Some learned lessons from the Agile testing days (part 1)

In the week of the 14th of November I was at the Agile testing days in Potsdam and I’m going through my notes of this event. It is unbelievable how many ideas one can get by visiting presentations, talking to other testers and discussing test topics. I cannot describe everything, but I tried to write a personal note of these days. What did I learn during these days?
So this list is only a part of all the things I’ve learned, but they give some ideas that you maybe could use too.

Port in the Centre of Potsdam City

I’ve been present on the first three days of this four day testevent. This posting in three parts is about the 2nd and 3rd day. The first day I visited the workshop of Michael Bolton: “Critical thinking skills for testers”, which gave me even more to think about. But that workshop is not mentioned below.

In general
Some topics returned a few times which I would like to point out:

• What is a good tester? Do you think you have enough experience to say that for yourself?
• How can you help other testers to improve their testing skills? Making mistakes and learning by doing that is one way.
• The IT world changes a lot at this moment and so is testing. Agile is taking over and is maybe a first step towards a different way of developing software. Testers should keep up with all these new trends, because there are a lot of challenges coming our way!
• Don’t think in groups like: “we testers”, “you developers”. We are all developers and we have the same goal as the organization we’re in. We should know the business goals (why) of the organization when we work on a project.
• The standard way of presenting, bullets with text on Powerpoint is on his way back. I’ve seen Prezi, mindmaps and presentations consisting only out of bad drawn, but effective pictures. Michael Bolton also did an experiment with his presentation I understand. I did not see it myself alas.

Presentation via a mindmap (Stevan Zivanovic)

Next posting later this week.

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Did you miss the Agile Testing Days and you live in The Netherlands, please check this out on the 6th of December VX company does a summary for you.