Lots of audience participation in this one, and I was helping facilitate, so less to share, but here’s the mindmaps in PDF and image.
A good session from John-Paul Varwijk.
Tag Archives: testing
Cross Team Testing
Johan Atting presented how Cross Team Testing works in his organisation. It looks like an interesting way of increasing collaboration between the teams, and managing the natural bias we all have towards the software we regularly test.
Here’s the mindmap, in PDF and image format.
Automation: Time to Change Our Models?
A great session from Iain McCowatt on why we should change our models of automation. Questioning how we use automation and how some models can constrain us rather than free us.
Here’s the PDF mindmap, and the image.
Curiosity Killed the Cat – Anne-Marie Charrett
A great case study from Anne-Marie, around a consulting assignment that did not go as well as she had hoped.
Here’s my mind map, and the PDF.
Creating Dissonance – Overcoming Organizational Bias towards the Value of Software Testing
What a great start to day 2 at Eurostar. Keith Klain explained how to approach organisational bias towards testing and how he is initiating change at Barclay’s.
Here’s my mind map, in PDF and image.
Experiences of Test Automation At Spotify
A great presentation from Kristian Karl from Spotify. Really interesting to see how they do things and lot to take back to where I work.
Here’s my mind map and its also available as a PDF.
If you are interested in how Spotify are organised then it’s well worth reading this blog post from Henrik Kniberg.
Self Defense For the Skeptical Tester
So here I am at Eurostar 🙂
A great first keynote from Laurent Bossavit. We should question claims, and he presented in particular the cost of fixing defects curve as an example.
Here’s my mind map from the session in PDF.
London Tester Gathering Workshops 2013
I had the pleasure of attending the London Tester Gathering Workshops last week, organised by Tony Bruce and the team at Skillsmatter. It was a good couple of days, and a good break from the presentation led conferences that I have mostly attended in the past.
As an offshoot from the London Tester Gatherings, the purpose of the workshops were to enable testers to get more hands-on and practice in a group setting, with support from some great testers and presenters. For me it was a good opportunity to get back to being a bit more hands-on, and to improve my knowledge of security testing in particular.
If you were wondering what the venue or some of the attendees looked like 🙂 then take a look at Tony’s blog. He took the pictures, I spent the time learning and talking testing.
Day 1
There were a couple of workshops that really looked interesting. Black Ops Testing, run by Tony, James Lyndsay, Steve Green and Alan Richardson, and Security Testing for Mobile Apps, run by Bill Matthews.
Black Ops Testing focused on scouting, intrusion and extraction. Or, as the intro said – if you don’t like military metaphors: Thinking, Exploration, Diagnosis. It focused around exploratory techniques and a whole lot more. Using a variety of techniques on a test server, meant that we were able to quickly put into practice what we were learning. Sadly I have lost the mindmap I wrote so you’ll have have to take my word for it, and wait for the blog post from Dan Ashby.
The Black Ops Testing workshop continued on in the afternoon but sadly clashed with Bill Matthew’s Security Testing for Mobile Applications workshop. Given my focus on mobile testing, both professionally and otherwise, then this one couldn’t be missed. Bill focused the session around the Mobisec VM and gave us all a large number of hints and tips on security testing for mobile applications.
I drew a mindmap: 
We focused on testing for Android applications, learning basic tools and techniques alongside some application security concepts. It was very useful to be able to setup the Mobisec VM in particular, and then use that to test an application with known vulnerabilities Security Compass Exploit me – they have a set of labs you can follow as well on their site. Using a VM meant we got all the tools we needed in one package, and Bill was on hand to explain, answer questions and make sure we were heading in the right direction. It was a good session with lots to takeaway and practice.
If you have an interest in mobile security then I would definitely recommend that you take a look at the Mobisec VM, and then head over to the Security Compass site. They also have an iPhone version, together with labs you can go through to help learn the main concepts.
The day concluded with the London Tester Gathering, which is always a good opportunity to meet old friends and new one’s over a beer or two.
Day 2
Day 2 was all about security testing again. Firstly Bug Hunting for Fun and Profit with Martin Hall, then The Evil Testers Guide to Http Proxies with Alan Richardson.
Bug Hunting for Fun and Profit was all about the tools and techniques that would enable testers to find security exploits in popular websites and applications, in order to make some money from bug bounty programs. Martin clearly knew his stuff – he gave us a lot of examples, a whole bunch of tools, and a lot of supporting information on which sites run bounty programs, the best way to approach them, and how to make some spare cash.
I mindmapped my ideas from the workshop, although, like Bill Matthew’s workshop the day before, this was just the start of things. There’s a lot of practice to do, both using the tools and the techniques before going onto any live sites. Fortunately there are a number of sites that one can practice on, and Martin gave us some great tools to use.
The afternoon was spent with Alan Richardson, talking about The Evil Testers Guide to Http Proxies. Having spent both Bill and Martin’s sessions using proxies then it was great to have Alan give his ideas and helpful advice. The session was organised around testing the Gruyere web application, a vulnerable app designed for practicing web security testing. Alan gave us a lot of documentation and support, far more than I can go through in one blog post.
Wrap Up
The London Tester Gathering workshops were a great couple of days. I learnt a lot, and I now have a lot of great opportunities to learn and practice. The presenters were all very knowledgeable, and were happy to share that knowledge and a lot of useful tools, slides and experience. I met a lot of good testers who were keen to learn and improve their skills. It was great to meet some old friends, but equally it was good to see so many testers in the workshops that I haven’t met before. Sometimes the testing community can seem a little cliquey and this workshop certainly was not.
Thanks to Tony and all the other organisers and presenters. If you didn’t go to the workshop this year then make sure you check it out next year. It’s well worth it.
Get Out and Test – My Mobile Testing Blog Post Over At The Testing Planet
I’ve just had an article published on The Testing Planet’s new site. It’s all about mobile testing, and why you shouldn’t just sit in your seat, in your office, when you are testing mobile.
Why not head over to their site and take a look? You can find the article on The Ministry of Testing website.
Persona Based Interviewing
Why you may need to do some actual testing in the interview for your next testing role
When I was starting to think about writing some posts to help out those who are either recruiting testers (see here for my first post), or for testers looking for new roles, the obvious first post was going to be around interviews. Interviews are scary, interviews need preparation, etc.
But to be honest, there is already so much available on the web that’ll teach you the basics, that I’d be re-inventing the wheel.
This is the second post in a series on finding a job within testing – the first one is Starting a New Job In Testing which you can also read on this site.
Basic interviewing techniques
If you need some help on basic interviewing techniques then I’d recommend spending some time on Ministry of Testing, looking at the recruitment resource section. What I want to discuss in this post is an interviewing technique we are using where I work, in order to help us recruit testers. It’s not new but it’s also not typical, and so hopefully it helps you.
A typical interview
A typical interview has a set of questions, and sometimes a script to follow. While the questions may not be written down, an experienced interviewer typically has a number of questions in their head that they can tailor to the interview situation, and use to steer the conversation in a particular direction. There may be a formal test, or the interview may just be conducted verbally.
Simply asking someone questions about testing, and gauging their responses, is one way of understanding in more detail what they know. You can also find out more about who they are, and what they can bring to the company. While we are following this approach, we’re also doing things a little differently.
Persona based interviewing
In a persona based interview, each of the interviewers play out part of a task based story, which the candidate is also a part of. One of more scenario’s are played out, normally based around a task that the candidate would typically face if they were successful in joining the company. The interviewers take different persona’s, each playing the part of a role or person that the candidate would need to interact with, in order to successfully pass the task that they are set. In this way the interviewers can understand how the candidate approaches particular tasks, how they solve problems, and how they interact with others.
For our interviewers for mobile test positions we typically play out some scenario’s based around testing our applications on real hardware. I won’t go into too much detail, for obvious reasons, but the candidate receives a certain testing task, and then is expected to start testing and exploring the application in order to successfully find bugs within it.
We play the parts of other people in the story. These could be the Product Owner deciding on re-prioritisation, other testers being able to offer advice, a developer being difficult or helpful, or even a senior manager wanting to know the progress of a testing task. As we go through we throw in these sorts of requests, and other changes to the scenario, in order to see how the tester works when requirements change and the pressure mounts.
Attempting to complete the tasks without interacting with the other roles within the scenario is very difficult and we are looking as much towards how and when the candidate asks for help, as we are to the testing skills that they show.
After the scenario’s are complete then we discuss with the candidate how they think the scenario’s went, what they thought went well and what they would do differently if faced with them again.
Is persona based interviewing useful for test roles?
We think it is. Mainly because:
It gives us a better idea of how the candidate thinks, and how they approach a testing problem
I’m a firm believer in context-driven testing and Rapid Software Testing in particular, as is the company I work for. To me, being able to observe how someone approaches a testing task, who they communicate with, and what questions they ask is very important. Being able to get an understanding of how they change their approach based upon the context is also much easier within the scenarios. Using persona based interviewing I get to discover more about ‘how they tick’ rather than what testing terms they can remember, or how much of their career story they can tell.
We get to see a candidates real, practical skills
By giving the candidates tasks based around testing our live applications, usually on an iPhone or iPad, we give the candidates an opportunity to demonstrate the real, practical skills that they have. We encourage the candidates to talk us through what they are doing and give them the opportunity to demonstrate what they know. Being able to demonstrate ability also puts people more at ease and we get to see what they can really do.
It focuses on critical assessment and improvement
By having a de-brief or lessons learnt session after the scenario’s have played out, we also get to see how a candidate critically assesses themselves, and discover what they would do differently given another chance. Making mistakes is human but learning from them is the important thing, and I don’t expect testers in my teams to get everything right first time. However I do expect them to be able to recognise ways in which they can improve.
It’s more fun than just answering questions
It’s certainly more fun for the interviewers, and hopefully it’s also a bit more fun for the candidate (as much as interviews can be anyway). Asking questions isn’t much fun, and only being able to show your skills in simple answers, is not the best way to spend your time. Demonstration of skills tests how a candidate works not what they can remember.
So, why not try persona based interviewing next time you are recruiting for testers. It can be a great way of finding really good people who you can have confidence will do a good job.
The next post in the series will be about C.V.’s, and what you need to highlight in order to get noticed.
Image courtesy of Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net