Presentations and materials from the London Tester Gathering Workshops 2016

#ltgworkshops for 2016 have just passed.

There are some photos if you'd like to have a look.


And here are the presentations and materials:

Programme - 2016.

Hands-on Screen Reader Workshop
Steve Green

Testing web services
www.mwtestconsultancy.co.uk/presentations/understanding_web_services/

www.mwtestconsultancy.co.uk/presentations/what_makes_a_service_restful/

www.mwtestconsultancy.co.uk/presentations/observing_rest/

https://github.com/mwinteringham/restful-booker

Mark Winteringham

Dimensions of Testability
Maria Kedemo

Agile Exploratory Testing
Shared under this Creative Commons License

Agile Exploratory Testing van Jean-Paul Varwijk is in licentie gegeven volgens een Creative Commons Naamsvermelding-NietCommercieel-GeenAfgeleideWerken 4.0 Internationaal-licentie
Jean-Paul Varwijk

Better Check
Peter Houghton

Fast Feedback And Fun Using Ruby
Fast Feedback Using Ruby Book
Stephan Kämper

Questions are powerful. Learn to use them.
Tony Bruce

Get Into Coaching And Mentoring
Dan Ashby and Tony Bruce

Write more robust and extensible BDD tests faster with Serenity and the Journey/Screenplay Pattern
John Smart and Jan Molak

From Example Mapping to Serenity
Kishen Simbhoedatpanday and Arjan Blok

Blast from the past: BDD Lessons Learned

How the London #TesterGathering sponsorship works

In order to save constantly repeating myself here is how the London #TesterGathering works.

If you want to sponsor it is a minimum of £600 (+VAT). You can however put in whatever amount you like (or top it up on the night).
You can either be invoiced or place a card behind the bar.
This goes to the venue hire. This may vary, it will be dependent on the venue cost.

If there are two willing sponsors there may be events with joint sponsorship, the amount is the same for both sponsors and it all goes behind the bar.

For this you will have:

• access to a room of eager to listen people who work in software development, most of them will be Testers.

Thanks to @stephenjanaway for the picture.

• a chance to get people interested in whatever you are sharing with us.
• a chance to launch something.
• a chance to discuss what you have directly with your target market and get direct feedback.
• association with the London #TesterGathering.
• a pleasant evening with a lot of discussion.

There are 2 x 15-20 minute slots. Unless there are 2 sponsors in which case there is 1 extra session.

• 1 is for the sponsor.
• 1 is for someone from the community who wants to share something.

There is a VGA projector and/or a HD TV.

If it's required there is a portable PA system.

A sponsor is a person or organisation who:

• Has something to sell. 
• Has a presentation they would like to deliver related to something they sell.
• Wants to talk about something related to who/what they work with.
• May have a presentation with company logos all over it.

A community speaker is a person who:

• Has something to share.
• Has something they want to ask.
• Is there as a person and not a representative of a company.
• Will not have company logos anywhere.
• Will not profit in any financial way from the presentation.

Generally the evening starts at 18:00 and the talks being at 19:00.

I post the event details to meetup.com and use Twitter/Linkedin/word of mouth to spread the word.

The Twitter hashtag is #testergathering.

It is generally held once a month in London venue.

Please contact Marisol if you'd like to know more.

'What is this Exploratory Testing Thing?' presentation given at Agile Tour London 2014

London #TesterGathering Workshops 2014 materials. #ltgworkshops

London #TesterGathering Workshops 2014 - Presentations and materials

Here are the some materials from the London #TesterGathering Workshops 2014.

Photos!

You can check out the full programme and podcosts here

The materials from 2013 are available here.

2015 is already on early bird sale. 

Exploratory Testing Session - Tony Bruce

Debugging, testing and hacking JavaScript Web Applications  Resources -  Carlos Ble and Jenny Mulholland


Testing Mobile Software - Stephen Janaway

Introduction to the WebDriver API - Richard Bradshaw
Java and C#

Making your WebDriver tests fast, portable and reliable - Mark Collin

Security Testing with OWASP ZAP: from zero to hero - Bill Matthews

London Tester Gathering Workshops 2014 - Exploratory Testing Session

One more question... slides from #CAST2014 workshop

Questions are a powerful tool, and good questioning skills are extremely important for both people and in testing. Through effective use, we can engage in more effective learning, create outside-the-box thinking and start decision making conversations. Tony will explore the power of questions and their ability to make us and others think by looking at items such as the use of probing questions, tone and rephrasing. He will work through exercises to allow participants to practice some of what they are learning. Participants will walk away with ideas on how to sharpen their questioning skills to a fine tool which can be used to transform their every conversation and to increase their testing thinking. Questions can help create and negate, learn and teach, and stop and start projects, connections and relationships. Add this ability to your tool set.

What Do Testers Do presentation - #rtc2014

This is my 'What Do Testers Do' presentation given at the Romanian Testing Conference 2014.


Create your own mind maps at MindMeister

I'm going to.....

So taking John's example I thought I'd share my plans for this year so far.

• I'm attending Test Bash 3 in Brighton in March.
• I'll be running a tutorial and giving a talk at Romanian Testing in May.
• Steve Green, Alan Richardson, James Lyndsay and I will be running Black Ops Testing in London in June. 
• I'll be running a workshop at CAST in New York in August.
• I'm organising (with Skillsmatter) and running a workshop at the Tester Gathering London Workshops in London in October.
• The London Tester Gathering will continue this year running roughly once a month.
• I am a judge for the Software Testing World Cup.

As far as I'm aware there are still tickets available for all but get in quick.

NB. Tickets not needed for the #TesterGathering

What do Testers do? presentation - #bddx

Adrian Rapan and I gave a joint presentation called 'What do Testers do?' at #bddx. At least that was the plan. Adrian fell ill and couldn't speak so I solo presented and tried to involved the audience in place of Adrian. The podcast is available on the Skillsmatter site. This is a ongoing project and any feedback is welcome. And the presentation is here
Create your own mind maps at MindMeister This is a ongoing project and any feedback is welcome.

Change how you change presentation - Agile Tour London 2013

Be a real team member - Agile Testing Days 2013 Presentation.

Create your own mind maps at MindMeister

Photos from #ltgw2013

Pictures from the London #TesterGathering Workshops.


Skillsmatter photos - 

Google + 

Facebook 

Carlos Ble photos -

Google + 

A few photos I took

Have you seen what is happening at The Wesley?

In a few weeks Agile Tour London 2013 will be upon us.

Agile Tour London is a conference, a part of the Global Agile Tour. Since its conception in 2008, it has become a hugely successful worldwide event spanning 30 different countries. The idea is simple yet powerful: create a world-wide network of local agile events open to everyone interested in Agility: From Confirmed Agile Practitioner to Agile Newbie.
Global Agile Tour has come to London for the first time this year. This event for agile enthusiasts is an international conference composed of several excellent Lectures and Workshops given by Speakers from the UK and abroad. You can check the program to discover all the talks.
The London edition will happen the Friday 1st November 2013 in The Wesley Hotel close Hudson Station and Saint Pancras.
The registration is open with regular tickets at the price of £100 Follow the @agiletourlondon on twitter and in linkedIn with the Agile Tour London Group

Check out the program!

Theory of Constraints and Agility
Craig Strong and Daryn Holmes

Agile Leadership
Alex Cuva

Discovering Scrum: An Introduction
Peter Stevens

Xanpan — a personal take on all things Agile
Allan Kelly

Frameworks: supporter and mischief-makers of Agile Development
Oliver Szymanski

So long, and thanks for all the tests
Seb Rose

The future is Agile
David Tanzer

The Emperor's New Clothes: Meaningful Interactions in Stressful Situations
Portia Tung

How to Develop Great Scrum Master
Ángel Medinilla

How to be agile in a waterfall company
Dror Helper

Code Dojo
Nigel Runnels-Moss
(Bring your laptop and your favorite IDE!)

XP at Unruly
Rachel Davies

Personal continuous improvement — a myth?
Brindusa Axon

Agile UX, Is Agile from Mars and UX from Venus?
Carl Myhill and Steve Hayes

Methodology Patterns: a Different Approach to Create a Methodology for Your Project
Giovanni Asproni

When TDD goes awry: Useless tests, infesting mocks and other horrors
Uberto Barbini

Change how you change
Tony Bruce

« We Do Agile ». Why Is It Difficult for Solution Centers to Be Agile?
Ernst Perpignand

Flow - an agile method for Devops
Steve Arnold


Not a day you want to miss. See you there.

BDD Lessons Learned - Skillsmatter skillscast

Recently I presented a talk with my colleague Ant on some lessons learned around working with BDD.

The podcast is here



A discussion on what can cause some issues when implementing BDD taken from personal experience.

Things like, in no particular order:

• Don’t rush into automation
• Don’t spend hours arguing about the correct language to use
• See what others are doing
• Write scenarios as a team
• Have the conversation
• Don’t add implementation details in scenarios
• Add tests to continuous integration process as early as possible
• Use your scenarios
• Include the SME (Subject Matter Expert)
• domain expert and customer
• Keep scenarios precise
• Use examples to reinforce the scenario
• Every scenario is negotiable and is subject to change at any time
• Your scenarios are your living documentation
• Make things visual
• Sign off scenarios
• Just do it.

Change the way you attempt change - Skillsmatter skillscast

Recently I presented a talk on Change.

Change the way you attempt change

http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/agile-scrum/change-the-way-you-attempt-change

We all have things we want to change, whether it's at work or personally and change is hard, in some cases seemingly impossible. This will be a chance for people to get together and discuss change.Looking at the psychology behind change. Focusing on case studies,research and personal experiences.
Looking at using the framework of 'Direct the rider, motivate the elephant, and shape the path' we'll discuss it's general use which we've all experienced and most likely not realised and look at how we can utilise it in our own lives.
Breaking down the framework we'll look at aspects such as :

• Finding the bright spots.
• Shrinking the change.
• Tweaking the environment.

What do you want to change? Let's get started

Here is a link to the Prezi

Reasons to be at Nxt Gen Testing

Program

• Interesting case studies ranging from Mobile Testing to large organisations adapting their testing to their new agileness.
• Me!
• You can meet.
• You can discuss.
• Talkers with all kinds of different experiences and contexts.
• Attendees from all over the world.
• You can share.
• You can learn.
• You can teach.
• I'll be there!
• Interesting round tables ranging from testing in the cloud to the future of testing.
• First time talkers as well as experienced talkers.
• A good range of topics.

I went to Mile High Agile 2013 and I liked it.

I went to Mile High Agile 2013 and I had a interesting time.

The Keynote was from Joe Justice who spread the word about Team Wikispeed: building a 100 MPG car using Agile & Lean methods
You get the drift of the talk from the title, it was great to see how far they've come using these methods and also how they are able to help others using the methods.

The Keynote was filmed but I don't know what happens with the recording, whether or not it's put online for public viewing.

Find out more about wikispeed.

I managed to catch Paul Rayner's DDD Workshop which I enjoyed.  I think it gave a good introduction and a few take aways to think about.

We worked through a exercise and we were working out our domain model.  I won't write down too much detail as I don't want to give it all away.

Paul's was the only session I managed to catch as I spent a lot of the day in the coaches clinic.

The coaches clinic is a great idea and the basic setup is that people can drop by a booth and book in some time with a coach to talk about about pretty much anything agile related.

Whether it is issues they are experiencing or things they are unsure of and so on.

I enjoyed the clinic and it was interesting to talk with people who needed help with some different areas.  I hope I was able to help with some things to take away and think about.

Some of the things we discussed ranged from whether or not to use Scrum or Kanban to how to get more out of Product Owners. 

While I didn't make many of the conference talks I definitely feel my time was well spent.

My thanks to Pete Behrens for inviting me to be a part of the clinic.

My own talk was at the end of the day and it was still a pretty full room which I was surprised about purely because usually some people have left by the last talk.

My talk was about Change and the Prezi is available.

I caught a glimpse of the feed back forms and it was a mixed bag which is pretty good, in my experience it's hard to have a talk that is going to reach everybody the same way.


I do wish that the people who didn't get much out of talks would offer more feedback.  It seemed like the people who got something out of the talk offered comments and the people who didn't just marked down a score and left it at that.
That makes it very hard to improve.

All in all a good day, had a lot of different conversations, hopefully gave some people some things to think about in both the clinic and my talk and met a lot of really dedicated people.

My thanks to agile Denver and all the volunteers for bringing me along for the ride.


After the conference I got to meet Lisa Crispin's donkeys , Ernst and Chester.

Matt Barcomb was also Lisa's guest and it was great to be able to spend time with Matt, Lisa, Bob (Lisa's husband) and Lisa and Bob's extended animal family.

It was great to meet Matt and I'm looking forward to his (and Jim Holmes's) session at Eurostar.

My thanks to Lisa and Bob for inviting us (my wife and me) over. They are fantastic hosts and we had a great time.

 Matt and Lisa

My wife Marisol

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