Blog Posts

TestBash Netherlands 2017

I will speak at the TestBash Netherlands on January 2017 and present How to misuse ‘Automation’ for testing, fun and productivity.

We often hear about how ‘test automation’ can go wrong, which is all fine and dandy for the pessimists in the audience, and balancing feel good positive case studies exist for the optimists. But what about the anarchists? What about the rule breakers? What about the pragmatists? In this talk Alan will explain how to ‘misuse’ the ‘automation’ tools you’ve heard so much about, because you need to get things done. You’ve no doubt heard that ‘Cucumber is not a test tool’, and you’ve no doubt noticed that people use Cucumber during their testing. It’s misuse cases like this that we will celebrate, and as a bonus, you’ll learn what Cucumber ‘really’ is. We’ll look at other tools; to find out their true nature and how you can turn it to your personal advantage. To further groom you for success, we’ll explain the mental models which give you guilt free flexibility in your approach. If you’ve ever wanted an ‘expert’ to quote to give you permission to use the tools how you want, this is the talk for you.

TLDR; Map resolutions every day. Evaluate if you are living the purpose you set. Go deep with your current knowledge and it will allow you to adopt the trends when they become strong influences on your work.

TLDR; push back, ask questions, and if all else fails - plan it as a manageable set of tasks

At SyncHerts January Meetup I presented a 5 minute Lightning Talk.

The Lighting Talk

SyncHerts January 2017 Meetup

This is the first time I’ve been able to attend a SyncHerts Meetup, which is one of the ‘just outside’ London, but ‘close enough’ to home, that I should be able to attend more regularly.

I’ll be presenting a 5 minute (with max 7 slides) talk on “Automating Tactically vs Stragically”.

Looking forward to talking, drinking ‘soft drinks’ because I’ll be driving, and networking.

I spoke at the Test Automation Guild on January 2017 and present “If you want to automate, you learn to code”.

If you want to automate, you learn to code, and you learn to code well.

“Automate” doesn’t mean “Automate Testing” it means “Automate part of your test process”.

You need to learn to code to do that with the most options open to you.

We’ll look at some ‘we do this alot’ and ‘we want to automate’ activities which we can use tools for. But we’ll also see that we are limited by the tools.

I believe that everyone has a unique and personal test process. Also, when we accept this, we can grow our testing skills further and faster than if we pursue the traditional path of learning a common body of knowledge.

An exercise in JavaScript console hacking.

TLDR; Start emulating people, use your job to learn, keep training, identify other people’s strategies, experiment to see what works for you, make your own tools, harness your uniqueness.

TLDR; Happy New Year - And all the best for 2017 - resolve to make changes every day - don’t rely on a single point in the year.

TLDR; I avoided creating a definition of software testing for a long time because I thought it would constrain me. Instead I built a model of what I did. Eventually I generalised it to a ‘definition’ - “Testing is building and comparing models of a system to the system.”