PotsLightning topics

I put together all the great ideas and topics, which participants will bring with them to the peer event.
(Abstracts are taken out of the communication we had)

Lisa Crispin
I’d like to propose a workshop on visualizing quality. Specifically, what are ways we can visualize quality of a product AFTER it is delivered – the outcomes of that product? How can we visualize validated learning about our product? The purpose of the workshop would be to generate some new ideas that we can share with the community.
More ways to make quality visible, and getting away from focusing totally on DELIVERING the software and not on the value it actually provides to our customers and our business.

– I’ve been trying to start a Testing Lean Coffee regular event locally, not having much luck, would like to know if others have community-building ideas
– now that I work on a project tracking tool (Pivotal Tracker) whose major feature is automatically calculating average velocity and making sure you don’t exceed it, I’m more interested than ever in the usefullness of velocity, estimating, scrum “commit” approaches, and the like.
– tester-coder collaboration and ways to improve it are always an area of interest
– ATDD at API level, and what do you do when your dev team is writing functional tests as part of TDD and then think there is too much overlap with ATDD
– using brain-based checklists to help w/ exploratory testing

Cecile Davis

What I would like to do is work on excercises for testers to get them in the agile mindset. So probably first find out what the pitfalls are for testers starting with agile, and what the reasons are they do not mingle with non-testers. Then create and/or exchange some specific excercises to learn testers to avoid those pitfalls and make them understand why the need to avoid them. Result will be some excercises that can be used in trainings and courses available for the world.

Sigurdur Birgisson
There are more aspects of Developers Exploratory testing that I would be happy to discuss with you.
I also have some other material developing, that will get more focus after the summer.

Jean-Paul Varwijk
– Transition to agile – approaches, obstacles, practical experiences?
– Agile pitfalls, common reason for “failures”; lessons learned, etc.

Stephanos Livieratos
I would like to discuss whether and how agile approaches can be applied in nearshore test automation projects. And I would like to respond to the special role of the on-site team members. Furthermore, to look at the challenges to be faced in the nearshore center, interesting. The experiences that have been made in my current project, I would like to contribute to the discussion.

Maik Nogens
I like to talk about community building and the obstacles & chances I experienced and would see, if others are interested to discuss about it as well.

PotsLightning schedule and topics

Since it was asked; I drafted a quick agenda for the day with timings:

09.00 – 09.30                    Gathering, welcome, meetup
09.30 – 12.30                    „Open Space”:

    – Presentation of contribution topics
    – Putting the topics up in our “backlog” list
    – Participants select topic to start with

12.30 – 14.00                    Lunch
14.00 – 17 .00                   “Inspect & adapt”.

    Are the morning sessions still “hot” or are we in for some different topic?

17.00                                  End of the workshop; Begin of after-workshop

Comments:

Topic selection: My idea is to let us all decide, what is the most interesting/urgent/flavorable topic we want to talk about.

This might mean, some topics might not be touched during the day; but due to the democratic selection the flow of the workshop should mirror the interest of most participants.

Also, depending on the size of attendees, we might go more in an “Open Space” direction, by creating groups and participating in the topic you are interested in.

Lunch: Depending on the availability and weather we find us some place outside the venue to get some fresh air and fresh mind. In worst case we order in.

Timings are suggestions. It is your workshop; you should have the most out of it.
So just bring your feedback up and we can adjust.

After-workshop: Dinner, beer, other activities… It is your weekend and your choice. I assume (yeah, yeah) there will be socializing in one location or the other. We will see.

UPDATE: Here is the current topic list: .

PotsLightning – Max. 25 % ATD conference discount for PotsLightning attendees!

I knew, that my company Diaz & Hilterscheid was always big on supporting the testing community; ever since I attended my first RST with Michael Bolton in 2009 in Berlin; organized by them.

For the PotsLightning they already sponsor the room at the Dorint Hotel and now they surprised me even more.

With no strings attached they offered a discount for our attendees for the Agile Testing Days (ATD) conference (see below).

So if you were unsure, if you could attend PotsLightning, now you have another goodie.

Come on the weekend before the ATD, have a good time with passionate agile people from all kinds of the profession and attend the ATD with a good chunk of the price.

Here are the details:

If your attend PotsLightning, you get a special ALUMNI code, which you need to use on the ATD registration page; otherwise it won’t reflect on your invoice.

 
ATD Alumni discount
 

http://www.agiletestingdays.com/registration.php

GATE 02 Announcement

We are proud to announce the call for contributions for the second GATE workshop. It will be held in Munich, Germany on September 8th 2012.

The main theme for the second workshop will be

The future of Agile and Exploratory Testing

We expect participants to submit content in line with this theme. We are interested in contributions such as

  • innovative approaches to testing
  • combining session- and thread-based test management
  • collaborative test chartering
  • testing in practice (Testing Dojos, Testautomation Coderetreat, Hands-on testing)

Feel free to contact us if you are unsure. We will be most glad to provide you feedback.

The language of the workshop will be dependent on the workshop participants. It might be German all day, but if we got international contribution, we might decide to hold the workshop in English.

If you want to attend the second German Agile Testing and Exploratory Workshop, come up with a contribution, and send it to us until August 1st. Further details on the attendees, the program, and travel information will be provided later.

If you are interested in the format, there have been quite a few of these peer workshops in the testing space recently. Here are some pointers:

Hope to meet you in September 2012.

GATE 01 Findings

On October 1st 2011 the first German Agile Testing and Exploratory Workshop took place in Hamburg, Germany. The five participants Meike Mertsch, Maik Nogens, Eusebiu Blindu, Christian Baumann, and Markus Gärtner discussed Agile Testing and Exploratory Testing in General, and tried to come up with a definition. You can read more about the experiences from the participants on their related blog entries:

Looking forward to GATE 02.

GATE 2011 participants

So far our call for participation has resulted in some responses. Currently we have the following line-up for the first German Agile Testing and Exploratore Workshop. Here they are:

  • Markus Gärtner – Helping traditionally trained testers to contribute on Agile teams
  • Maik Nogens – tbd
  • Meike Mertsch – Helping Teams and Testers to create valuable products
  • Eusebiu Blindu – Exploratory Testing and visualization
  • Sven Finsterwalder – agile testing with SBTM supported by the “SessionCreator”
  • Christian Baumann – Shared responsibility for quality vs. separate QA teams
  • Alexandru Rotaru – demotivating testers – why good testers choose different career paths;
    teaching testing using exploratory testing

There is still room for more. If you struggled so far with a topic, feel free to contact us. We will be happy discussing your proposal, and providing feedback on early drafts.

GATE 01 Announcement

We are proud to announce the call for contributions for this workshop. It will be held in Hamburg, Germany on October 1st 2011.

GATE will be a low budget, non-profit peer workshop. This means that we might split expenses for the location and commodities equally among the participants (probably below € 100). Every participant will take care of the remaining costs for her- or himself, e.g. travel, lunch.

As the main goal we identified the following elevator pitch:

For ambitioned testers who want to learn established approaches and practices in the craft of software testing the GATE workshop provides a platform for an equal knowledge exchange. In contrast to traditional conference formats the GATE workshop provides a practical, low budget, controversial experience on software testing.

That said, we are interested in contributions such as

  • realistic experience reports
  • controversial testing techniques
  • testing in practice (Testing Dojos, Hands-on testing)
  • options for distributed software testing

Feel free to contact us if you are unsure. We will be most glad to provide you feedback.

The language of the workshop will be dependent on the workshop participants. It might be German all day, but if we got international contribution, we might decide to hold the workshop in English.

If you want to attend the first German Agile Testing and Exploratory Workshop, come up with a contribution, and send it to us until September 5th. Further details on the attendees, the program, and travel information will be provided later.

If you are interested in the format, there have been quite a few of these peer workshops in the testing space recently. Here are some pointers:

Hope to meet you in the nicest city in the world. Hope you are as excited as we are.

German Agile Testing and Exploratory