TiCCA19

Have you heard about testers shifting left and coaching developers to be better testers?

I tried a quality coach position at Campaign Monitor and I failed in my efforts.

Hear my lessons in building credibility, keeping track of mental health and how I answer the question, "How do I add value here?"

The idea of this proposal is to share our story…. and how automation has greatly influenced our development process.

From very small beginnings, we were using the appropriate test automation tools for windows applications, which suited our needs at the time.

But we were expanding into the world of automating web browser and mobile applications. Our business functions were extensive, with incredibly complex combinations of usage. Our team of testers had rich application knowledge but the product was growing, and the teams were increasingly adapting agile methodologies. The challenge was where to start.

But today we have greatly expanded in knowledge, confidence and affection for our automation testing.

We have established multiple test automation frameworks to support our growing applications. Our testers can write and maintain our tests for any given project.

I compare our experience in growing our Test Automation to the Lifecycle of a Gum Tree.

The "gum tree" phases are as follows:

• selecting the right species (tools and prep work)
• nurturing a young sapling (setting up and training)
• dealing with drought (unearthing resources)
• burning off (deleting and rebuilding )
• living with co-inhabitants (sharing and expanding )
• dwelling in the shade (experiences of quality protection)
• falling limbs (dealing with flaky behaviours)
• becoming humongous (keeping it contained and manageable)
• the happiness of re-growth (implementing new ideas)
• blossoms and essential Oil By-products (the benefits and the beauty)

The message is loud and clear: Learn to code or hit the road. Don’t hesitate; automate!

The demand for technical skills has never been higher. It seems the days of the manual tester are over. How much truth is there to this? How do we truly need to adapt for the future? Is there a future for non-technical testers? What does that look like? What does technical even mean?

In this talk, Aaron will take a critical look at what "technical" means in the context of software development, and offer his opinion on what skills will be critical for the future of tech.

Agile testing is about more than how to squeeze enough testing in on the last few days of the sprint. However so many teams have adopted agile and not yet changed the way they test.

A couple of years ago we were trying to create a memorable slide with all the things we believe in around agile testing. We created the agile testing manifesto and that small slide grew and grew and is now translated into many different languages.

In this session we will look at how agile testing is different to traditional testing and introduce some simple techniques that everyone in the team can use, to change the way they think about testing.