Tag: Agile Testing Days

Agile Testing Days 2023 – A Summary

Conferences Learning Testing Uncategorized No Comments
The word/hashtag '#AGILETD' stands in 3D on the stage in the foreground. Behing it there is a statue of a unicorn.In the background a graphical image is on the printed background of the stage.
The Agile Testing Days stage

Day ‘0’: Tutorial & Evening Keynote

Note: I denote this as day zero since the conference starts counting the conference days, with ‘day one’ being the first day after the tutorial day.

As every year, the Agile Testing Days start with a tutorial day. I chose ‘Breaking into AI and Machine Learning’ by Tariq King. The tutorial followed a top-down approach. We did not have to (re-) learn linear algebra and the like before getting started. Instead, after a brief introduction to the topic, we could work on an example task: Classifying irises. A CSV file containing typical attributes of various flower species was used to create a model that could classify a flower as one of the species the model was trained on. Tariq introduced this as the ‘Hello world of AI’.

We saw how overfitting a model can cause issues when a model is used with new data it wasn’t trained on. This happens when the model matches the test data (nearly) perfectly, which usually causes larger misclassifications when new data is put into the model.

We also learned how models can be trained on images to classify them. This is the next step since it requires processing much more data.

Then ChatGPT was introduced. While I am still a bit sceptical about some of its output since it’s known to (for example) ‘hallucinate’ citations for scientific papers. Yet, I am impressed with what can be achieved when it’s provided with enough data and prompts tuned to its needs.

In the first keynote, Maaike Brinkhof wrapped the experiences in her software testing career in the story of a role-playing game. In this setting, she met increasingly hard-to-conquer ‘bosses’. Inspiring, entertaining – and providing input for the following keynotes. In other words, It opened my mind for the conference to come.

Day 1 – No Overnight Sucess & Sociocracy

In the day’s first keynote, Kristel Kruustuk presented her thoughts about ‘10x Software Testing‘. My takeaway was this: You don’t become a ’10× tester’ overnight. Instead, it requires persistence and regular training. This matched nicely with my personal experience and is linked to one of my sessions this year.

The next session I attended was CraigRisi’s ‘Becoming an Open Sourcerer‘. He explained what teams should consider when they use open-source software. He also discussed the advantages and potential disadvantages of using open-source software. Finally, we learned about contributing to open-source projects. While contributing code changes is likely the most common way to contribute, providing documentation is another essential aspect, as are providing and improving bug reports and even (automated) tests.

The next keynote, ‘Could Agile Testers Help Debug Management?‘ by John Buck, was about debugging organisations. I particularly like his explanation of consent:

Consent means “Good enough for now, safe enough to try”

John Buck, Agile Testing Days 2023


As a tester, I’m unsure how to use this to debug management, and I will admit that I haven’t tried it yet.

Day 2 – Workshop & Infotainment

I missed the first keynote of the day since the next scheduled time slot included my workshop ‘Fun with U̡̟ͩ̊̏ͬͯni͑c͐̀͢od̲̎ͅḕ̶̩͙͆‘. Much to my pleasure, it was well attended, and folks were surprised at how bad some software is with processing Unicode. As Maaike tweeted:

Or, as Elizabeth Zagroba puts it:

After collecting my workshop material and winding down, I attended the keynote ‘Everyone is a Leader‘ by Zuzi Šochová. I liked how easy it was to follow along and the message that everyone can be a leader – at some time, for some topic. Leadership doesn’t have to be assigned but can be assumed temporarily when it makes sense.

The following two keynotes were mindblowing! Dr. Rochelle Carr requested the audience to ‘MOVE THAT WALL‘. This talk was loud and inspiring and made me think about which walls I have that I may want to move – or tear down entirely.

‘Don’t go breaking my code‘, by Lena Nyström & Samuel Nitsche, was a keynote in a musical or rock opera format: Loud, entertaining, and fun. It also explained where and why testers and developers have different points of view. Not only that, they also demonstrated ways to get along with each other better.

I ended the day by spending time at the Agile Testing Days Book Fair, organised by Tobias Geyer and Maik Nogens. Thankfully, I got the books I was looking for: Zuzi Šochvá’s ’The Agile Leader’ and John Buck’s ‘We The People’. They were even kind enough to sign the books for me. Thank you!

Day 3 – Conflict Resolution, Micropowers & Judgment Day

In the morning keynote ‘A Fighting Chance – Learning the Art of Conflict Resolution‘, Alex Schladebeck presented pitfalls to avoid when dealing with conflict and good ways to deal with them. Planned as a pair keynote, the second speaker, Sophie Küster, couldn’t be at the conference. Sophie, you were missed, and we all hope you’re back next year! My key takeaway: Noticing that someone perceives a conflict goes a long way to mitigating it. – Especially if the affected parties know about the pitfalls, such as saying, ‘You always/never do XY’.

After this, Eveline Moolenaars and I prepared our talk ‘Micropowers: Learn to Speak Up and Be Heard‘. This was about our shared experience of recovering from cancer and its treatment and how that helped us to start asking for help – and helping others. We found the term ‘superpower’ intimidating and came up with the term ‘micropower’. We defined this as an ability one can trust that helps to act when we see things that should be changed.

In the morning keynote, ’A Fighting Chance – Learning the Art of Conflict Resolution’, Alex Schladebeck presented pitfalls to avoid when facing conflicts and good ways to deal with them. Planned as a pair keynote, the second speaker, Sophie Küster, couldn’t be at the conference. Sophie, you were missed, and we all hope you’re back next year! My takeaway: Noticing that someone perceives a conflict goes a long way to mitigating it. – Especially if the affected parties know about the pitfalls, such as saying, ‘You always/never do XYZ’.

After this, Eveline Moolenaars and I prepared our talk ‘Micropowers: Learn to Speak Up and Be Heard’. This was about our shared experience of recovering from cancer and its treatment and how that helped us to start asking for help – and helping others. We found the term ‘superpowers’ intimidating and came up with the word ‘micropower’. We defined this as an ability one can trust that helps to act when we see things that should be changed.

The keynote ‘Wait! That’s Not Tested’ by Heather Reid introduced the idea that not all things need to be tested. We need to consider time, cost and risk when testing software. And since there is never enough time to test everything anyway, we must make bets. This connects nicely to John Buck’s definition of consent: ‘Good enough for now, safe enough to try’.

The keynote, ‘The Rise of Generative AI: Judgment Day’ by Tariq King, was the perfect ending to the official program since it nicely connected to my tutorial day. He presented content (paintings and music) in pairs: One an original from a human artis, the other one created by AI is the style of that artist. The audience was tasked to tell which one was the original and which one the ‘copy’. – I found it shocking that we, the audience, did not perform particularly well.

My overall impression of the Agile Testing Days: It was a very well-planned conference, with sessions that connected ideas and concepts. I am already looking forward to Agile Testing Days 2024 – and have many ideas for proposals already. 

Thank you to everyone I have met and talked with this year. I hope to see you again in 2024.

Agile Testing Days 2022

Conferences Feedback No Comments

It’s that season again: I attended the 2022 edition of the Agile Testing Days. There are already blog posts by Lisi Hocke ‘Agile Testing Days 2022 – The Unicorn Land We Build Together‘ and Stéphanie Desby ‘What I’ve learned at Agile Testing Days 2022‘. They already cover a lot of the remarkable sessions – and really, I think there’s no replacement to attend this conference in person. I’ll focus on the few things I find particularly noteworthy.

I arrived the day before the conference started and went to the gym & pool area first. After a 5½ hour drive through changing weather conditions (snow, fog, hail, sunshine, rain, more snow, sleet, and finally some more sunshine), this is just the right thing for me to shake off the stress.

Tutorial Day ‘Problem Solving with Agile Thinking and Practices‘ with Ben Linders

I very much enjoyed this well organised tutorial. Ben presented several way to find problems and then solve them. This included some role playing and games. What I appreciate: We got all the material needed to use the games in our projects as well as his ebook ‘Impediments – Problem? What Problem?’. That’s going to be so useful when applying the exercises in my projects – or playing the game with my teams (when I will meet teams in person).

The day was made even better, since I received the confirmation that I am booked for my next project. This is especially nice, since I have worked with the team already and like it a lot!

Day 1

I found Lily Higham’s talk ‘Testing the BBC World Service‘ exciting, since she explained how her team has to cover an incredibly large number of systems, languages and devices. One important insight: ‘Test with real devices’. Also remarkable: She noted how the BBC has to deal with being blocked in some countries and how, in some cases, professional smugglers help spreading the news anyway. No details about this were shared for a good reason. We were advised against trying the smuggling ourselves.

Dermot Canniffe presented ‘BDD And The Sleepy Developer‘, and made the point about the effects a sleep disorder can have during work incredibly well.

During the OpenSpace on this day we shared some information about Mastodon – and what to consider when joining it. My point of view: Two things are important:

  1. The server you chose
  2. The account name

While I didn’t use them in the Open Space, here are slides I prepared just in case:

For easy reference, here are the links used in the slides:

As is a tradition by now the first day ended with a themed costume party. This year the ‘dress code’ was ‘Fairytales’. This is also the Award Night to celebrate MIATPP (Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person) of the year, this time won by Janet Gregory. Congratulations!

Day 2

On this day, I missed quite a few sessions I wanted to attend, since I held a workshop “Fast Feedback Using Ruby”. With about 10 people attending it was just the right size to help with the many things that can (and will) go wrong in a workshop where coding is a major part. Being (maybe over-) prepared helped a lot: While I had some material prepared to be downloaded, I knew (from experience in an earlier year) that conference WiFi may – or may not – work well. I now bring my own WiFi, so I have a back-up in case the conference one doesn’t work so well. I also had the downloadable material on a tiny small local web server – and a USB stick. Yes, I was over prepared, very likely.

In case you considered this workshop, but attended another session: There is an ebook(let) available on LeanPub, which covers the workshop. And there still are a few coupons let to grab it for free: https://leanpub.com/fastfeedbackusingruby/c/ATD-2022. Additionally there is a GitHub repository at https://github.com/s2k/fastfeedbackusingruby_workshop. The slides from the workshop are available as Fast Feedback Using Ruby slides.

The day ended with the first ‘AgileTD book fair‘ and the ‘Digesting Poets Society‘. I had the pleasure to present ‘Software People … Work From Home — Insights & Experiences From Planet Earth‘, a free ebook to which contributors from (so far) 28 countries and 33 authors provided text about life during the pandemic. Only while I was talking to some of the new readers, I realised that this wasn’t a writing task for me (I still have to add my contribution), but a project management job. Organising so many people from so many countries was – and still is – some work, but oh what a pleasure, too.

Day 3

What I remember from this day most of all, is what Stéphanie Desby shared with me about her break from – and return to working in tech. I find it super interesting what leads people to leave tech, at least for a while, and then come back. As I had to leave tech for while myself, that’s probably no too surprising.

An Afterthought

I remember that in some (pre-pandemic) years, the conference covered the whole week, either with 2 tutorial days, or 4 conference days. While I thought the conference should move back to this longer format, now I’m not so convinced anymore. 4 full days with a LOT of input, talking and, yes, having fun, is demanding.

That said: I am already looking forward to the Agile Testing Days 2023! 🦄🌈

Reviewing Submissions for the Agile Testing Days

Conferences Feedback Uncategorized 2 Comments

Other reviewers have also blogged about this topic:

The other day a discussion about the review process of the Agile Testing Days developed:

Since I contributed to this thread and was a reviewer for this years programme, here’s my take. It’s my personal view and other reviewers may well have other aspects they focus on.

  1. On the conference page there are blog posts covering how to write a good proposal. I suggest to read them. This blog contains some tips as well:
  2. The conference offers a list of ‘hot topics’ which changes each year. If a proposal fits to this list it’s a plus, since this is a step towards a consistent conference programme.
  3. I prefer proposals that catch my interest, without telling too much about the topic. – If a proposal already expels everything well, time may be better spent in another session.
  4. A well written abstract text, that is easy to understand (for me) is a plus, too. This includes avoiding typos and grammatical mistakes. We all make them, and even the best spell checkers can’t catch all issues. But still, some proposals are really hard to understand due to language problems. Don’t let that get in your way of getting accepted. My tip: Get feedback by a native English speaker before (!) submitting. Many well known testers and speakers offer help and it is worthwhile accepting this help.
  5. Understand what the fields in the proposal form are meant for. Fill them to provided the information that is asked for,
    Avoid repeating the same text in different parts for the form. Change the wording at least a bit. In some cases the title, sub headline, main statement and key learning(s) contained exactly the same or very similar text. To me as the reviewer this is a little bit boring, and doesn’t help me understand what the session is about.
  6. Sometimes, repeating is worthwhile: It helps to understand what is important. Use this tool carefully.

Some questions may guide to writing a good proposal:

  • Will this help the reviewer to give me a high rating?
  • Am I giving enough information to inform a potential attendees decision to come to my session?
  • Am I giving too much information?
  • Is this a good fit for the conference this year?

A leaving personal note: It took me years to get accepted at the Agile Testing Days, even for what was then called a ‘consensus talk’. In the very early years the proposals weren’t very well written, in some years I failed to match the overall conference theme. And then it clicked, I asked for help, gave workshops, a tutorial and, in 2019 even a keynote. For me it was worth the effort.

Good luck and may your proposals be accepted!

Agile Testing Days 2021 – Part 3

Conferences 1 Comment

If you haven’t you might be interested to read the previous part of this series as well.

This day impressed me most by the three key notes and discussing the effects of corona and working from home with Anne Colder.

Thursday

The first keynote of the day was Ard Kramer’s “How to nudge your way through agile testing”. Ard presented six ways to nudge people to make a decision in a certain way – probably a way that we want them to go. In a very consistent way he made the distinction between doing something (the nudging) and the ethics of doing it.

It’s so important to aware of these techniques, because then we can more consciously decide whether or not to follow the nudging.

These are the six kinds of nudging he explained:

  • Default options
  • Commitment through consistency
  • Anchoring
  • Decoy effect
  • Zeigarnik effect
  • Activate unconscious behaviour

The name Zeigarnik effect was new to me, although I read about the way it works somewhere on the net. Basically it states that one can remember an activity that has been interrupted (not not completed) more easily at a later point in time.

“The Tester’s Learning Toolkit” was the second keynote, presented by Vera Baum. Supported by incredibly great graphics Vera explained the various levels of experience people may have.

  1. Novice
  2. Apprentice
  3. Crafter
  4. Expert

She explained how we can develop from level to level, and why it may not be the best approach to let experts teach novices.

The last keynote of the day – and the conference – was Vernon Richards‘ “What does the ‘Coach’ in ‘Quality Coach’ mean?”. He introduced 6 styles of leadership and how they can be applied in the context of software quality. I loved his way of giving examples his experiences in applying them.

With this highly interesting and super entertaining keynote ended the official program of the Agile Testing Days 2021.

In the evening, I discussed the effects of having to work from home with Anne Colder, leading to another contribution for the ebook “Software People … Work From Home“. Stay tuned. 🙂

This ended a truly brilliant experience of the Agile Testing Days. It was so great to finally meet real testers in real live, discuss software related topics during breakfast, lunch and dinner… as well as in between.

Thank you! Thank you to everyone I spoke to, especially the organisers who ran an incredible conference!

Agile Testing Days 2021 – Part 2

Conferences Uncategorized 3 Comments

If you haven’t read it yet, you may like to start with the first part of my Agile Testing Days 2021 summary.

Wednesday

I started Wednesday with a Lean Coffee. At the Agile Testing Days this is traditionally facilitated by Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin.

We discussed a good number of topics, such as how to get folks to try new ways, ways to practice testing and the role of testing/testers. I like this way of quickly covering a broad field of topics, to give people input to work with. I recommend tying this format, if you haven’t done so yet.

Jutta Eckstein‘s keynote “Agile Comes with a Responsibility for Sustainability” covered the three main parts of sustainability:

  1. People, the social equity bottom line
  2. Planet, the environmental bottom line
  3. Profit, the economic bottom line

See for example the Wikipedia article about the ‘Triple Botton Line’ for more details. I find that these aspects are all incredibly important and also believe that we, the community of software people, have a shared responsibility to help achieve improvements in all three areas.

The second keynote on Wednesday was João Proença‘s “Limitless within our boundaries”. He explained nicely how limiting options can improve creative work. His example were his Band that got completely stuck, when they experienced the possibilities of a music studio for the first time. It’s the same in most other contexts, including software development. I very relaxed presentation style and body language. I found it super nice that he reminded me, that I recommended submitting a session to the Agile Testing Days – and I am really, really glad I did.

The session “Resistance is futile” by Anne Colder & Jantien van der Meer, was about how to facilitate changing behaviour. The session was Star Trek themed and I am luck I survived in my red shirt. 🙂 Details about the model of “The Rider, the elephant and the path” are, for example, available at https://www.creativehuddle.co.uk/post/the-elephant-and-the-rider. I like the way they explained the model as well as the exercises to illustrate how it can be used.

For me Bruce Hughes‘ keynote “How to be an Ally to Non-binary Folk in Tech” was next. It was brilliant, hilarious, sad and helpful. The standing ovations she received were absolutely well deserved. The blog post appache attack helicopter wrote at https://undevelopedbruce.com/2020/07/06/non-binary-in-tech/ explains what was covered in xer keynote. I recommend reading it. To her ‘appache attack helicopter’ is an acceptable pronouns BTW. See: https://undevelopedbruce.com/about-me/ (read that as well, I may help further understanding the complexities of existence). Lisi Hocke tweeted a great summary of this keynote:

The last session I attended as Søren Wassard‘s “Digesting Poets Society”. A very nice, relaxing and emotional bonus session about another way to get creative: Poems. We mostly heard English poems, but also one from a Welsh author, recited in Welsh by a Welsh (and no other than Bruce).

Part 3 of the series is available now, too.

Agile Testing Days 2021 – Part 1

Conferences Uncategorized 1 Comment

After a two year break, I could finally attend the Agile Testing Days in person. I was a bit worried about having to deal with the corona virus floating around and infection counts increasing significantly in Germany. However, the organisers handled this exceptionally well: Only vaccinated or recovered people were allowed to attend, every attendee received two test sets for self-testing and the certificates to prove vaccination/recovery were checked twice: During check-in at the hotel and the conference. During the conference it became obvious that many (likely most?) people tested every day. For me this meant I felt a lot better!

Additionally, they offered ‘colour coded’ masks: A blue masks indicated “I’m OK with getting near people, even hugging” and black ones which meant “I prefer some distance, please”. I took a black one and was pleased that people respected this. Thank you everyone!

What follows is a summary of some sessions and events.

Monday

Originally I had planned to give my workshop “Get a Lot Out of This Conference” (a teaser video is available on Vimeo), however it turned out that most first time attendees weren’t at the conference on Monday already, some would even only arrive on Wednesday. Since this workshop makes most sense when done before the conference, we decided to cancel it. And that’s OK since my ‘plan B’ was to attend the session to build a Tiny House. – Sadly this session also had to be cancelled, for reasons outside the control of any one at the conference. Thankfully the organisers allowed us non-builders to join on of the other sessions of this day and I could participate in “A Path to Holistic Testing” presented by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory. Alex Schladebeck also joined my table. It was super interesting to see how being a CEO can change focus, when it comes to sign-up forms for courses (this was the example we used in the exercises). Hint: The GDPA plays an important role.

I learned a lot in this super entertaining tutorial. This will be very useful in helping my team.

Tuesday

A session I looked forward to a lot was Maaike Brinkhof‘s “The Struggle with Learning How to Code”. I enjoyed the story telling about her experiences in learning to code immensely. She also offered great tips for how to prevent the barriers she ran into.

The second talk I attended was Alex Schladebeck who presented “Unit Testing and TDD from the tester perspective”. It was a great presentation and I am already looking forward to getting the slides which contain links to resources and further information.

Some insights of Alex' talk: TDD can be seen as exploratory programming.

The ‘traditional’ highlight of this day is the costume party including dinner and the award ceremony for the MIATPP (Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person) award. This year I had the honour to be asked to announce the winner. As every year, first the dinner is served and then the award. I had a hard time keeping a straight face when the (future) winner asked if they may join my table. Introducing the winner and keeping the tension up to the very last moment was great fun, especially since apparently no-one had any clue who might be the MIATPP this year.

Again congratulations, Raj Subrameyer, MIATPP Award Winner of 2021!

Continue reading the second part at https://seasidetesting.com/2021/11/22/agile-testing-days-2021-part-2/

Tips for Conference Proposals & Sessions

Conferences 1 Comment

Disclaimer: This year I’m one of the reviewers for the Agile Testing Days.

It’s proposal season again, at least for one of my favourite conferences, the Agile Testing Days; the call for papers is open until March 28th (for 2021).

There is a good number of articles and blogs available on the topic of Agile Testing Days proposals alone: I suggest to follow the advice Uwe gives with his blog post “Call for Papers Submission Pitfalls & How to Do it Better! Tales from a Conference Organizer“. There’s more info to find from that same conference over on YouTube: https://youtu.be/QxC-Ee51xmM

Mind The Context

Another important tip (especially for those thinking about a keynote) comes from Liz Keogh:

If it’s an opening keynote, I try to open people’s minds to learn and question. If it’s a closing keynote, I try to help them reflect on what they learned. Keynotes are there to frame the rest of the conference.

Liz Keogh on Twitter

I believe similar thinking applies to other sessions too: Make your session fit into the frame of the conference and what you know about the attendees expectations.

Tell a Story

I personally try to at least come up with a story, either one I made up or a personal one. Both worked well for me:

For a ½-day tutorial about testing and the Internet of Things (IoT), I set up the story of Goblin King Jareth the 42nd, who wanted to control his kingdom with a set of IoT devices and tasked the participants with testings these devices. The framing story helped to provide some reason to actually participate in the exercises.

For a (read: ‘the’ 🙂) keynote I gave at Agile Testing Days 2019, I chose the most personal story I possibly could: My diagnosis of and treatment for cancer – and why I still consider myself lucky. Read about it in “Being Lucky — A Keynote at the Agile Testing Days 2019“.

If you like to know more about telling a good story, be sure to read Huib Schoots’ blog post “Storytelling“! You’ll find — no surprise — a good story (and many links to more information, too).

Be Prepared

Things can go wrong: The notebook you planned to give the presentation with may crash. The projector may break or the sound system my fail. You may forget what you wanted to say. These things all happened to someone somewhere.

It’s better (and impressive!) to be prepared. For my keynote, I prepared index cards with notes of what I wanted to say when, when to make extra long breaks and other instructions, such as when to proceed to the next slide. At first I numbered them, so I could sort them, if I dropped them on the floor.

Numbered index cards

Later, I also put them on a thread: Now, even when I would drop them, they would still be sorted! This would have saved the talk, had I dropped those cards.

Index cards on a thread, to prevent shuffling

Some of the directions didn’t work out in the moment the presentation was live: The introduction was totally different from what I expected (and significantly louder!).

Mind the Last Possible Moment

One important, even obvious, aspect: Don’t miss the dead line. I did once and it’s annoying. Very annoying. — Most of the work was done for nothing, because I forgot to check the calendar. I learned it the hard way: If I’m too late to submit, it doesn’t matter how good the proposal was. Only if submitted within time, a paper has a chance to be selected.

I hope to see many great and inspiring proposals for the Agile Testing Days 2021!

© 2012-2026 Stephan Kämper — Mastodon

MENU

Navigation