Questions are powerful. Learn to use them workshop - 22nd October

At agile tour London I'll be giving a 1 day workshop focused around questions.

Here's the abstract:

Questions are a powerful tool, and good questioning skills are extremely important for both people in teams. Through effective use, we can

• Save ourselves time and effort.
• Encourage participation and teamwork.
• Create outside-the-box thinking.
• Engage in more effective learning.
• Start decision making conversations.
• Improve our inquiry skills.

During this practical interactive session we will explore the power of questions and their ability to make us and others think by looking at items such as:

• Listening to set the questions.
• Use of probing questions.
• Open and closed questions.
• Constructive conversations
• Tone.
• Rephrasing..

We will do this with exercises and evaluating as we go.
Questions can help create and negate, learn and teach, and stop and start projects, connections and relationships. 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.
I use open questions daily to gather more information, open questions give people no other choice but to churn things over in their head before they respond.
I also use open questions when I pair (with developers) as it helps them defocus for a minute while they answer me and helps them realise what is going wrong as their sub-conscious churns away. I have tone questions used on me, tone can have a huge impact, a one word question and change of tone can change anything. For example, the question with the right tone for 'Really?'. My wife uses it daily to devastating effect, I immediately stop whatever I'm doing.
Questions are used to help my preparation. I question myself with:

• What is my awareness?
• What is my intent?
• What is my motion?

I have to step outside my interpretation with questions so as to not get trapped by asking myself things like 'What happened to make me interpret it this way?

London Tester Gathering events for your calendar

London Tester Gathering dates for your calendar


London Tester Gathering - Weds 6th April - Shooting Star
Sponsor and guest: Michael Bolton
http://events.linkedin.com/London-Tester-Gathering-Weds-6th-April/pub/539524

London Tester Gathering - Thurs 5th May - Mozilla evening
Sponsor and guest: Mozilla Testers
http://events.linkedin.com/London-Tester-Gathering-Thurs-5th-May/pub/601378

London Tester Gathering 2 Days of Free Workshops
2 days of free workshops and talks.
Sign up here: http://skillsmatter.com/event/agile-testing/london-tester-gathering-2011
Programme here: http://bit.ly/fpF2nr
LI event here: http://events.linkedin.com/London-Tester-Gathering-2-Days-Workshops/pub/545939

London Tester Gathering - Tues 17th May - Shooting Star
http://events.linkedin.com/London-Tester-Gathering-Tues-17th-May/pub/587090

WTF? I've organised a testing conference. How'd that happen? Part 2.

So the next step is for your wife to tell you that you're actually on holiday on the date you've chosen.
Speak the Skillsmatter and set another date.
Decide that if you are going to do it it'll be free.
Start mentioning the workshops idea to people and ask around to see who is interested in running one. Utilise what you have available, Twitter, Linkedin, Meetup, your contacts, etc.
Start mentioning that sponsorship would be nice.
Expect a whole lot of none responses as you're asking for money and no (direct) money will be made from this and people will have to give up their own time.
Receive a whole lot of responses and realise that your original idea of 3 rooms running parallel is now blown out the window as you've heard a lot of really interesting workshop ideas and you:
a. Want to attend them all
b. Are quite sure a lot of other people will want to attend them.

Start 'advertising' the workshops.
Speak to Skillsmatter and hear the good news that there are more rooms available so you now have 5 rooms.
Start chasing up workshop descriptions - Start this as early as possible, it'll take longer than you think.

WTF? I've organised a testing conference. How'd that happen?

A while back I decided that while there are plenty of great talks around at conferences, meetups, etc we need more practical stuff. I want to go somewhere and do stuff, test something, setup something, work with people on something. I imagine it's the same kind of thought that launched the Eurostar Test Labs

I am unbelievably lazy so I did nothing more than think about it. I thought I would borrow the TMF format and have 3 tracks running and people could just go and pick what they were interested in.

I was lucky enough to be able to attend Liz Keogh's Agile, Lean & BDD Course and I happened to mentioned my idea to Wendy who advised Skillsmatter would be happy to help out. I thought nothing more of it.

Wendy tells me she has created a page on the Skillsmatter site. A page! A actual real bona fide website page! What could I do? There was no going back now!

TBC