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"ministry of testing", "rapid software testing", blog, Experiences

Learning Time

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Tomorrow I’m leaving the safety of the South to journey far North* for something that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to sign-up for James Bach’s Rapid Software Testing course which has been arranged by The Ministry of Testing in Cambridge.

To say I’ve been looking forward to this for a while would be an understatement. Unfortunately due to budget constraints then it’s not been possible for me to get on courses like this in the past few years but ‘fortunately’ now that things are closing, then there’s a bit more money available for training and this will be money very well spent.

First stop is the Software Testing Club meetup tomorrow in Cambridge then on Wednesday the course starts. I don’t know what to expect but if it’s three days of hard but rewarding learning then I will be very happy. Having already taken a look at the course outline and slides then I’m sure it will be.

I’ll try and blog daily about my experiences, assuming I have the time and brain power left to do so 🙂

 

* (non-UK readers – we have a big North-South joke thing going on in the UK. If a place is north of Watford, which is a bit north of London, then us native southerners joke we’re out of the safety of the south and that it’s grim up north 🙂 Even though it isn’t and Cambridge is not even in really in the north anyway).

blog, Experiences, Exploratory Testing, Testing

Some Brief Words On ET for Mobiles

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No not the short, funny coloured alien guy….

Yesterday I attended a exploratory testing session for the latest change that my team are testing, on new feature phones. So we’re talking mass market devices, ones where a bug let out into the field can wipe out your profit and destroy your reputation. So we like to get our QA right, you could say.

Overall the session went well. We found some bugs even though the feature under test is pretty close to release maturity now. There was a great mix of developers, testers and some of the release ops team (aka the CI guys). We like to use these sessions to bring the team together. Using Agile sdlc’s helps here anyway, but having everyone testing together and helping each other is great for the team spirit and the togetherness. It was good fun.

So here’s what went well and what to try differently next time:

* Make sure you do not limit your sessions to just the testers in your company. Get everyone together, it’s fun.
* The leader of the session is important to keep things flowing. Our test lead brought ready flashed phones. And food. That helped.
* Make sure you have a structure to the session. We used charters.

And some areas to learn from and change:

* Getting results and statistics from the session wasn’t easy. Next time we will try session based (as I’ve used in other teams).
* Get some commitment from participants and make sure they come on time. People who drift in and out break the focus of those testing.
* Make sure there are chargers and SIMs with relevant features available.

Overall it was most enjoyable. I can’t wait for the next one.

*and in the true spirit of mobile, I’ve written this whole post on a Nokia E7 using cutepress. Yep, I’m still a Nokia user, and still mobile obsessed 🙂