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The evening before TestBashX Edinburgh, we are going to be looking at the Power of Habits, which ties in nicely with the first-ever TestBash in Edinburgh!

This Pre-TestBash Meetup will be happening at the People's Postcode Lottery's office (28 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh EH2 4ET).

This month we are hosted by the amazing Post Code Lottery! Make sure you register your attendance here, so we know how many are coming.

Alex Reynolds is going to share how simple habits can develop, drive and support a learning culture for you and your team.

Join us as Alex brings to life the teachings from the masters of habits and habit research Dr 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.

Plan of Attack!
18:00 - Doors Open and Reception
19:00 - Power of Habit: Alex Reynolds
20:00 - Group Discussion
20:30 - End, maybe to the pub :)

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.

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To kick off TestBashX Edinburgh, Beth will be giving an original and interactive talk on a subject she's passionate about - Test Automation Portfolios.

If you've ever wondered what they are, when they are useful and how they could help you on your learning journey then come on down!

Takeaways

• Discuss the value a Test Automation Portfolio might hold for you
• Understand the different elements of a successful Test Automation Portfolio
• Design your very own Test Automation Portfolio Plan

Speaker

Beth Marshall

Senior Quality Engineer

Beth has been testing for the past 15 years, and has recently joined Ada Health as Senior Quality Engineer. Based in Leeds, Beth is a proud member of the global software testing community, and a regular blogger. She is also course tutor for a software testing bootcamp.

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In this session you will try out a variety of tests in Postman, demonstrating how you can build robust test suites for your APIs.

You'll author some test scripts, automate tests, and dynamically control workflows using the collection runner and scheduled monitors - and if you’re still hungry for more you’ll experiment with the CLI collection runner Newman!

What you'll learn in more depth:

• Author scripts to test API request responses.
• Run collections via the collection runner in Postman and/or on the command line using Newman.
• Control the flow of request execution via scripting.
• Use scripts and variables to pass data between requests.
• Use dynamic variables and/or mock servers to automate request data generation.
• Set up monitors to observe API behaviour.

Takeaways

• Use Postman API test and automation workflows in their development and deployment pipeline

Speaker

Arlemi Turpault

Head of Advocacy

Senior developer advocate at Postman, the API platform. I started my career as a software engineer working on various types of projects - from mobile applications to research and development for Augmented Reality solutions. I then naturally turned to developer relations as a strong advocate for great user experiences and access to knowledge.

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Where do you get your crazy ideas from? As testers we have a mental toolbox of test ideas, but how do we keep it fresh and expand it?

In this activity, learners will come up with as many different test ideas as possible in a short frame of time. We’ll then learn how we can expand our ideas with heuristics to help us identify new ideas to expand our testing.

Takeaways

• Discover new heuristics to expand your testing abilities

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Learn about coding concepts in a fun and interactive way as a team and complete as many challenges as you can.

In this activity you will have to arrange sections of written "code" to help the robot complete a challenge.  Once you have ‘developed’ the code you can test it and then submit it to the human compiler/robot (Our activity instructor). But, you only get one chance to submit the code! If its wrong its wrong (and our instructor is a stickler for syntax)
 

Takeaways

• Use basic code concepts to inform real world activities such as testing and development

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How does culture, process and collaboration impact how we deliver software? How can we work together to better improve the quality of our products and the quality of our testing?

In this activity, learners are given different roles and a task to create a Jenga tower. As we work to create a Jenga tower that doesn't fall over, we'll learn how collaboration is the key to success.

Takeaways

• Argue why collaboration is key to improving the quality of our products

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What would you do if you were presented with a system that has no clear inputs and outputs? How would you learn how the system works and how would you test it? One great place to start is by building a model of how the system works.

For this activity, you’ll explore a device using a range of different questions and tools. What you learn will be used to create a visual representation of how the application works. So that you can pick the right testing approaches to learn more.

Takeaways

• Construct a model of an application to help guide testing

Speaker

Mark Winteringham

OpsBoss

Mark Winteringham is a tester, toolsmith and the Ministry of Testing OpsBoss with over 10 years experience providing testing expertise on award-winning projects across a wide range of technology sectors including BBC, Barclays, UK Government and Thomson Reuters. He is an advocate for modern risk-based testing practices and trains teams in Automation in Testing, Behaviour Driven Development and Exploratory testing techniques. He is also the co-founder of Ministry of Testing Essentials a community raising awareness of careers in testing and improving testing education. You can find him on Twitter @2bittester or at mwtestconsultancy.co.uk / automationintesting.com

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Several years ago I wanted to transition from Traditional Testing to Modern Testing.

My goal was to no longer be a safety net for teams, break the cycle of being the “lone tester” and guide teams towards shared responsibility for quality. Through a variety of painful testing experiences I knew what didn’t work but was struggling to find new and better approaches.

Throughout this journey I have experimented, learnt many lessons and embraced many concepts. Two of those key concepts were Whole Team Testing (Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory) and The Modern Testing Principles (Alan Page and Brent Jensen).

These concepts evolve testers to the next level so that their teams embrace whole team  quality.

Personally it helped me undertake changes such as no longer being a safety net for the team, embracing lean principles and ensuring the team made data-driven decisions. Embracing these concepts accelerated my development to becoming a Modern Tester, influenced how I lead a team of distributed testers, and ultimately helped improve the quality culture of teams.

In this talk I will openly share successes, failures, and plans for the future.

Takeaways

• An Understanding of Traditional Testing, Agile Testing and Modern Testing
• An understanding of the three phases of a tester’s career, executor, partner and influencer and how to transition between each phase
• An understanding of Whole Team Testing and the 7 Principles of Modern Testing, and the huge benefits that can be gained from these approaches
• Practical examples of activities to move you towards modern testing, and future-proofing your career

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.

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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!

The host 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!

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What better way to finish the day than to warm down with a post-TestBash Meetup?

We will be staying in the same venue, Brewhemia for some food and drinks, thanks to our Personal Trainer Sponsor Postman and our Warmdown Sponsors Mailinator and Harvey Nash!