Across the world there were similar journeys taking place.

Delegates are boarding planes, trains and automobiles to attend a European conference in the wonderful city of Amsterdam. For some this journey is short. For others it’s epic.

Some delegates would be travelling on their own. Others would be travelling with people they know; colleagues, friends, peers or family.

For the first time conference attendee the journey can be daunting and nerves can start to form around what to expect.

Some journeys go better than others.

In England one conference delegate is flying from a small city airport in a tired looking Bombardier Q400.

The noise on-board is deafening, the coffee cold and the seats cramped. Despite these downsides the delegate can’t help but notice that the flight staff are welcoming, well trained and during the safety overview, incredibly well synchronised. He notices the menu in the seat-back and does some impromptu testing of the contents. The first obvious bug he spots is the use of the word “gourmet” to describe the microwaved cheese toastie.

Those who often attend testing conferences are somewhat obsessed. Testing isn’t just a career – it’s a calling (or a lucrative business). It’s something they’ve been doing their whole lives. Some might call this devotion to it strange, weird or sad. Others just see it as a way of life.

Over the Atlantic ocean is one of the conference speakers, asleep on a Virgin Atlantic jet. His journey started several hours ago. It won’t end for a few more hours yet. Tiredness is inevitable.

In Amsterdam there are already a large group of delegates descending on the city’s hotels, hostels, rentals and flats. Pockets of testers are occupying three or four of the main hotels. Many don’t know each other and are destined to spend the rest of their stay oblivious to the fact that the person next to them at dinner is a tester and attending the same conference.

All of the delegates share something in common; testing. They may approach the subject differently. They may oppose each others views. They may dislike each others personalities, but they all have a common thread to at least start a conversation. Yet many won’t. Many will spend the entire time alone. Some may enjoy this, others will inevitably feel isolated.

Some delegates arrive on the Monday, others wont turn up until the start of the presentations on Tuesday. The Twitter stream starts to fill with people discussing meet-ups, comments on the tutorials already taking place and general banter about the event.

Chat sessions fire up, text messages are sent and tweets are broadcast to arrange meals, drinks and gatherings. Many of these people are meeting others in the flesh for the first time. Relationships on social channels have paved the way for a seamless ability to meet-up in person. The hard work is done. The relationships can flourish further in person, or dwindle away at the realisation that online personas don’t always match reality.

As the evening comes around small groups of Testers are travelling to bars, hotels and restaurants to catch up and relax before the conference starts.

In an Indonesian restaurant in the city centre, a group of testers are gathered around vast quantities of food and beer. Conversations are flowing about testing, life and work. People are getting to know new people or are refreshing relationships with people they met at other conferences. As more beer flows the conversations become more lucid and discussions about the state of testing inevitably crop up.

As this particular group discuss certification schemes, standardisation and best practices, in the context of them destroying the industry, it is oblivious to them that across town, in a posh hotel where Heineken is served in impossibly tall glasses, there is another group of testers talking about how context doesn’t matter and best practices are what the testing world needs.

Just down the road in a small bistro is a group of well funded testers talking about how maturity models are the future for their giant consulting business. They are busy putting the final touches to new methods of quantifying the true value of testing to an organisation.

Across Amsterdam that evening there are many tribes of testers discussing testing. Some with polar opposite views, some in perfect alignment and some who are too tired, or drunk, to talk about testing. In hotel lobbies and rooms across Amsterdam there are also testers with no-one to talk to.

As Tuesday afternoon spins around the conference centre starts to get busy. In the corner is a tester filming the queues forming using a time delay app on his iPad. Upstairs are testers sitting around talking about strategies for handling regression testing and exploratory testing. Meetings are happening and discussions are flowing.

Many testers are pacing around the venue embroiled in conversations to someone on the other end of a phone call. Are they conducting business? Speaking to relatives? Pretending to speak to someone to look important?

In the Test Lab the lab rats are getting ready for people to do some testing at the conference – a concept that is alien to some delegates.

In the expo centre are salespeople and demonstrators trying to draw attention to their products, services and goods. Some are doing better than others. Some are more involved than others.

For some of the vendor representative it is their 20th conference this year. Some of the vendor reps haven’t been home for the last 8 months, their life is a constant cycle of conferences.

Throughout the event some presentations go to plan, some of the speakers don’t quite communicate their intended message well and some experience a few technical glitches.

Some talks are funny and insightful, others masked in terminology and concepts that aren’t appealing to everyone. Some are about systems, some about space rockets, some about video games and some about standards.

There’s a talk for everyone. Many delegates are complaining that there is too much to see and they are having to make tough decisions on which talk to get to. Some consider that struggle to decide the marker of an excellent conference.

This year sees a real sense of community and involvement. The community hub took a day to get going. But on the last day was well attended with delegates wanting to listen to lightning talks, chat to new people and contribute their views and ideas to the Testa Mappa.

It’s in the community hub that delegates get to talk to the speakers and other attendees in a welcoming and safe environment. Many delegates are changing their mind about the presentation after discussing the topic further with others. Many speakers are learning a lot about themselves, their presentations and their ability to communicate their core message.

Throughout the event there are many smaller and much more focussed meetings happening, some private and by invite only, some open to a wider audience. There is business happening, friendships being made, social connections starting and also ending.

As the conference comes to a close the delegates, speakers, organisers and vendors travel home, many leaving with new friends and connections. Many will return home to families, friends and colleagues more tired than they thought they would be. Conferences take their toll both physically and emotionally. The challenge for many will be filtering and putting in to action many of the interesting ideas they took away from the conference.

The challenge for some will be working out how they can talk to more people next time and how they can ensure they are invited to the many social gatherings that are happening.

For many though the conference didn’t end when the doors closed and they travelled home; the conference continued on the social channels for many more months. And that is often the real marker of a successful conference.

(I wrote this short observational story at EuroSTAR 2012 last year. It was a great conference and this years looks like it will another great conference too – see you there hopefully.)

For the last few sprints we’ve been demonstrating our user stories (i.e. completed work) using the medium of video. It’s been really interesting to see how the teams have moved to video with ease.

The videos are often hilarious, some featuring more tech wizardry than others but all of them a great show of creativity.

I tweeted about this a while back and a couple of people asked why we would go to the effort of creating videos to show our features. Well here’s some reasons:

The demonstration were choppy during switch overs as teams had to sign in, get the system to the right state to show the new work and articulate clearly the story to the audience.

All demonstrations are at the mercy of the demo Gods. Sometimes they work, sometimes they fail – even though they may have been working just moments before (mostly it was due to logging in to the wrong accounts, dialling the wrong number, slower connection in the meeting room, nerves, data now in the wrong state after practicing the demo). We now simply line up each video and play them one at a time pausing for questions in between.

If you miss the demo you miss the demo. So for those that can’t make it to the meeting they don’t get to see the demo of the product. Videos let us post them somewhere central for the business to view at their leisure.

Also, as we move forward we will be starting to add the video demos to a central source when the feature is actually finished, which could be just a day in to the sprint. As we release to live weekly when we demo the feature to the wider business it may already have gone live. With regular release comes a new set of communication challenges! This allows the business to see the features as they become available, not just in one big chunk at the end of the sprint.

So the videos have helped this greatly. They have also been a great laugh to create and they are brining out the creative juices in the team. Not only are they experimenting with new video techniques but they are also working hard to communicate the right messages to the right audience, which is a great skill to have.

The only constraint we’ve currently set is that the videos shouldn’t take more than one hour to make. Ideally they will take just 30 mins or less, but some of the features are tricky to explain. We’ll see how it goes. Like most things here we are constantly tweaking and optimising.

Quite often I hear presentations and discussions from testers who talk about those moments when they feel it appropriate to say “Ha Ha, Told You So”.

You know? Those moments when the testers advice was ignored and it all went pear shaped. Or the time a tester said the company should be testing earlier, only to find a boat load of bugs too late in the day.

Over the years I’ve heard loads of people saying “ha ha – told you so”.

Sure it’s gone pear shaped, but it’s often at these times that you are needed the most; when your skills and ability are required by the business to get software out of the door.

If all you have to say at times like this is “ha ha, told you so” then you will appear petty, annoying and arrogant.

We shouldn’t be offending people and making them resentful because a decision was made that frustrated us. We need to step up and take ownership. Step up and contribute. Step up and make a difference.

At a conference a few years back a tester was presenting on how happy she felt when the project crashed and burned because they had ignored her advice. The crowd were joining in talking about “wiping the smug look off the developer’s face” and saying things like “at their peril will they ignore the tester”. It’s poisonous, unhelpful and downright ridiculous to think like that. (I was in the minority in the room btw – I walked out with a few others who found that session just too much).

So when you hear a tester shout “ha ha told you so” as a project takes a downward spiral, offer them some constructive feedback and ask for their support. Motivate them to act, not gloat in the destruction. How is that negativity going to help the business release good software.

Releasing software is a team effort. And tester’s are a part of that team.

A few years back I spent some time helping a company move to a social intranet. Here is the old mind map I put together to help explain why a social intranet is so valuable to a company who mainly work in the knowledge industry.

Identifying why something could work and what benefits it can bring is the foundation of making changes in your organisation.

We’ve recently moved forward with Confluence here at NewVoiceMedia as a social intranet and I used this basic mind map as a starting point for helping to bring about this change.

It’s great to see how people are now collaborating on work items and sharing ideas. It’s not just the Development team that are using Confluence, the wider business have picked it up with Gusto also.

For those who find mind maps tricky to read in this blog clicking on this link will take you to the mind map on the Xmind website.

There is also a text only version of this mind map here. (the text only versions loses the concept of nested ideas and essentially reads as one a large flat file)

I’ve been reading Team Geek for a long time now. Not because it isn’t easy to read, or interesting, or useful, but because each chapter seems to hold a valuable lesson I can bring to the work place. And in doing this process of reading followed by action I’ve ended up taking a little longer to read this book than usual.

It really is a great book. I’ve recommended it to my peers and we’ve also ordered a couple of copies for the office. It’s maybe a step too far to say it’s essential reading for anyone working in a development culture but it should certainly be high on your reading list if you work in a tech department.

It’s packed with great hints, tips and stories on how to work better with others, how to respect other people and how to look at the big picture of the workplace. It’s written by Brian W. Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman, both well respected and established members of the development community who bring to this book a really good set of insights around people and how they work together.

There really are too many topics covered to summarise them here but the authors cover such topics as “How tools affect your culture”, being a “servant leader”, “growing cultures” and dealing with “poisonous” people.

The book is well written also and is super accessible. It’s clearly laid out and interspersed with some fun images which make reading this book enjoyable. It’s a really enjoyable book and one I think anyone working in tech would benefit from reading.

Note: The book I reviewed is a promotional copy obtained through the O’Reilly blogger review program.

Really interesting, short and accessible video on the power of Ethnography and how companies and people can use it’s insights to create new products, services and improvements.

Via

http://www.experientia.com

Seeing the feed coming through on Twitter about Test Bash has got me all nostalgic for those good times I had working with Rosie and team behind the scenes at The Software Testing Club, over the last couple of years. It was a blast while it lasted and we created some amazing content for the community.

I’m proud of a lot of the content we created but it was the Tester Types that I enjoyed the most. In actual fact the Tester Types that kick started mine and Rosie’s working relationship. Such fun.

During that time a friend of mine, Richard Ellis, created a short but wickedly sweet video of The Tester Types which I’ve included below.

This years Test Bash appears to be a resounding success (if the Twitter feed is anything to go by). Great stuff – a testing conference the UK has desperately needed and can be proud of.

Enjoy.

When we are online we are often being tracked across a series of websites. It’s a growing concern for those interested in their own personal data security online. It’s also interesting to see how companies are sharing information about you and how your usage online is being tracked.

So it’s with great interest that I delved in to using Collusion from Mozilla supported by the Ford Foundation. The Firefox extension visualising and stores who is tracking you and how these companies are linked. It also has the option to be able to turn off this tracking.

From the Collusion website: 

Not all tracking is bad. Many services rely on user data to provide relevant content and enhance your online experience. But most tracking happens without users’ consent and without their knowledge. That’s not okay. It should be you who decides when, how and if you want to be tracked. Collusion will be a powerful tool to help you do that.     

The visualisation tool is also pretty neat looking. The screen shot is from a quick test I did by visiting Amazon, the BBC and ITV websites, eBay and Google. As you can see the connections start to build up. 

I’m going to leave it running for a few days and see what kind of picture I get….might be quite scary just how much I’m being tracked.

Of course there are already mechanisms for turning off the tracking like Firefox’s own inbuilt option:

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-turn-do-not-track-feature

I’ve resorted to using my blog to recruit again.

Right now I’m recruiting for two roles.

Role 1 – Contract Manual Tester.

I’m looking for a talented contractor to join our team for initially 3 months. The role will have a mix of new feature testing as well as plenty of exploration around our product.
Role 2 – Permanent Technical Tester.

I’m looking for a talented technical tester to join our team. The role will involve refactoring and re-energising our test automation framework. Must have solid experience of Selenium with Java/C#. Knowledge of BDD and SpecFlow would be beneficial.

Both positions are based in Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK.

Here’s a brief introduction of what it’s like to work here:

I often get asked what exactly we build here. To give you some idea:

To get in touch (No Agencies please) DM me on Twitter @rob_lambert or drop me an email rob (at) thesocialtester (dot) co (dot) uk