Thoughts About EuroStar 2008

I thought EuroStar 2008 was a great conference. The tutorials, keynotes and tracks were strong in my opinion (I must also say I want to give my perspective as an attendee as well as a speaker. It's hard sometimes to step back and be objective, but I'll try.).

One of my tests of a good conference is whether I'm torn between attending track sessions - and I was. I also spent a fair amount of my time in the interactive sessions, such as the ones on the testing manifesto and testing standards. It was nice to be working on things to advance our testing profession. I'm not sure where the whole testing manifesto thing will wind up. I hope it is someplace similar to the agile manifesto - something simple, meaningful and easy to read and remember.

James Whittaker was his insightful and entertaining self (that video he shows about the future of medical software is amazing and shows we're going to need better testing). His talk was "The End of Testing as we Know it", and I felt all the keynote speakers made me think. James Lyndsay spoke on "Becoming Agile - Reshaping Testing for an Agile Team." He had great points and I'm always impressed by the simplicity and impact of his slides!

The expo was amazing. In the U.S., the exhibits tend to be rather bland. In this show there were two coffee bars, a cocktail bar (I had a smoothie), a chess match, a bicycling competition, etc.

They had a contest where if you got all the exhibitors to stamp your card, you could enter the drawing. So, I computed my odds (about 1 in 30, I figured) and went for it. The grand prizes were two free passes for next year's conference and eight Nintendo Wiis. All I wanted was a Wii. Guess what? I won a conference pass. I didn't factor that in my odds! Oh well, I don't have the luggage space or weight anyway.

The gala was also fantatstic. It was held in the Grote Kerk, which is a former cathedral. It was big night for me, winning the best tutorial award. Thanks so much to the 60 or so people in my "Becoming an Influential Test Team Leader" tutorial that made that happen. It was totally unexpected! Much more important than the award was that we experienced and learned things together that will help us be better in our leadership roles.

My prize was a beautiful 9 pound Waterford crystal vase which I will find a great place for at home. Thankfully, security in the U.K. has relaxed security rules to allow two carry-on pieces of luggage!

One other thought concerns model-based testing and how it differs in Europe than in the U.S. - At U.S. conferences, model-based testing is often presented as a manual process. In Europe, they talk about the tools that can make model-based test design happen faster and more completely than using manual methods. I just thought that was interesting.

Dot Graham will be the chair for next year's conference in Stockholm, Sweden. I wish her all the best!

I would like to thank all the kind people who helped me feel right at home. Many thanks to the Qualtech Conference team - Tracy, Siobhan, Lorraine and others. Also, thanks for the conference committee for selecting my talks and to John Fodeh for my keynote introduction and to Bob van de Burgt as conference chair. You all did a great job!

StarWest 2007 Recap

Hi everyone!

Janet and I had a good week at StarWest last week, along with 1,300 or so of our fellow software testers. I thought I would pass along a few observations for those of you who didn't make it there.

First, many thanks to SQE for inviting me to speak again this year. And many thanks to those who attended by tutorial on Becoming an Influential Test Team Leader and the track session on Taming the Code Monolith – A Tester's Perspective. I plan to have the narrated slide show posted this week sometime.

The full-day leadership tutorial is always a joy to present because I get to meet so many people from all over the world that want to be the best at leading their team. We had over 100 people in the tutorial, which can be a challenge in terms of exercises, but those went well.

I sometimes wonder why some people do the things they do, but I also realize that you can learn a lot by just observing. Case in point – there was one lady on the very front row that from the outset of the workshop chose to read a magazine. Everyone else was engaged and appeared to be interested.

At the first exercise, she left and didn't return. The interesting thing is that the exercise involved working in small teams and everyone getting a card. Each card had a different action or indicated a role. She must have gotten the card that read “You are the Leader!” because that team started the exercise and learned they had no leader. However, someone in the team stepped up with no prompting and led. I guess I know who the real leader was!

I wasn't offended that she left and I truly hope she found a session that was more to her liking. I just could not help but note the contrast between the people who were engaged and those who just sit back and watch. That's why I give everyone a chance to participate – ask a question, share a tip, debate a point, you name it.

So, if you ever attend one of my leadership workshops be prepared. You may be called upon to lead!

By the way, we also made our own list of major testing challenges. We arrived at 30 of them! Guess what, there were none that were purely technical. Most were human in origin and a few were both human and technical.

As for keynotes, one of my favorites was Dot Graham's and Mark Fewster's (Grove Consultants, UK) keynote address on the “Five Doings of Software Testing”. It's not easy to do a duet keynote and they did it very well. On every “doing” they kept the audience engaged. The five doings are searching, checking, assessing, measuring and sampling.

Another keynote address I really liked was Lee Copeland's “The Nine Forgettings.” It was all about the things it seems we software testers have forgotten in recent years, such as lessons from the early pioneers of our field. (Only a few people could name even three out of seven of the pioneers on the slide.) It was a great session to remind us that we need to keep the foundations in mind. Lee handled an interesting group of questions toward the end on topics ranging from the future of testing to the value of test certifications.

My favorite presentation on SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) was by Brian Bryson of IBM. He used the basic Eclipse framework to build and test a simple web service. He presented some lessons learned by the teams at IBM and was just overall a very informative presentation. By the way, there was a decent sized group in the room and it seems that quite a few people are looking to learn how to test SOA. That's encouraging as I am rolling out my new SOA Testing course in two weeks!

I finally got a chance to attend Julie Gardener's (of Grove Consultants, UK) presentation on classification trees. Julie did a great job and her session brought me up to speed quickly on this technique which I plan to add to my intermediate testing course.

Speaking of the “Grovers”, they all did a great job and I appreciate them making the long trip over. They always share very valuable information in very engaging ways. Lloyd Roden presented his Top Ten Testing Myths and Illusions talk, which is always a great session to get people thinking about testing.

(Thanks to the Grove Players for inviting me to be part of their "A Christmas Carol - Testers Version". That's one of my favorites!)

One final note is on Robert Watkin's presentation on the Top Ten Signs You Need to Improve Your Testing Process. I felt a special sense of appreciation for his presentation since we both hail from Oklahoma City and I was able to give him a little advance feedback. Robert had a good sized group in his session and I liked the way he opened up the session for other people to contribute their experiences. Job well done!

I regret that I didn't see the “Testing on the Toilet” presentation by Bharat Mediratta and Antoine Picard from Google. I heard good things about it.

As I close this posting, my thoughts and prayers are with the people in California who have lost their homes and possessions in the fires which started last week. Last week was brutal weather-wise. Temps were in the high 80s+, winds were very high (clocked at over 100 mph on the mountain tops – I estimate about 60 mph at the hotel) and the smoke was everywhere. In the DFW airport on the way home I saw the interview on Larry King's show with Ken Blanchard, who lost his home in the fires. His attitude and faith are an inspiration to me. His words of wisdom were that his family was safe and that's what mattered most, He told about how his church and Christian friends had rallied around him and the other victims. That's how it should be – the Church being there for people.

Thanks for reading this long and winding post. More to come soon.

Best regards,

Randy