| Jim's View on the world of Testing |
Moved blogFor some reason my last couple of blog posts have disappeared? Including the one that mentioned that I've moved my blog to: http://dancedwiththetester.blogspot.com/11:55 - Tuesday 13 July 2010 - comments {0}London Tester Gathering - 12th May - LVPO BarLondon Tester Gathering - 12th May - LVPO BarHello All, The next LTG is on the 12th May 2010 and will be at: LVPO Bar in Soho. 50 Dean Street London, W1D 5BQ 020 7255 8617 http://www.lvpo.co.uk/location/ Closest tubes are: Leicester Sq and Piccadilly Circus Happy Hour is from 5pm-8pm. The plan: I'll be there from about 5:30pm and we have the basement room booked until 10pm. Currently no sponsor, if you're interested in sponsoring then let me know. Michael Bolton will be speaking. http://events.linkedin.com/London-Tester-Gathering-12th-May-LVPO/pub/304990 Hope to see you there. Cheers and Kind Regards Tony Bruce. 14:53 - Monday 26 April 2010 - comments {0}RapidFTR CodeJamOn Saturday (27th March) I went to a RapidFTR CodeJam.
RapidFTR is Rapid Family Tracing and Reunification. It has been created
in order to help rescue agencies looking after kids in disaster areas.
It'll store personal and medical details which will help children get proper
medical attention and reunite them with their family but also just as
importantly help keep them safe from human traffickers. 13:09 - Wednesday 31 March 2010 - comments {0}London Tester Gathering - 14th April - LVPO Bar - Sponsored by Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Electromind.London Tester Gathering - 14th April - LVPO Bar - Sponsored by Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Electromind.Hello All, We have a venue for the next London Tester Gathering: LVPO Bar in Soho. 50 Dean Street London, W1D 5BQ 020 7255 8617 http://www.lvpo.co.uk Closest tubes are: Leicester Sq and Piccadilly Circus Happy Hour is from 5pm-8pm. Half price wine and cocktails, bottles of beer are £2.50. The plan: I'll be there from about 5:30pm and we have the basement room booked until 10pm. Hope to see you there. Cheers and Kind Regards Tony Bruce. 16:26 - Friday 26 March 2010 - comments {0}Skate-a-thon to raise money for ShelterboxMy wife is taking part in a
skate-a-thon to raise money for Shelterbox, if you’re able to help out please
sponsor her: Hello
all, I will be taking part in
Skaiti for I'd be very grateful if you
would please sponsor me by visiting http://www.justgiving.com/Skaiti24
and donating. Please mention the
Bedfordshire Roller Girls, and my name when you donate so that we can keep track
of how much we've raised. If you'd like more
information on Shelterbox, please visit their website: http://shelterbox.org/ Thanks! Marisol
Bruce Cheers Tony. 13:20 - Wednesday 24 March 2010 - comments {0}2010 Test Management Summit - 26/27th January 2010the Test Management Forum is happening in a few weeks and reminded me that I still had this unfinished blog post sitting in my drafts folder, so I finished it and here it is.Recently, I was fortunate enough to attend the 2010 Test Management Summit details of which can be found on the UKTMF site. It was spread over two days and you could go to either one of or both of the days. On the first there were workshops in the morning and afternoon and on the second was the summit. I went to both days. On the first day I attended Alan Richardson's (Compendium Developments Ltd.) 'Exploratory and Innovative Testing Workshop' and Dave Evans and Mike Scott's (SQS) 'Agile Test Management Workshop'. Alan covered definitions of exploratory testing and innovative, looked at ways Test Managers could help increase creativity and therefore innovation, talked about Heuristics & Mnemonics, risk, etc. We also had a few pratical excerises to get through. There was a lot of discussion which was great and one thing that struck me was that a lot of Test Managers seemed to get dictated how the testing was going to be done in their organisation. **I had a lot more to say on this but it started getting too long so I thought I'd make it a blog post of it's own.** I enjoyed Dave and Mike's session as well which was essentially a Q&A session on Agile Management. They are both knowledgeable and have worked on various projects and if you are able to have a chat with them do so, you'll enjoy it and get some value out of it. With Dave and Mike leading the discussions and input from various others in the room it was an interesting and worthwhile session. The day ended with a few beverages and discussions and was a pleasant, entertaining and educational day. The following day was a whole other matter!! I joke, the following day was just as good. I attended Rob Lambert's (Social Tester) 'Agile is a mindset, not a methodology' talk where he discussed....well, Agile being a mindset and not a methodology. "It's about getting things done the best way, not a set way. It's about adopting a new way of thinking, placing the power back with the people that need it, the team." Totally agree with everything he said, some people and some organisations will not be able to work in an actually environment. Purely and simply put, it's not for everybody. I also went to Ray Arell's 'Intel USA: Case Study - Moving to an Agile Environment' talk which was really good for anybody looking to move to Agile. He spoke about the trials and tribulations he faced and went through while moving his team at Intel to Agile. Then there was Paul, Paul Gerrard's (Gerrard Consulting) 'Innovative Testing Practices' talk. I must admit, I was expecting Paul to talk about his experiences with cloud, crowd, etc. However he talked about them as exciting prospects which need to be looked into, which is fair enough, they are. People are already using them though which is why I thought Paul would talk about what he has been doing. It was a good talk and there was discussion on how and what people are currently using. 22:52 - Saturday 6 February 2010 - comments {0}London Tester Gathering - Wednesday 17th February 2010 - LVPO BarHello All,
http://events.linkedin.com/London-Tester-Gathering-Wednesday-17th/pub/228937 Hope to see you there. 11:58 - Wednesday 3 February 2010 - comments {0}London Tester GatheringOn the 12th Jan 2010 we held a London Tester Gathering, it was quite successful, we had around 20 participants.It was held at the Grosvenor Gloucester Casino where the staff were very helpful and friendly. Thanks must be given to Stephen Allott for organising the venue. In the past these have been purely social events, a chance to meet or catch up with people in testing. This time we offered the opportunity to speak and I'm glad to say we had some takers. We had: Stephen Allott John Reber Paul Gerrard Tom Gilb Unfortunately Steve had lost his voice so instead of speaking about 'The Testing Community' he printed out some details. John spoke about ownership of automated test tools in a TDD environment, he discussed the 'TDD's', his experiences and touched briefly on tools. It was a good talk and generated some discussion which was excellent. Paul introduced the first equation of testing, quantum testing theory and testing uncertainty principle. He also spoke about the Test Management Summit. If you haven't already got your spot booked, get in now. And gave away copies of The Tester Pocketbook of which you should own a copy if you don't already. This was also a good talk and generated some discussion. I might be the only person ever to have Tom Gilb at an event and have a short talk from him. This is not any kind of good achievement and one hopefully he'll give me a chance to rectify at another gathering. I wasn't aware Tom had a prior engagement to get to and the other talks over ran (which is not a bad thing) so we had a short talk from talk about his Lean QA course which is being run with TSG. This was unfortunate as I've yet to hear Tom speak, something I hope to rectify as well. Lessons learned: Next time, limit it to two speakers and start it a little bit later, give everybody plenty of time to get there. All in all it was a good night, people met, people talked. It was good enough to organise some more. If you're interested in attending and/or speaking please join the 'London Tester Gathering' Linkedin Grp for details. 15:08 - Monday 18 January 2010 - comments {0}What's wrong with me? Where were you brain? Frick I suckI've noticed a fairly annoying trend to do with me and interviews and more specificially how if it's a job I really want I give an embarrassingly bad interview. I have had good interviews, brilliant interviews but when it's something I really really want for some reason, my brain says 'Nah, not happening, screeeeeeeeeeeeew you'.I had one of these recently. My mind went blank and I mean totally blank, if I'd been asked my address I would not have been able to give it. I believe at one point I may have actually been sitting there with my mouth open drooling on myself. It wasn't quite the image I was hoping for. I was embarrassed to be me and embarrased for the people trying to interview me as I responded with 'me......test......me test....eeeer....me tester' I think that I over think these things and I actually, for some stupid reason decided that it would be a good idea to re-read a book, learn a new tool, learn abit more about another tool, read up on a few other things, all within a couple of days ontop of normal work and life matters. It didn't work, everything went straight out of my head. After the interview I spent the rest of the day and night gritting my teeth and getting a stress headache. Yet on the way home, I stopped off to catch up with a mate and actually spent a little bit of time telling him about the new tool, everything that I couldn't remember in the interview, all the cool things this tool does, I could sit there and talk about it. 20minutes earlier, nothing, nada. So, I'm not somebody who you would want interview advice from but I'm going to give it anyway. If you have an interview, don't cram, you know your stuff, just let it come out naturally. 16:10 - Thursday 14 January 2010 - comments {0}Free course on Lean QA by Tom Gilb for the under employedA second free course for the under employed, is now planned for 14-15th January, at TSG Liverpool St, on Lean QA. This is technical and aimed at test people who want to learn other QA approaches.Application to Tom Gilb (tomatgilbdotcom) with statements of employment status at that time. http://www.gilb.com/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=351 slides http://www.gilb.com/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=288 test experience paper http://www.box.net/shared/8oaggjt61k Real QA Tutorial Outline (Put the links above in your browser to see details) SEE TSG SITE FOR SYLLABUS OR Look at the attached document about the one day tutorial given at Unicom & the Real QA manifesto on which this two-day course is based. 19:30 - Thursday 7 January 2010 - comments {0}Found 0 tester London jobsSo I'm looking for work. I thought I'd check the Guardian jobsite: Going to be tougher than I thought! 18:02 - Wednesday 30 December 2009 - comments {0}Tester Types ebook.The Tester Types ebook has been released, mosey on over for a looksee.11:31 - Monday 21 December 2009 - comments {0}Electromind and Atlantis Software Selenium workshopOn Saturday 5th December I attended the Electromind and Atlantis Software Selenium workshop.I enjoyed the workshop and learnt a few things to get me started with Selenium. This is pretty much what I was looking for. Anand Ramdeo of Atlantis Software (and of www.testinggeek.com) ran the workshop. The first hour was intros and covering the history, uses, future of Selenium and a little bit on Automation in general. Why to automate, etc. Initially although the history and etc was interesting, it dragged on a bit longer then I thought it would. I actually thought we could probably have done without this, or it and the intros should be kept to half an hour. I wanted to get to the dirt. I know why I would automate,I was there to learn about a specific tool. However, after the day was over, I did feel like I'd taken a lot in, so I don't feel that I have lost out on anything. I would suggest though that possibly it would be better just to have some slides or links that could be sent to attendees before hand to cover this stuff and/or keep it to half an hour. That way we could have got straight into Selenium. Anand is a fountain of knowledge and is quite obviously passionate about what he does and makes a great instructor, the pace was good and Anand explained things well. I found that a lot of the first half was Anand talking and us listening, when he got to the stages of discussing Actions, Assertions etc it would have been better for him to actually demonstrate as he talked. We could have then followed along on our laptops. More time doing, less just listening is better when it comes to learning as far as I'm concerned. That's not to say we didn't work through a few exercises, we did, in the second half, but there's no reason we couldn't be following a demonstration while the basics were covered. I also believe this course would work better if it was actually over a number of weeks, say 5 or 6 weeks in the evenings for a hour and a half. This way contractors could attending without losing a days pay (which was one of the reasons for a Saturday course) and could also attend with permies. If it was over a number of weeks you could have a set exercise to work on, come back the following week, discuss, learn a bit more, go away with another exercise. This would be a lot more useful as a learning process. After the course you'd have some practical experience along with a mentor who you've been able to discuss things with. Although the content was spot on for me: basically talked about Selenium, how it worked, covering IDE, RC and others, created a few test cases and went away with course material to continue learning. It was a intro or beginners course. I'm not sure how somebody who already uses (I don't) Selenium or has used Selenium would feel, I think it would actually probably be better to have a Novice, Intermediate and Advanced course. All in all I enjoyed the course, got what I wanted out of it and will be back for more. I however would also suggest to pick a name and stick with it, I've seen the course posted around with different names, could get confusing. 14:29 - Monday 14 December 2009 - comments {0}STC |
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