Blog Posts

I have yet to update my Windows Machine to Windows 10, and therefore haven’t experienced the joys of MS Edge. Until now. And crikey! I was surprised.

I recently re-read Stafford Beer’s 1967 “Cybernetics and Management”. An overview of Cybernetics and its derivation from Operational Research; because its examples use organisations and teams, it provides immediate relevance to my work.

Agile and Automation Days, Poland, Krakow - November 2015

I attended the Agile and Automation Days Conference in Krakow, Poland on the 16th November 2015 to present a Keynote and a Tutorial on Technical Testing in Agile.

The Keynote title was “How to Improve your Technical Test Ability”. I described approaches, tools and mindsets that I use to improve my ability to test with increasing technical competency.

The tutorial covered “Technical Testing in Agile”, how to use and justify technical testing skills in an Agile context. This hands on tutorial requires much interactive investigation and execution.

I attended the Eurostar Mobile Deep Dive in November 2015 to present a session on Technical Mobile Testing - Risk, Issues and Experiences.

Mobile testing offers numerous challenges and the potential for massive scope creep with so many device combinations and tool choices available. We can’t afford to test everything so we make decisions on scope. We have learn to use risk as part of the the decision making process: business risk, and technical risk. In this talk, Alan will describe his experiences of hands-on testing of mobile native applications and mobile web applications, and the application of technical and risk-based thought processes in deciding what, and how, to test.

I attended the TestWorks Conference in Amsterdam on the 2nd of October 2015 to present a Keynote on “Real World Automation Challenges”. Based on my experience writing code to automate applications, and from working with clients world wide, I described challenges faced and the thinking behind the solutions chosen.

So if you want more options for how you approach automating executing then this might be the talk for you.

Slides

Blurb

The theme of the conference was Hands-on experience with different test automation tools. So I drew from my experience to consider different approaches I’ve adopted when automating, considering them as solutions to challenges.

Some lessons learned when working with a cloud grid vendor on a live production bug they had in their grid system.

Driver Abstractions are essential to help move between environments.

I run all the tests for Java For Testers prior to releasing the book. Since all code shown in the book is pulled out of the source, it should mean that all the source code you see in the book should run.

Lessons learned from Black Ops Testing - Testing a JavaScript library

Let us forget theory for a moment, and concentrate on the practice of automation. Alan will describe lessons learned from both success and failure; as a tester, an automator, and a manager. But more importantly, you will discover how to apply these lessons and improve your automation. Learn how to stay focused, how to experiment and still add value, how to manage even if you cannot code, and more…

Planning

Prior to the event I thought that the audience appeared to be a mix of practitioners and managers which was useful since I planned to talk about my experiences of automation from a perspective of a practitioner, and as a manager.