the art and science behind testing. Ideas we like and ones we don't. We will discuss them, test them and perhaps even generate some humour!

Let's learn together about the tools, techniques, approaches and team dynamics that help and hinder us.

Learning Outcomes

Reaffirmation of QA processes
Enlightened about QA stereotypes and possible ways to combat these
Interpersonal connections with some of our brightest QA consultants

Speakers

Ka Lee Gary Wong

SDET

Dependable and cheerful, been in the game for so long it can be jaded. But I still love the game. Always learning.

Grace Tree

Delivery Consultant | SDET

A consultant in the test specialty for globallogic UK&I

Put It to The Test

Ola Omiyale

What

Activity

Topics

API Testing and Automation with Postman

#test-cases

Description

A short and simple activity to demonstrate how easy it is to create and execute test automation cases with useMango.

All you have to do is follow the step-by-step instructions, which show you how to build a simple login test case using their component-based model.

Learning Outcomes

Build, Execute and De-bug an end to end testing scenario using pre-scripted components
Individuals with different skill sets can build automated test cases

Speaker

Ola Omiyale

Customer Relationship Executive

Currently helping companies speed and scale up their testing through codeless test automation. An adovcate for individuals with different skillset's participating in the test automation process!

Arlémi Turpault

What

Activity

Topics

Performance Testing 101 Activity

Description

Walk through writing scripts to test your response data in Postman, passing data between requests using variables, validating responses against schema, and automating your testing using dynamic faker.js data and the collection runner, defining control flow, and running collections on the command line with Newman.

Prerequisites

Bring your own laptop to follow along
Log in to a Postman account

Speaker

Arlémi Turpault

Head of Developer Advocacy

Arlémi Turpault leads Developer Advocacy at Postman, an API platform used by 25M+ people around the world. He started his career as a software engineer doing research and development for Augmented Reality solutions, then naturally turned to developer relations as a deep advocate for great user experiences and access to knowledge. Based in London (UK), and when not interacting with other community members, he can be found reading fantasy books or pretending to be a guitar hero on Rocksmith.

What

Activity

Topics

Let's Go Threat Modelling! - Activity

Description

Curated by Marie Drake.

In this activity, we will learn about the key differences between front-end and back-end performance testing and why it’s needed to perform both. As humans, it’s been scientifically proven that our attention span has been decreasing and we have been so used to instant gratifications that if a website performs slowly, we are quick to leave the website and go to a competitor website that functions significantly faster. It is therefore vital that as software testers, you are equipped to have the necessary skills to inform your team on how to get started with performance testing.

Instructions:

Part 1

In groups of 3-4, discuss the following key points:

Why do we need to test for performance?
Do you have examples or stories where you have been frustrated by a specific website due to its poor performance?
Do you have examples or stories that you can think of where the performance of the application that you are testing has degraded due to new feature changes?

Part 2

Within the same group, using post-its, try to come up with what you think are the differences between front-end and back-end performance testing. Include examples to explain the differences clearly.

Part 3

Whole group discussion. We will then discuss parts 1 and 2 of this activity and the moderator (Marie Drake) can provide more information when needed and clarify any questions from the group.

Part 4

How can you make small changes to make sure that you and your team are doing performance testing? Write down some ideas in a post-it note and discuss within your group.

Wrap-up

Performance testing, both back-end and front-end, can provide massive benefits. It’s not enough anymore for us to just make sure that our applications are functioning as expected. As software testers, we also need to consider the performance and overall user experience. Users are now quick to express their frustrations if they encounter a poorly performant website. To get started with performance testing, we must first understand the key difference between front-end and back-end performance testing.

To make sure that it gets included, you need to identify the most important features of your website, research the expected amount of load your website is expected to have, share the findings to your team and come up with a performance testing strategy collaboratively.

Nowadays, there are an abundance of performance testing tools available to help you with performance testing and most tools are becoming developer and tester friendly but before starting with the tools, you need to understand the fundamentals first and update your strategy as and when it’s needed.

Learning Outcomes

There are key differences between front-end and back-end performance testing and it’s important to know these differences so you can better inform your team
Having a performance testing strategy can be beneficial for you and your teams
As with other types of activities, a data-driven and team-owned approach to performance testing where you can collaborate with others is key

Prerequisites

Resources:

Speaker

Marie Cruz

Developer Advocate

What

Activity

Topics

Employ Feature Mapping to Capture Requirements of a New Feature

Description

Curated by Richard Adams

This activity is an opportunity to learn how to adopt threat modelling and what a session might look like, using Richard Adams’s card game. The goal is to show you how Threat Modelling works and also that threat modelling isn't for security engineers or lead developers. If anything, the tester mindset gives us the advantage.

Instructions:

Pick up the “Threat Model” and “Threat Modelling Table” handouts that accompany this activity.
Go through each of the “Threat Agent” entries in the “Threat Modelling” table and identify a type of attack that might be carried out for each one.

For example, for Denial of Service, we could suggest that a DDOS attack in which a Web API is flooded with requests might be an attack to be concerned about.

Tip: Find resources online or discuss with one another what each of the threat types are and what types of attacks might be connected to them.

Wrap-up:

This activity shows how creating a model of a system and then applying the STRIDE mindset, can help us pick out potential threats. As testers we’re good at identifying risks and that skillset comes in handy when assessing for security threats, even if you might not know how to execute them.

Resources:

Context Driven Security - Bill Matthews - https://bit.ly/mot-sec-1
Threat Modelling - Saskia Coplans - https://bit.ly/mot-sec-2
Security Testing Discussion - https://bit.ly/mot-sec-3
OWASP STRIDE reference sheet - https://bit.ly/mot-sec-4

Learning Outcomes

Visual models are a great way to spot security threats
The STRIDE mnemonic helps us break down each of the types of threats to our system
A threat might have many different types of attacks related to it

Speaker

Richard Adams

Senior Quality Engineer

What

Activity

Topics

Fast Track Coaching Skills For Testers

Description

Curated by Kiruthika Ganesan

Missed requirements, how it ties up with the user journey and finding out what matters most to the customers is always a challenge. Feature Mapping is an effective discovery mechanism wherein different stakeholders can come together and explore a given functionality and get some direction on what needs to be built/considered. Can the group employ Feature Mapping and figure out the requirements to build for the said feature?

Instructions:

A feature with very high-level requirements would be shared with the group.

Explore (20 mins)

The group will then explore the feature by asking questions, brainstorming ideas and figuring out what needs to be done for the feature to come alive. This will be done in the below 2 stages;

Stage 1:

This part of the activity is to assess who will be the target audience and what will they care about the most.
The result of this activity is to identify the various user personas and their main motive to use this feature

Stage 2:

This part is to identify some of the finer details in the user journeys, alternate journeys, identify known risks and unknown risks, error cases, etc., with the help of positive and negative examples
The result of this activity is to map out the user journey in the form of sticky notes based on the various user actions performed by the identified personas.

Eg: Persona1-Step1-Step2-Step3-Outcome

Persona2-Step1-Step2-Step3-Outcome

Wrap-up: (5 mins)

The group will then present the feature map and explain their approach on how they decided on the user personas, the user journeys and most importantly what matters to the user.

Also, reflect on the pending work if any. Are there any outstanding questions? Are there any other spikes or workshops needed to explore certain aspects further? Are we able to build in testability? Are there any specific test data requirements? etc.

Resources

Feature Mapping by John Ferguson Smart
Introducing Example Mapping by Matt Wynne
Cucumber Example Mapping
Cucumber & Cheese, a Testers Workshop by Jeff Morgan

Learning Outcomes

Feature Mapping provides structure to the discovery workshops and it also employs examples to explain the flows
Time is effectively used as the group can concentrate on users and users journeys rather than get bogged down on implementation details at the early stages
Common language and shared understanding of the requirements can be achieved among stakeholders. As a minimum (Dev,QA and PO) engage in this exercise
The identified scenarios can become excellent candidates for automated tests especially through the cucumber feature files

Speaker

Kiruthika Ganesan

Head of Quality Assurance

What

Activity

Topics

Observability in Automated Testing

Description

Curated by Stu & Vernon

Experience the core fundamentals of coaching: Unconditional positive regard, active listening and powerful questioning. Attendees split into smaller groups, and each group will rotate through each activity.

Instructions:

Unconditional positive regard

Work through each provided scenario and come up with 3-5 reasons a reasonable person would make those choices.

Active Listening

Spend 3 mins listening to your partner talk about one of the provided topics. You are not allowed to ask any questions. As you listen, think about:

How are you showing your interest?
Where is your attention?
What isn’t being said?
How are they communicating?

Powerful Questions

Similar to the last exercise, except now you can ask questions!

Wrap-up:

Coaching is about helping people generate solutions for themselves. How well you can help people do that will depend on three things.

How much you believe they can create their own solution
The amount of space they have to explore what’s happening in their world
What new perspectives open up for them

Resources:

Four links to additional resources that expand the topic and themes of your workshop.

How Coaching Skills Can Help Improve Quality
How to Use Coaching in Leadership within Organisations
The Coach's Casebook - Kim Morgan & Geoff Watts
Growing a Career Beyond Testing - Stuart Day & Chris Henderson Video

Learning Outcomes

Believing people can solve their problems prevents you from making premature judgements and providing solutions
Listening to understand is more potent than listening for a chance to speak
Open questions are powerful and there to help the coachee, not you as the coach
We can use all three skills outside of explicit coaching sessions

Speakers

Stuart Day

Head of Quality - Dunelm

Vernon Richards

Quality Coach / Senior Quality Engineer

João Proença

What

Activity

Topics

Observability — A 3-Year Retrospective (Charity Majors)

#observability

Description

In this activity, we will explore ways to evaluate how observable your test automation environments are. Each of our working contexts is different, so it’s important to understand what are the key characteristics of an observable system and what are the strengths/limitations of your own underneath those.

Usually, we think about observability as being product (and production) related, but it is also very important in other areas of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), namely in test automation, which we will focus on in this exercise.

Consider the following key characteristics, as coined by Abby Bangser and Charity Majors:

The only way to ask new questions is to keep the original raw data available and queryable.
1. raw events
2. no pre-aggregation
Empower creative and shared exploration based on business context.
1. oriented around the lifecycle of the request
2. batched up context
3. exploration over static dashboards
Make data easy to add details to and easy to query.
1. structured data
2. arbitrarily wide events
3. schema-less-ness
4. high cardinality dimensions

Instructions

Create a table like the one below for your test automation system:

Observability Characteristics	Strengths	Limitations
Keeping original raw data
Creative and shared exploration
Easy to add details and query data

Fill out what are the key strengths of your system for each key characteristic.
Now, focus on the limitations for each characteristic. What are the main factors that are keeping you from fulfilling those ideals
Review your Strengths and Limitations and think about what are the top 3 small experiments you may run in your organisation to potentially overcome the limitations and turn them into strengths. Write them down!

Wrap-up

Keep in mind that observability in the context of test automation relates to how well you are able to ask questions of your test runs without having to write new code and run it in your automation. A prime example of where observability matters the most in test automation is in how well you are able to find out why a test failed in a specific run, which implies having the right data available and being able to navigate it with success.

It is easy to overlook observability beyond production systems, as we stated above, and that tends to make us underestimate the cost of not having observable systems when we are thoroughly testing our software.

Key Takeaways:

True observability is achieved when you are able to ask new relevant questions of your system without having to ship new code.
Observability is important throughout the whole SDLC, not just in production.
Use small experiments over the data that you produce and / or the way you explore that data to uncover the impact it has in understanding test failures and your feedback loop.

Resources

A journey to truly understanding Observability (Abby Bangser)

Learning Outcomes

True observability is achieved when you are able to ask new relevant questions of your system without having to ship new code.
Observability is important throughout the whole SDLC, not just in production.
Use small experiments over the data that you produce and/or the way you explore that data to uncover the impact it has in understanding test failures and your feedback loop.

Speaker

João Proença

Quality Engineer

The Pen Game

What

Activity

Topics

#testing-notes

Description

Curated by Dan Ashby

In this adaptation of “The Pen Game” lateral thinking game, the challenge enables the audience to test “the system”, giving them control of testing their ideas.

Instructions:

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this activity is to discover the variables within the system that produces “yes” and “no” responses.

RULES:

You need to discover the patterns that cause a yes and a no
You can control the system to test the variables that you discover within the system, to see if that variable affects the pattern.
You can also control the output (i.e. ask the system to produce a “yes” or to produce a “no”)
We have a 20-minute time limit for this exercise.

Wrap-up:

To wrap up, we’ll debrief on the activity: How difficult was it? How much fun was it? What other variables can we think of in retrospect? Did anyone take testing notes and want to share?

This activity offers a great example of investigative testing. Testing can be difficult, but it can also be fun and exciting!

Learning Outcomes

Identifying the variables of the system
Converting ideas and hypotheses of each variable into a test idea (describing how you’d control the system in order to prove or disprove your hypothesis)
Discovering information about the system from your testing
Understanding the value in taking testing notes

Speaker

Dan Ashby

Director of Quality Services

RiskStorming

Beren Van Daele

What

Activity

Topics

Would Heu-Risk it? - Lightning Mode

Description

Curated by Claire Reckless & Beren Van Daele

The RiskStorming session format is a wonderful way of generating a visible Test Strategy as a team that focuses your strategy to answer the following questions:

What is important to our product?
What risks could impact these important aspects?
What can we do, as a team, to make sure they don't happen?

Instructions:

Understand the product under test well enough
Take the 25 Quality Aspect TestsSphere cards and pick the 6 most important ones within 10 minutes
Take sticky notes and add 2-3 risks per chosen TestSphere card within 10 minutes
Take the other TestSphere cards and match risk mitigating activities for each Risk within 10 minutes

Wrap-up:

By the end of the activity, you’ll have a much better understanding of what quality actually means for your product or epic as well as what could potentially harm it. Not just you, but everyone on the team understands how they can prepare, defend and explore against risks which could severely impact the project. Quality becomes clear to everyone and everyone’s responsibility.

Resources:

Learning Outcomes

You will work as a team to discuss and describe a Test Strategy
You will work out a proposal to convince your manager which forces you to focus on business value and risk
You will use TestSphere as a tool to uncover unknown-unknowns and strengthen your strategy

Speaker

Beren Van Daele

Businessman

I lead a company: Isle of IT

I create things:

TestSphere, a testing card game that inspires and supports knowledge sharing
RiskStorming, a workshop that focusses the team on quality and risks
RiskStormingOnline.com is RiskStorming for the remote world.

I do conferences:

BREWT is peer workshop for testers. (organiser)
ITMatters is a conference for Diversity and Inclusion in IT (support)

What

Activity

Topics

Play Cards and Create a Test Automation Strategy

Description

Curated by Lena Wiberg

Would Heu-risk it - Lightning mode lets you reflect on situations in your past work life and how you could use heuristics like these cards to explore your own, your team’s and your application’s strengths and weak spots.

Instructions:

Pick a random card

Go to https://www.pejgan.se/WHRI

Click the “random card” link in the top menu bar. This is your card.

Individual reflection (10 minutes)

Think of, and write down a few sentences about what this card means to you and a time in your work life when it was relevant.

(Tip: If you can’t think of a time, try to imagine a situation when it would have been)

Questions you can use to spark ideas:

Is this something I come across a lot?
What does this card mean to me?
How does it apply to my current scope?
If not, how could I imagine using it?

There are three different categories of cards. You might have to think slightly differently depending on the category:

Traps: A time when you fell into this trap, or you observed someone else fall into it?

Tools: A time when you, or someone else, used this. What was the result?

Weapons: A time when this was a problem in a project you worked on.

Group reflection (15 minutes)

Share your reflections around the table and add your thoughts to each other’s cards and reflections.

If the discussion sparks new ideas and thoughts - add these to your reflection.

As a group - summarize the discussions and reflections you had.

Demo (5 minutes)

Share the group reflections in the larger group.

Did you learn something new?

When could you use this in your team and/or own work?

Wrap-up:

Reflecting on our work, our strengths and weak points can be intimidating, but it’s the way we grow and become better. Using focal points like for example Would Heu-risk it, TestSphere, can help trigger new thoughts and discover new perspectives. Sharing and discussing in a group, hopefully diverse, is a great way of adding more angles and seeing things we were unaware of ourselves.

Learning Outcomes

How to uncover strengths and weak points (your own, your team, your application)
How you could use games or focal points to come up with new ideas
How using reflection as a structure can help you unblock yourself and grow new skills
How sharing in group can add new perspectives

Prerequisites

Resources:

Question Able by Pejgan - https://testing.pejgan.se/
TestSphere - https://www.ministryoftesting.com/testsphere
Would Heu-risk it Cards - https://store.ministryoftesting.com/collections/would-heu-risk-it
Would Heu-risk it Book - https://pejgan.se/WHRI.ht

Speaker

Lena Nyström

Engineering manager, Author and Public Speaker

What

Activity

Topics

#analysis

Experience Driven Accessibility Testing

Description

Curated by Dana Aonofriesei

Test automation strategies require collaboration, overcoming challenges and dealing with unknowns. We will simulate this by playing a cards game.

Instructions:

Game on! (20 minutes)

Each group will receive a card deck (with Strategy, Challenge and Joker cards) and a given business scenario for test automation.

Each group member picks a Strategy card from the deck.

Discuss in the group how you will implement in your test automation strategy the approaches recommended by each Strategy card or why the recommendation is not needed in your strategy.

Write down notes for each card (implementation details, concerns, opportunities).

Time to spice things up! (15 minutes)

Each group has to extract at least 2 Challenge cards and 1 Joker. If you dare, pick more cards.

Discuss in the group how you will address those challenges or incorporate the crazy ideas suggested by the Joker.

Write down notes for each card (implementation details, concerns, opportunities).

Wrap-up:

During the activity you have the opportunity to share your knowledge as well as learn from others and hopefully the opportunity to challenge the test automation status quos.

Learning Outcomes

Create a brief test automation strategy
Apply your existing knowledge to a new use case and with a new group
Learn about new approaches to be considered in test automation

Speaker

Dana Aonofriesei

Director of Engineering

What

Activity

Topics

Description

One challenge testers face when doing accessibility testing is a lack of understanding of accessibility needs. It is hard to appreciate the challenges users can face without any first-hand experience of a disability. This activity is aimed at helping testers to better appreciate the challenges users with accessibility needs might face when using a software application.

For this activity, we will be completing a series of online questionnaires. Sounds simple? To make things more interesting, we will be using the disability simulator chrome extension to help us experience the challenges some users face when using a software application. We will then attempt to complete the same form but with the aid of accessibility tools to help us understand how a user might attempt to use an application, and learn how websites can still be inaccessible even with the aid of accessibility tools.

Speaker

Louise Gibbs

Senior Automation Tester

Start a New Habit

What

Activity

Topics

Description

Curated by Alex Reynolds

The first step into defining new behavior and habit is to understand where we are now and have a clear view of the present moment. The Habit Map is a perfect way of identifying our regular habits, and the likely actions we are to take through the course of the day. By understanding this it allows for a clearer intention to be set for a new habit, one that is more realistic, bounded by data and more likely to be achieved.

Instructions:

Identify (10 mins)

Discuss as a group the habits you would like to start, this could range from learning, to starting a new hobby, introducing a new mechanism at work, or ensuring time for self care.

Map (15 mins)

Create a Habit map of existing habits, identifying those that are value add activities and those that are waste activities and the impact they have on cognitive load.

Set an intention (5 mins)

Define an intention for your new behavior and share with the group showing what you have learned about your habits and what you hope to gain from this new one.

Wrap-up:

By exploring your own habits,and developing a map of the things that you do on a regular basis, provide you with a powerful insight into current behaviours and can support your personal development by identifying areas you want to make change. This will lead to creating a new positive habit (such as a learning habit) and define a clear intention to achieve it.

Learning Outcomes

Habit mapping is a useful tool to understand behaviour.
We can use Habit Maps at an individual, team and wider level.
Habit Mapping can lead us to alter behavior in a more scientific manner.
Habit Mapping allows us to set clear intentions for new behaviour.

Speaker

Alex Reynolds

Quality Engineering Community Lead at Lloyds Bank

API Automation Activity

What

Activity

Topics

Description

Curated by Julia Pottinger

Select the things you would include in your automated tests for a specific API and then select one of those tests to write an automated script for using supertest.

Instructions:

API Link - <TBD find API for Activity>

Part 1 - 10 mins

Using the API above and the guide on ‘how to decide which tests you should be automating for your API’ that was shared in the Next Level API Automation talk, create a list of scenarios that:

Would be included in your API automation
Would not be included in your API automation and why

Part 2 - 15 mins

Clone the repo that was used in the API automation workshop https://github.com/jpott77/api-automation-supertest
Select one of the tests that you would include in your API automation and write the code to automate it

Demo - 5 mins

Share what you would include or not include in your API automation and why
Share the automated test you wrote for the API

Wrap-up:

API automation as with all other forms of test automation requires some thought and planning to ensure that you reap the intended rewards. API automation is valuable in the way it can speed up tests, help test at an earlier phase in the SDLC without the need for GUI’s and increase the scope of tests as API-level tests are specifically designed to verify that all system components function as intended.

This activity should have allowed you to think about why you automate certain scenarios over others and give you practice with writing automation scripts.

Learning Outcomes

How to automate APIs in JavaScript
API testing checklist
How to decide what should be included in your API automation

Speaker

Julia Pottinger

Head of Training and Development at QualityWorks

Links

Storytelling for Testers - The Activity

What

Activity

Topics

Create a High Level Visual Ways of Working

Description

Curated by Gareth Waterhouse

This activity will involve you writing and sharing stories, gathering feedback about the story and then applying that feedback and tips to a new scenario to (hopefully) achieve a greater impact.

Instructions:

Write up/plan out your story (5 minutes)

This will involve you writing up the bug that you have just found and wish to tell a developer on your team, if you’re struggling to think of one, we will have examples that can be used :)

Share your story (5 minutes)

Share your story with people in the group and talk them through the bug as you would a developer on your team.

Feedback on the stories (5 minutes)

We’ll go around the group, and give 1 piece of advice about writing stories, was there something you particularly liked about one of the stories? Or something that could be improved upon perhaps?

Create a scenario-based story (10 minutes)

On the table, there will be cards with “scenarios”. The aim here is to use the feedback in the previous stage and write up a story based on that scenario.

Share your story (5 minutes)

Those that feel comfortable can share their scenario-based story with the group and get some quick feedback on them.

Wrap-up:

There are a number of ways you can structure a story, it very much depends on who you are telling it to, and what you want to get out of it. Bearing these things in mind when creating your story, or telling your story, will help you get the most out of it and hopefully achieve a positive outcome.

Resources:

Learning Outcomes

Start with Why - Why are you telling this story? Identify what you want to get out of it to help you shape the story.
Think about Who - Who are you telling this story to? What information is important to them? What information isn’t important to them?
Think about How - How are you going to tell this story? Will visual aids help? Is it a quick conversation?
Stories are powerful - They can make the listener(s) feel empathy and hopefully help you achieve the outcome you wanted.

Speaker

Gareth Waterhouse

Principal Test Engineer

What

Activity

Topics

The Most Awesome User-focused Dashboard

Description

Curated by Robbie Falck

Learn how to create a high-level visual Ways of Working (WoW) strategy outlining the key responsibilities and activities that QAs undertake before, during and after a sprint.

Instructions:

Brainstorm (20 minutes)

Brainstorm the activities and responsibilities that QAs undertake within an agile sprint. Split these activities into 3 sections: before a sprint starts (shifting left), during a sprint and after a sprint (shifting right). You’ll be able to get ideas from a real work example of a WoW that Robbie and his team built.

To do this, you will need to interact with the others doing the activity with you, brainstorm ideas together, ask questions as to how other people work and together learn and agree on what responsibilities should go into your WoW. You’ll be taking notes as you go.

Mindmap (10 minutes)

Reflect on your brainstorming notes and start to build a high level visual representation of your WoW. You’ll be given a sprint timeline outlining the 3 states of before, during and after a sprint and start creating your mindmap from there.

Demo (5 minutes)

Show your WoW to your other team members and how you have gone about structuring your WoW. See how others have done it and learn from what they have deemed important in their WoW mindmap.

Wrap-up:

You should now have a good high level idea of the activities a QA is responsible for throughout an agile sprint and how your team differs and can learn from others. You’ll have a great template to take home and continue to work on a more indepth strategic WoW with your own team.

Learning Outcomes

You will have identified and analysed activities that QAs undertake within a sprint cycle.
You’ll have learnt from others on how they go about involving QAs and generate ideas that might help your team going forward.
You’ll have made a start on a WoW that you can take home and build on with your team.

Speaker

Robbie Falck

QA Lead

What

Activity

Topics

AMA: API Automation with Julia Pottinger

Description

Curated by Lewis Prescott

Design the best user-focused dashboard you’ve ever seen.

Instructions:

Complain (5 mins)

Vent and explain what is wrong with testing/monitoring dashboards today? What value do they hold and who are the people who actually look at the dashboards?

Generate ideas (10 mins)

What should be on a user dashboard? Add your ideas and headings to the board.

Make it pretty (10 mins)

Draw and colour in the charts, graphs and metrics.

Demo (5 mins)

Walk us through the most awesome user-focused dashboard. What are the most important metrics to display on a dashboard which represents the user?

Wrap-up:

Creating a user-focused dashboard helps us focus on why we are building software and keeps the core things the user really cares about. Comparing current dashboard metrics and visuals with the user focused aspirational view will be an interesting comparison.

Learning Outcomes

Dashboards help visual metrics of user data
We can create user-focused dashboards
Metrics can be boring without colour and charts to bring them alive
Dashboards are only useful if they are monitored regularly

Prerequisites

Resources:

AMA Test Reporting: https://club.ministryoftesting.com/t/ask-me-anything-test-reporting/46827
Qualitative vs Quantitative Data: https://www.hotjar.com/blog/qualitative-vs-quantitative-user-research/
Dashboard Design: https://www.geckoboard.com/best-practice/dashboard-design/
DevOps Metrics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerate_(book)

Speaker

Lewis Prescott

QA Lead

AMA Bar

This is the place to come to chat with speakers, community members and get those burning questions answered.

What

Ask Me Anything

Topics

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask the speaker those burning questions you got from their workshop, talk, activity or challenge. Or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Julia Pottinger

Head of Training and Development at QualityWorks

Links

AMA: Test Automation Strategy with Dana Aonofriesei

What

Ask Me Anything

Topics

AMA: Example Mapping with Kika Ganesan

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask the speaker those burning questions you got from their workshop, talk, activity or challenge. Or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Dana Aonofriesei

Director of Engineering

What

Ask Me Anything

Topics

AMA: Athens Meetup with Petros Plakogiannis - Day One

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask the speaker those burning questions you got from their workshop, talk, activity or challenge. Or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Kiruthika Ganesan

Head of Quality Assurance

Petros Plakogiannis

What

Ask Me Anything

Topics

AMA: A Career in Consulting as a Tester - Global Logic with Thomas, Luke and Samer - Day One

Description

Meetups are an essential part of our Testing community. Run by dedicated and passionate testers, Meetups are a great place to network and learn and can be great fun. We love our Meetups so much we've invited three of our international Meetup hosts to share their experiences of running a meetup and give you an opportunity to learn what it's like attending a meetup or running your own. In this session, you'll be able to meet Petros, learn about his story and ask him anything about the famous Athens Meetup.

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar.

Speaker

Petros Plakogiannis

Test Team Lead

Petros Plakogiannis lives in Greece. He has graduated from the University of Piraeus and the Technological Educational Institute of Crete. He has been working professionally as a software tester for 12 years, with strong focus on automated testing using various tools like QTP, Selenium, Protractor, Cypress etc. He also has a significant experience in white box testing, application testing (desktop, web, and mobile), and security testing. He travels a lot and supports customers onsite by providing information regarding automation testing. Petros is also the main organizer of the Ministry of Testing Athens meetups and is very active in the testing community.

Thomas Shipley, Luke Masterman, Samer Naqvi

What

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AMA: useMango with Ola Omiyale - Day One

Description

A Career in Consulting as a Tester

Have you ever considered working as a consultant? The opportunity to learn from multiple clients as you help them achieve their quality goals. Or perhaps you have worked with consultants in the past and want to understand how to get the best from them in your team.

Come talk to us - GlobalLogic - about the highs and lows of consulting as a QA. How we help clients with tight deadlines, ambitious projects and occasionally tricky customers. Even if you are not considering a career in consulting there is a lot we can learn from each other about the management of projects, people and quality expectations. All valuable skills to explore and take back to discuss with your team.

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask our awesome sponsors those burning questions you got from the activity or challenge, or just come in and say hi!

Speakers

Thomas Shipley

Head of QA @ GlobalLogic

Hi. I am Thomas Shipley and I work in Quality Advocacy. My career is focused on understanding what others in a team are doing. The impact of planned work, managing the expectations of stakeholders and analysing development changes. By asking questions of a team I can better understand the impacts of these changes. Understanding more I begin to coach teams. Sharing my expertise in testing with the team so they can start thinking more like testers themselves. I mentor, pair, persuade and promote towards my goal of shared quality ownership. Sometimes this is challenging but often worth it!

Luke Masterman

Test Architect

Worked in test automation for 9 years covering all aspects of functional testing

Samer Naqvi

Senior Delivery Consultant

I am an Test Architect/SDET with over 16 years of experience in QA focusing on test design, processes, automation and leadership . I am currently working as a Practice Lead in HSBC via Global Logic. I have spoken at various different conferences with the aim of spreading QA best practices.

Ola Omiyale

What

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Topics

AMA: Quality Coaching with Clare Norman

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask our awesome sponsors those burning questions you got from the activity or challenge, or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Ola Omiyale

Customer Relationship Executive

Currently helping companies speed and scale up their testing through codeless test automation. An adovcate for individuals with different skillset's participating in the test automation process!

Clare Norman

What

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Topics

AMA: Postman with Arlemi Turpault - Day One

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask the speaker those burning questions you got from their workshop, talk, activity or challenge. Or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Clare Norman

Quality Assurance Analyst

Arlémi Turpault

AMA: Virtuoso with James Bent - Day One

What

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Topics

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask our awesome sponsors those burning questions you got from activity, challenge, or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Arlémi Turpault

Head of Developer Advocacy

James Bent

What

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Topics

AMA: Sauce Labs with Andy Wyatt - Day One

#ui-automation

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask our awesome sponsors those burning questions you got from the activity or challenge, or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

James Bent

VP of Solution Engineering

Andy Wyatt

AMA: Detroit Meetup with Hilary Weaver-Robb - Day One

What

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Topics

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask our awesome sponsors those burning questions you got from the activity or challenge, or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Andy Wyatt

Manager Solutions Engineering, EMEA

Hilary Weaver

What

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Topics

AMA: Culture of Quality with Simon Prior

Description

Meetups are an essential part of our Testing community. Run by dedicated and passionate testers, Meetups are a great place to network and learn and can be great fun. We love our Meetups so much we've invited three of our international Meetup hosts to share their experiences of running a meetup and give you an opportunity to learn what it's like attending a meetup or running your own. In this session, you'll be able to meet Hilary, learn about her story and ask her anything about the famous Detroit Meetup.

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar.

Speaker

Hilary Weaver

Sr. Quality Engineer

Hilary Weaver is a Sr. Quality Engineer near Detroit. She is a mentor to her fellow testers, makes friends with developers, and focuses a lot on API testing, and diving into the code as a tester. Hilary has always been passionate about improving the relationships between developers and testers, and evangelizes software testing as a rewarding, viable career. She runs the Motor City Software Testers user group, working to build a community of quality advocates. Hilary tweets (a lot) as @g33klady, and you can find her thoughts and experiences in the testing world, at g33klady.com.

Simon Prior

AMA: Cork Meetup with Conor Fitzgerald - Day One

What

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Topics

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask the speaker those burning questions you got from their workshop, talk, activity or challenge. Or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Simon Prior

Head of QA @ easyJet

Conor Fitzgerald

What

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Topics

AMA: Power of Habit with Alex Reynolds

Description

Meetups are an essential part of our Testing community. Run by dedicated and passionate testers, Meetups are a great place to network and learn and can be great fun. We love our Meetups so much we've invited three of our international Meetup hosts to share their experiences of running a meetup and give you an opportunity to learn what it's like attending a meetup or running your own. In this session, you'll be able to meet Conor, learn about his story and ask him anything about the famous Cork Meetup.

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar.

Speaker

Conor Fitzgerald

Engineering Manager - Quality

Conor Fitzgerald is a Quality Advocate with over 15 years of experience. He is passionate about whole team testing and working with teams on quality improvements. Currently, he is working as an Engineering Manager(Quality) for Poppulo| FWI in Cork, Ireland. He has spoken at a number of conferences in recent years, including SoftTestDublin, TestBash, OnlineTestConf, AgileLeanInternational, Romania Testing Conference and RebelCon. Conor is an active member of the test community and is a Co-Founder of the Ministry of Testing Cork. Previous positions included Test Consultant, Test Lead/Manager, and Automation focused roles. These positions were held in a wide variety of industries from embedded systems to financial systems with companies ranging from startups to large multinationals such as Intel. Occasionally blogs at conorfi.com and frequently tweets at @conorfi.

What

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Topics

#learn

AMA: Performance Testing 101 with Marie Drake

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask the speaker those burning questions you got from their workshop, talk, activity or challenge. Or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Alex Reynolds

Quality Engineering Community Lead at Lloyds Bank

What

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Topics

AMA: Visual Ways of Working with Robbie Falck

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask the speaker those burning questions you got from their workshop, talk, activity or challenge. Or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Marie Cruz

Developer Advocate

What

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Topics

AMA: Cork Meetup with Conor Fitzgerald - Day Two

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask the speaker those burning questions you got from their workshop, talk, activity or challenge. Or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Robbie Falck

QA Lead

Conor Fitzgerald

What

Ask Me Anything

Topics

Description

Meetups are an essential part of our Testing community. Run by dedicated and passionate testers, Meetups are a great place to network and learn and can be great fun. We love our Meetups so much we've invited three of our international Meetup hosts to share their experiences of running a meetup and give you an opportunity to learn what it's like attending a meetup or running your own. In this session, you'll be able to meet Conor, learn about his story and ask him anything about the famous Cork Meetup.

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar.

Speaker

Conor Fitzgerald

Engineering Manager - Quality

AMA: SDLC with Dan Ashby

What

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Topics

#models

AMA: Storytelling as a Tester with Gareth Waterhouse

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask the speaker those burning questions you got from their workshop, talk, activity or challenge. Or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Dan Ashby

Director of Quality Services

What

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Topics

#influence

AMA: User Driven Test Reports with Lewis Prescott

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask the speaker those burning questions you got from their workshop, talk, activity or challenge. Or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Gareth Waterhouse

Principal Test Engineer

What

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Topics

AMA: Detroit Meetup with Hilary Weaver-Robb - Day Two

#test-reporting

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask the speaker those burning questions you got from their workshop, talk, activity or challenge. Or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Lewis Prescott

QA Lead

Hilary Weaver

What

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Topics

AMA: Threat Modelling with Richard Adams

Description

Meetups are an essential part of our Testing community. Run by dedicated and passionate testers, Meetups are a great place to network and learn and can be great fun. We love our Meetups so much we've invited three of our international Meetup hosts to share their experiences of running a meetup and give you an opportunity to learn what it's like attending a meetup or running your own. In this session, you'll be able to meet Hilary, learn about her story and ask her anything about the famous Detroit Meetup.

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar.

Speaker

Hilary Weaver

Sr. Quality Engineer

What

Ask Me Anything

Topics

AMA: Sauce Labs with Andy Wyatt - Day Two

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask the speaker those burning questions you got from their workshop, talk, activity or challenge. Or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Richard Adams

Senior Quality Engineer

Andy Wyatt

AMA: Virtuoso with James Bent - Day Two

What

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Topics

#mobile

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask our awesome sponsors those burning questions you got from the activity or challenge, or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Andy Wyatt

Manager Solutions Engineering, EMEA

James Bent

What

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Topics

AMA: Hidden Logic of Thinking for Testers with Nithin SS

#ui-automation

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask our awesome sponsors those burning questions you got from the activity or challenge, or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

James Bent

VP of Solution Engineering

AMA: Would Heu-risk It? with Lena Wiberg

What

Ask Me Anything

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask the speaker those burning questions you got from their workshop, talk, activity or challenge. Or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Nithin SS

Head of QA

What

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Topics

#heuristics

AMA: useMango with Ola Omiyale - Day Two

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask the speaker those burning questions you got from their workshop, talk, activity or challenge. Or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Lena Nyström

Engineering manager, Author and Public Speaker

Ola Omiyale

What

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Topics

AMA: A Career in Consulting as a Tester - Global Logic with Thomas, Luke and Samer - Day Two

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask our awesome sponsors those burning questions you got from the activity or challenge, or just come in and say hi

Speaker

Ola Omiyale

Customer Relationship Executive

Currently helping companies speed and scale up their testing through codeless test automation. An adovcate for individuals with different skillset's participating in the test automation process!

Thomas Shipley, Luke Masterman, Samer Naqvi

What

Ask Me Anything

Topics

AMA: Postman with Arlemi Turpault - Day Two

Description

A Career in Consulting as a Tester

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask our awesome sponsors those burning questions you got from the activity or challenge, or just come in and say hi!

Speakers

Thomas Shipley

Head of QA @ GlobalLogic

Luke Masterman

Test Architect

Worked in test automation for 9 years covering all aspects of functional testing

Samer Naqvi

Senior Delivery Consultant

Arlémi Turpault

AMA: Athens Meetup with Petros Plakogiannis - Day Two

What

Ask Me Anything

Topics

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask our awesome sponsors those burning questions you got from activity, challenge, or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Arlémi Turpault

Head of Developer Advocacy

Petros Plakogiannis

What

Ask Me Anything

Topics

AMA: Test Automation with Christian Baumann

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar.

Speaker

Petros Plakogiannis

Test Team Lead

What

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Topics

AMA: Quality Coaching with Vernon Richards & Stuart Day

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask the speaker those burning questions you got from their workshop, talk, activity or challenge. Or just come in and say hi!

Speaker

Christian Baumann

Principal Software Tester

AMA: Exploratory Accessibility Testing with Louise Gibbs

What

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Topics

Description

The AMAs will be happening in the Circle Bar and each session will be split into three 20-minute sessions.

This is your opportunity to ask the speaker those burning questions you got from their workshop, talk, activity or challenge. Or just come in and say hi!

Speakers

Stuart Day

Head of Quality - Dunelm

Vernon Richards

Quality Coach / Senior Quality Engineer

What

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Topics