As a prequel to the Let’s Test conference in May, I interviewed some of the European context-driven testers. Today we have Huib Schoots who is a board member of the Dutch testing network association TestNet.
Continue reading Let’s Test prequel with Huib SchootsCategory Archives: Testing
Software Testing
Let’s Test prequel with Jean-Paul Varwijk
As a prequel to the Let’s Test conference in May, I interviewed some of the European context-driven testers. Today we have Jean-Paul Varwijk who became a black-belt in the Miagi-Do school recently-
Continue reading Let’s Test prequel with Jean-Paul VarwijkLet’s Test prequel with Henrik Andersson
As a prequel to the Let’s Test conference in May, I interviewed some of the European context-driven testers. Today we have Henrik Andersson from the House of Test with us who also co-organized the conference.
Continue reading Let’s Test prequel with Henrik AnderssonLean Startup Testing
A while ago I started reading the book The Lean Startup – How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses from Eric Ries. Some of my colleagues already propagated some of the insights from the Lean Startup, and I heard about the Lean Startup for the first time back in November 2010 while attending a workshop with Kent Beck (see a write-up here).
I wasn’t aware that I read about some contents of the book from a different perspective. Back in 2009 Michael Bolton and James Bach reported on testing an internet application which was from their perspective more than buggy. Even continuous deployment didn’t help much there. The company, IMVU, was mentioned throughout the book by Eric. So, I was curious now about the connection between Lean Startups and Testing. Despite the chapter with the name “Test” in it, I wasn’t surprised that I have to make that connection myself.
Since Phil Kirmham asked for a perspective from my point when he saw I was reading the book, I wanted to share my insights I got from the book, and my vision for testing in a Lean Startup.
Continue reading Lean Startup TestingLessons Learned from Context-driven testing
There has been some fluff and rumor around context-driven testing yesterday. Some folks even talked about the death of context-driven testing. Most of it was issued by the about page from Cem Kaner. If you haven’t read it yet, go ahead, read it now, I will wait here.
Back? Alright. Now, I would like to take a pick on what context-driven testing means to me, and why I think the whole schools concept can help us shape something. These are the rough ideas I had around a proposal for CAST 2012 which was not accepted. It is based on the combination of the schools concept with complexity thinking and the CDE-model. Oh, you don’t know that one? I will introduce it.
Here is the abstract that I submitted:
Continue reading Lessons Learned from Context-driven testingTitle: Significant Differences and Transforming Exchanges
In this workshops participants will apply three different concepts from complexity thinking to the schools of software testing model. The three different concepts – containers, differences, and transformational exchanges – will be explained in the workshop. We will directly apply complexity thinking to the schools of testing, and discuss where we see the schools help to shape different containers, what the significant differences between the schools are, and how transformational exchanges between the different schools could happen, and maybe where they will even fail.Armed with these tools, we will discuss how to evolve our craft of software testing, eventually extending the the concept of the different schools of thought, and find platforms for transforming software testing for the 21st century.
Let’s Test prequel with Zeger van Hese
As a prequel to the Let’s Test conference in May, I interviewed some of the European context-driven testers. Today we have Zeger van Hese who is – besides many other things – the program chair for this year’s EuroSTAR conference in Amsterdam.
Continue reading Let’s Test prequel with Zeger van HeseBinary Kata
There are only 10 types of people in the world:
- Those who understand binary
- Those who don’t
How is your binary today?
If you want to become one of the former group, here is a coding kata for you. I derived this from a tester at a client who is currently pursuing his Computer Science degree. While he was asking for help on an exercise, we came up with the idea, that this exercise would be a pleasant coding kata.
Continue reading Binary KataLet’s Test prequel with Johan Jonasson
As a prequel to the Let’s Test conference in May, I interviewed some of the European context-driven testers. Today we have Johan Jonasson from the House of Test with us who also co-organized the conference.
Continue reading Let’s Test prequel with Johan JonassonLet’s meet, let’s confer
Here are a bunch of dates on my schedule. I am always pleased to meet new people. So, let’s confer.
- 23rd March: TestBash in Cambridge
- 1st-28th April: BBST Foundations (online)
- 16th-17th April: ScanDev in Göteborg
- 18th April: JAX in Mainz
- 7th-9th May: Let’s Test in Stockholm
- 10th May: Karlsruher Entwicklertag
- 23rd-25th May: Testing in Scrum in München, a public three day course that I am offering
- 3rd-30th June: BBST Bug Advocacy (online)
- 14th-15th July: Test Coach Camp in San Jose, CA
- 16th-18th July: CAST 2012 in San Jose, CA
- 24th-28th July: Rapid Testing Intensive (most probably online)
- 2nd-4th August: SoCraTes in Rückersbach
- 10th-27th October: BBST Instructor Course (online)
- 17th-19th October: Testing in Scrum in Hamburg, a public three day course that I am offering
- 19th-22th November: Agile Testing Days in Potsdam
- 29th November – 1st December: XP Days Germany in Hamburg
Phew. Quite a list. There are a few dates missing, but I will wait to get confirmation on them before making them public.
In between, I hope to see the relese of my book “ATDD by Example”. I just found out yesterday that Amazon.com put up the publishing dates as the 9th of June. But I am a bit skeptical about that.
Alternatives to Apprenticeships
Today I crossed my review comments for the Apprenticeship Patterns which I wrote back in 2009. I wrote a blog entry back at that time about My long road. Reflecting back over the past – maybe – 3 years, I noticed something I wanted to write about: alternatives to apprenticeships – most of them I came across at my current employer it-agile. I remember that we discussed the topic of apprenticeships a few weeks ago at the local software craftsmanship user group meeting in Münster. We found that the apprenticeship model does not fit well into Germany’s working model in the IT industry. So, we tried to come up with alternatives. Here are the ones I have seen implemented at different companies: Mentoring and Peer-Groups.
Continue reading Alternatives to Apprenticeships