March #TesterGathering random photos.

Random photos from the March London Tester Gathering.

Inbetween talks - Agile Dev Practices 2013

So #agiledevprac has been and gone.

I had a great time.


During the Monday my fellow speaker Ant and I had a chance to hang out with Maik Nogens.

Maik's a great guy, if you see him (you can't miss him, he's 8ft tall, although everybody looks 8ft tall when they are standing next to me) say hi.

We had a walk around Potsdam and sampled a couple of Bratwurst.  This is my second time in Potsdam and I think it's a great place, nice, quiet and picturesque.

On the first night there was a speakers dinner at Walhalla.

Jose stood up and gave a short speech welcoming everybody.

The food itself was OK, the company was great.

Ant and I had both chosen a fish dish which came with bacon sauce. BACON. SAUCE. How could you not?!

We'd been waiting and looking forward to it for weeks. We'd been imaging all sorts of amazing creations.

It was one of the biggest disappointments ever. It is a cream sauce with bits of bacon in it.

Ant and I shared a table with a number of people and we spent the most time talking to Ray Scott and Vagif Abilov.

I've come across Ray and Vagif before in my travels but have never had a chance to sit down and have a proper talk.

It was great to do so.

After dinner there was a short visit to the hotel bar and then off to sleep.


Over the next few days there were:

• Pop-up coding dojos.

• Conversations all around with people from the world over.
• I would love to list the names of everybody I had a conversation with but there are too many.
• Ant drank his first ever full pint of beer, followed by his second, and third, etc.

 

• A social dinner event complete with improv comedy troupe.
• Ant and I were on the same table and again had a number of diners with us. During dinner we spoke mostly with Ray Scott and Krystian Kaczor. 
• After the meal we spoke with a few more people.
• A group of us went for a meal, sat down and realised none of us speak German.
• We had 2 English guys, 1 Hungarian, 2 Spanish guys and 3 Russians.
• Luckily, one of the waiters spoke Russian so we were able to get a meal organised.

 

Unfortunately I didn't get the names of two of the (Russian) guys at dinner, the rest are:

@carlosble

@brightoniant

@ooobject

@gasparnagy

@vgaltes

It was great to catch up with some people, meet new people, have some great meals and have some great discussions.


In my opinion, over the next few days there were some good talks, some OK talks and some talks that didn't quite work.

Conferences are essentially a meeting of people who want to contribute, teach, learn and share.

It's not just attending the talks.

Make the effort to meet new people and talk and you will get untold value from a conference.

London Tester Gathering - Tues 19th March - The Shooting Star

The March London Tester Gathering will be on Tuesday 19th March at The Shooting Star.

Address:
125-129 Middlesex St, London E1 7JF

The plan:
We have a room from 6:00pm onwards

Sponsorship:







Guest:
Michael Bolton

RSVP.

Hope to see you there.

Cheers and kind regards

Tony Bruce

Reasons to be at TestBash 2.0

Program

• I'll be there!
• Talkers from all over the world.
• Attendees from all over the world.
• You can share.
• You can learn.
• You can teach.
• Did I already mention I'll be there?
• You can meet.
• You can discuss.
• Ministry Of Testing put on good events.
• You can talk authors of a number of books:
•  Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams
• The Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar: How Self-education and the Pursuit of Passion Can Lead to a Lifetime of Success
• Bepaal je koers! Toekomst en Trends in Testen
• Brighton is a great place to visit.
• It's cheap!
• There's a get together the night before.
• Apparently some people feel the need to run (for no reason) so there's a joint run in the morning.
• There's a leancoffee.
• There is a chance to do some really short talks.
• Good way to do your first talk.
• Good way to raise a point.
• Good way to start discussion.

Check out Make The Most Out Of TestBash 2.0

Don't miss out, you'll be grumpy if you do!

London Tester Gathering - Thurs 7th February - The Shooting Star

The February London Tester Gathering will be on Thursday 7th February at The Shooting Star.

Address:
125-129 Middlesex St, London E1 7JF

The plan:
We have a room from 6:00pm onwards

Talks:
Are we negative people? - Tony Bruce

Being a SDET at Skype - Martin Hall

  Sponsorship:









RSVP:

Hope to see you there.

Cheers and Kind Regards

Tony Bruce.

London Tester Gathering - Thurs 13th September - The Shooting Star

The September London Tester Gathering will be on Thursday 13th September at The Shooting Star.

Address:
Function Room 125-129 Middlesex Street London E1 7JF 0207 929 6818

The plan:
We have the function room from 5:30pm onwards.

Talks:
Neotys demo

Extending the page object pattern with widgets and reflection - Rob Fahey

Negotiation - Patrick Esson

http://www.aransa.co.uk

Sponsorship:
Neotys


RSVP here.

Hope to see you there.

Cheers and Kind Regards

Tony Bruce.

London Tester Gathering - Weds 22nd August - The Shooting Star

London Tester Gathering - Weds 22nd August - Shooting Star

The August London Tester Gathering will be on Wednesday 22nd August at The Shooting Star.

Address:

Function Room 125-129 Middlesex Street London E1 7JF 0207 929 6818

The plan:

We have the function room from 5:30pm onwards.

Talks:

Who we are - Levy Associates

Why do we need SDETs (Software Developers in Test)? - Kostas Mamalis & Kingsley Hendrickse

Sponsorship:

Levy Associates

RSVP

Hope to see you there.

Cheers and Kind Regards

Tony Bruce.

Photos from past Gatherings

Agile Practitioners meetup - 'In Theory and in Practice'

Last night I attended an Agile Practitioners meetup where Daryn* gave a talked titled 'InTheory and in Practice'.

Here are my notes from last night and the Italics are my thoughts

He took us through a recent project (for a client) to build a Excel plug-in which connected to a third party.

Didn't really go into complexity, wonder if the same approach would work with a larger team.

TDD and BDD were used

BDD details weren't really discussed but it sounded more like acceptance tests were written rather then 'full' BDD.

There were 2 Developers and Daryn acted as a sort of co-ordinator.

The Deverlopers were able to practice pair programming and found having to voice and explain/justify your ideas a little odd at first but found great benefit by doing it.

Teaching/learning and writing better code

Code reviews were carried out by Developers on other projects.

Daryn also talked briefly abou the NUMMI case study, I'm not goint to write anything about that as there is loads of stuff around.

It's a good case study and I've not researched it enough but I wonder about the variables such as if the improvements were partly due to there being nowhere else for people to work and does that matter (in terms of the fact there were huge improvements)

On the project the first thing they talked about was testing, or how much/what could be automated.

They used Specflow for automation and I think Coded UI may have been mentioned as well.

            Were other options explored?

They were given uses stories which contained impementation details and luckily they were trusted enough to re-write the stories and change them to just the what rather than the what and how.  This meant they could look at different ways of implementation and were able to simplify the solutions.

            Were they written with the people who write the original stories?

They were able to decided at the last responsible minute and Daryn shared some pointers:

* Share partially completed designs
* Colloborate
* Develop a sense of how to absorb change

            What did they do to develop that sense? Or how was it handled?

All the stories were based on business value only and nothing had been written for the implentation, frameworks, etc. Essentially all the kind of stuff that becomes tech debt.

This also meant that this work wasn't visible.

            It was mentioned that this wasn't a issue, be interesting to know why this wasn't a issue.

A couple of burn down charts were shown and generally speaking they were pretty smooth and showed improvement.

Excel was used as the overall management and data collection tool

Of high importance was the people side of things, building a good relationship with the PO and the third party.

Daryn shared some general project pointers:

* Don't do too much upfront
* Too large a context change/switch can cause performance hits, ie, work on 1 project, don't work on multiple projects.

Data, information and quotes were resourced from Jerry Weinberg, Lean SoftwareDevelopment*, The New New Product Development Game and various conferences.

*Didn't get Daryn's surname. 

*Not sure which actual book it was.