Learning Through Exploration, A Conversation - Alexandra Schladebeck, Zeb Ford-Reitz & Huib Schoots

Talk Description

Exploratory testing remains misunderstood and underappreciated by many in the testing and development communities. For example:

• Many people know the name but can't say what it means (beyond standard definitions)
• There are relatively few people who choose to make it their speciality
• Requests for test services are usually for manual or automated test case creation/execution- even when the project will not benefit from them.
• Many developers don't understand the value and necessity of it and therefore don't practice and improve.

This is a worrying and also interesting state of affairs. Worrying because exploratory testing is a key part of good quality strategies - and the only way to identify unknown risks. It's interesting because everything we do in software development is exploratory: we work iteratively/incrementally in agile because we gain new insights while working. It's remarkable that we don't already have a catalogue of exploratory activities within software development, and talk more about how to improve our exploration in general.

In this interview hosted by Huib Schoots, Zeb (a developer) and Alex (a tester) will seek to change this. We will look at exploration as a human activity that has links to agility and experimenting. We'll talk about exploratory activities in the development process - including requirements gathering, coding and debugging, testing (at various layers) and even monitoring and observing. Through stories and examples, we’ll look at exploring from various angles, and give participants motivation and techniques to improve exploration (testing and other activities) within their teams.

By the end of this session, you'll be able to:

Alex Schladebeck

Head of Quality / CEO

Alex is a passionate tester whose favourite topics are quality, agility and humans. She is CEO and Head of Quality at Bredex GmbH. In these roles, she supports colleagues, customers and teams on their journey to better quality - be it in products, in processes or in their communication. In previous roles, she was responsible for enabling teams and growing quality. Now she enables others to do that work, and works on nurturing a system in the company where everyone can flourish. Alex views the world through the curious eyes of a tester and loves learning new things. She shares her knowledge and experience in workshops, coaching sessions and as a speaker or keynote speaker at conferences.

Zeb Ford-Reitz

Technical Lead

Zeb is a software developer and technical lead at BREDEX GmbH in Germany. He is a huge fan of open source, and was an active Eclipse committer for many years. He works closely with testers in his teams to share understanding about quality and risk. He has a knack for effective code documentation and is not fond of acronyms.

Huib Schoots

He/Him

Quality Coach, Agile Expert, Change Maker, Product Improver, Problem Solver, Tester, Scrum Master

Passionate about learning, mindset, thinking, behavior, collaboration, testing and quality. Empowering teams through connection, innovation, facilitation, coaching, enabling, and teaching.