Have you ever danced with the tester by the pale moon light?

Moved blog

For 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/

London Tester Gathering - 12th May - LVPO Bar

London Tester Gathering - 12th May - LVPO Bar

Hello 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.

RapidFTR CodeJam

On 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.
It�s a good cause and if you can spare some of your time then please have a look for more details here: http://wwww.rapidftr.com.

I was of course late and so missed the meet n greet but it was a pretty good turn out which is great. It must have been 20(ish) people in London and a couple of guys in New York with who we were video conferencing.

For a lot of people the majority of the day was spent on environment setup. I had real trouble getting it setup on my Ubuntu netbook and it in fact took all day.

Lessons learnt from the environment setup:

1. If you are tired don't leave it until 12:30am to setup your environment then stop halfway through because the setup guide is not quite working for your version of Linux.

2. If you are going to a CodeJam the next day do not install a theme on your netbook at 1am, get it half working then go to bed. It'll cause you performance issues the next day.

3. Prepare a VM to use for your environment setup; it'll make life much easier.

4. Just because there is a guide for a Linux environment setup don't assume it's been tried with different versions of Linux.

5. Keep a note of the steps you tried during the setup so that when you do get it working you can write a guide for other people.

Silly things really, I should have known better.

The Devs worked in pairs working in 25min increments, took a 5min break then worked another 25 then a 5 min break, it seemed to work well.

Although the environment setup was tricky it was good to hear different people, strangers really, working together in pairs on their stories. A few stories were actually completed which is great.

I was absolutely useless that day as it took me forever to get up and running. I aim to be able to add some value as the project progresses though by brushing up on my Ruby so I can help with the code and with testing.

The idea of the testers/QAs floating about helping people with their tests was put forward but I felt this might distract if the Devs were in flow.

Details about development are here: http://www.rapidftr.com/developer

I aim to knock up a setup guide for Ubuntu over the next few days to make the process quicker.

It's a good way (as cheesy as this sounds) to help make the world a better place, brush up on your skillset and meet and work with new people.

So please help if you can.

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.

Skate-a-thon to raise money for Shelterbox

My 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 Haiti - a 24 hour sponsored skate-a-thon on April 10-11th. Proceeds will go to Shelterbox, a disaster relief charity, which provides aid not just to Haiti but to any area that has been affected by disaster.

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.

2010 Test Management Summit - 26/27th January 2010

the 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.

London Tester Gathering - Wednesday 17th February 2010 - LVPO Bar

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/location/
Closest tubes are: Leicester Sq and Piccadilly Circus

We also have speakers/presenters:
Jeremy Gidlow (Intechnica)- speaking (I believe) about various performance tools (pros and cons) and experiences with them
David Evans & Mike Scott - TDD and Testify: http://code.google.com/p/testifywizard/

We just need the people, which the following information along with the chance to hear the speakers and meet people should cover:
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 a private room (with bar) booked from 6-7:30 for the speakers and then we have a private area in the main bar.

http://events.linkedin.com/London-Tester-Gathering-Wednesday-17th/pub/228937

Hope to see you there.

Cheers and Kind Regards

Tony Bruce.

London Tester Gathering

On 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.

What's wrong with me? Where were you brain? Frick I suck

I'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.

Free course on Lean QA by Tom Gilb for the under employed

A 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.