State of Testing Report 2019

The annual  state of testing report  is based on the contribution of about 1000 participants from 80 countries. They filled in the survey earlier this year and thus sharing  how they perceived their work and the testing profession.

PractiTest and TeaTimeWithTesters are happy to present the report. It’s the 6th edition already. It brings you a lot of data and numbers, and also clarifies trends that are relevant to everyone seeking a future in the QA world.

• Have  a look at page 13, and see how CI/CD is getting more adopted.
• See how the number of testers that don’t do automation goes down,
• or look for the team challenges on page 25.
• Check how people expect their career to  evolve on page 31

Just a few  of the highlights, Download it now and discover:

State of Testing Survey 2019

TestExpo Copenhagen

I just got back from Denmark where I contributed to the TestExpo 2019.

Wednesday Jan Jaap Cannegieter and I gave a tutorial on Test Management in Agile. With a group of 23 enthusiastic test managers we explored what task we perform, how these tasks relate to our mission as test manager and what various roles the test manager can have.

A large amount of time was spent on making one-page testplans for sprint and release level.  There were many questions on how we can embed quality in larger agile organisations.  Based on the questions we adapted the program a bit and shared our ideas on building quality into e.g. the SAFe frame work. Based on the eBook I wrote with Mette Bruhn-Pedersen, we had some great discussions. The Chief Quality Officer, that is introduced in the eBook,  even made into the next assignment.

During the Conference Jan Jaap gave an  interactive  session. Since the conference was held in the cinema, the STARWARS theme of “Dark side of test automation” was a close fit. During this  session we discussed the pitfalls of Test Automation and give some tips to stay away from the dark side.

 

 

The impact of AI on testing

Bits & Chips magazine published an article on Artificial intelligence. For this article I sat down with Rik Marselis from Sogeti, and together we had a good conversation about the changes and challenges of AI and testing.

AI is a popular topic these days. As companies are including it in their solutions and services, IT professionals are more likely to encounter AI and machine  learning in their daily work and experience the challenges it brings. We discussed

How AI can be used to:

• automatically scan the system and run some tests
• interpret the systems’ response
• find patterns in the production data
• learn how the system is being used
• select the test to include in a regression testset
• predict where error might occur
• generate synthetic test data

Read the full article in Bits & chips or here:  Tea and coffee with Rik and Derk-Jan – The impact of AI on testing

Bringing the DevOpsImprovement Game to Ibiza

This weekend Innspire and Fincalabs host the Agile Coaching Summit – Digital Innovation Camp on the beatiful island of Ibiza. I was thrilled to participate and did the Valori DevOpsImprovement game. We had great fun playing it and had a fruitfull debate afterwards.

 

Common sense or Agile Excellence? – A new workshop

Wednesday the Dutch Test Association is hosting its spring-conference in the NBC. We have a full day ahead of us filled with interesting talks and workshops on testing and quality. From Valori we contribute with two sessions

In the morning we start with a tutorial called  “Common sense or Agile Excellence?”. During this workshop Duco Geels, Feline Hermans and I will explore test strategies in a real life experiment:  Agile Evangelists and purist have a very clear picture of how agile development should go. Opposite the purists is a group of pragmatic test professionals. They do not see agile as the ultimate goal and do not approach the problems from the theory, but from their gut feeling or common sense. Sometimes these groups face each other. This is also the case during this session, where we will learn the differences and similarities between both approaches.

In the evening, Linda Dekker, Gerhard Kruiger, Roy Vennik, Jurgen Woen Tjoen Soen and Eric van der Mark will host a session on how testing can be kept out of the crumple zone. If the planning supports testing, the project is helped because feedback is given early, the quality improves and early insight is gained on risks and the effectiveness of the
test approach. It is therefore only logical that testers interfere with the planning of development such that they can start testing as quickly as possible. But is this in daily live the case…. often it is not….!

See more details about the event on the testnet site.

It’s a pop-up Huddle!!

The Eurostar Huddle is going on tour! This month is will show up in Copenhagen, where it will pop up at TestExpo on May 23rd! Jan Jaap and I will be hosting a tutorial on Test Management in Agile there and a session on test automation.

But together with the #eurostarconf crew and Isabel Evans will sit down for a relaxed and informal couch session during the break. Hope you drop by and to say hi!

DevOpsImprovement Game – Maximise business value without ignoring operational responsibilities

DevOps teams have to balance their work between three types of tasks. Development, Operational tasks and Improvements. Many DevOps teams (and that includes the PO) are struggling with balancing between the three types of work. Often Ops work uses up much of the time reducing the adaptivity of the business, while other teams focus heavily on new features and create too much technical debt.

To get a feel about this challenge we created a serious game, called the DevOpsImprovement Game. In this game teams experience how to have a maximum of business value in a sustainable way without ignoring operational responsibilities.

I have posted some impressions of the game before, but I proudly present DevOpsImprovement- The Video. 

Thanks Jana, Philip, Karlijn and Thomas for sharing your impression of the game

Keynote speaker on the Agile Testing Days – Woaauw!

The line-up of keynote speakers for the Agile Testing Days in Potsdam gave been announced. The grin on my face in the picture above is sincere; I am really happy to give a keynote.

Jan Jaap looks happy as well. We are combining forces to make it a story worthwhile. More details will follow in time due.

New eBook series on the Digital Transformation

Proud to present the first edition of three eBooks on the Digital Transformation: Title “Why your organization will not survive the next 5 years, and how to avoid that.” In this first eBook I describe trends that force organizations to adapt their business model and invest in a flexible and adaptive development process. In this eBook I give some examples of disruptive changes and explain how this could impact organizations like yours….

You can download the eBook for free (if you leave behind a few details) on the Valori Website. Currently the publication is in Dutch, I am sorry for that.

This first edition will be followed by two more eBooks….we are currently working on the 2nd edition that will describe what organizations do to become adaptive. To be Continued…

 

How to get more out of your User Acceptance Test- Article in AG Connect with Rene Ceelen

Together with Rene Ceelen I published an article in the AG Connect. Rene Ceelen is researcher on the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op de faculteit Institute for Computing and Information Sciences. He also runs TestMonitor, a consultancy company on ERP Testmanagement.

For this article we sat together and discussed the value of the User Acceptance Test (UAT) and defined some tips to empower the user to do great tests. We also discussed ways to improve the value of the UAT. It can be so much more than just some users playing around with the system.

We wrote the article in dutch, but if we get enough requests we’ll translate it to English. You can read it here: Gebruikers acceptatie testen blijven belangrijk.

Test management in Agile – Full day tutorial at the TestExpo Denmark

On May 22^nd, you will get a unique possibility to enhance your test managers skill set within Agile environments. Together with Jan Jaap Cannegieter I will host the full day tutorial the day before TestExpo™ Conference in Denmark.

We made a little video teaser for you to get an impression of the tutorial. More details can be found on the website TestExpo

Join us in Copenhagen if you want to know

• how to make and use a test strategy in Agile
• make and use light weight documentation
• how different test management like roles add value in Agile
• how to do Test planning and monitoring in Agile

We hope to see you there! Reserve you ticket on the conference website

Safe & Sec: QA&TEST Safety and Security Madrid program announced !

Since 2001 the QA&TEST conference is held in Bilbao. The aim of the conference is to diffuse the latest technological developments in Software Testing and Quality Assurance for embedded and complex systems.

This year the conference is expanded with a Madrid edition that will focus on safety and security.  SQS will launch QA&TEST Safety and Security conference, focused on facing the challenges presented by addressing safety and security aspects in an integrated manner, to both development and testing. QA&TEST Safety and Security will be the perfect complement to the general content of QA&TEST embedded.

On 27 and 28 March the conference will be hosting a great selection of interesting talks. You can check the program on the new conference website.

EuroSTAR Proposals at a glance – what to expect this year?

This week I finished the proposal review for the EuroSTAR conference. I think it is a nice task, since as a reviewer you are not only helping the program board with selecting the best proposals. What I like about the reviewing is that you get an insight in what topics seem to be hot and alive among the community. This year’s program chair Isabel Evans set the theme; working well. She explains on the website to look for talks that describe experiences of Working Well under several broad headings.

Isabel states:” The software, technology, products and services that we design, build and test: whatever they are, we want to deliver them working well. And to meet that purpose, we need to think about how we work well; our practices, our people, and our challenges.”

I am not sure whether this year’s theme influenced the type of proposals, but I noticed a tendency towards generic topic this year.

A lot of the proposals I reviewed were on embedding the testing within the Agile development cycle. I read proposals on how testers can contribute during the refinement and include user experience in their strategy. This aligns with my personal experience that testing discipline seems to merge more and more with agile development. We like to contribute to a fast and efficient creation of solutions that have customer value and build in quality.

Sometimes that requires the tester to focus on the organisation, but it also requires a more technical approach. Luckily there were also some proposals on CI/CD and Automation. I liked the proposals that will show participants to adopt new technology and tools like AI to improve their testing. I read about api testing, Test data and Non-functional testing as well. No doubt we’ll have some of those on the program in Prague next November.

Gamification of the DevOpsImprovement challenge

Yesterday we piloted the new DevOpsImprovement game.

Many DevOps teams (and that includes the PO) are struggling with balancing between Development work, operational tasks and improvements. Depending on the organisational context and the team members, there often is a focus on one of the three types of work. In the Dev, Ops & Improvement game teams experience the benefit of improving your way of working and balancing between short term and long-term benefits.  In the game teams experience that often the way to being proactive and innovative is by reducing the time spent on operational task by sufficient improvements like automation, CI/CD and developing team skills. The goal of this interactive card game is to have a maximum of business value in a sustainable way without ignoring operational responsibilities and creating technical dept.

During the agile guild meeting at Valori we held the first trial run. We made some improvements and will present the game at the NN Agile day, later this month. The participants were enthusiastic: ” it gives examples on how certain improvements can benefit the organisation”, “the events are really recognisable, we have them as well”, “it triggers discussion between teams” and “since it can be done in an hour, I can easily do it during retrospective or e.g. at a lunch session”.

The Dark Side of Test Automation – Interactive Session at the TestExpo 2019

23 May, CopenHagen, Denmark: Capgemini will host the TestExpo 2019. During this full day event Tester will gather and imagine how it would be to work with unrestricted quality assurance, that Test & QA was the highest priority in our organisations and that we and access to unlimited resources. The imagination gets free rein when we, at the CinemaxX theater, take another step to facilitate the development of the test world.

But amidst all this unlimited thoughts and highly positive atmosphere, Jan Jaap Cannegieter (squerist) and I will look at the dark side of test automation. In our session we will explain the five most common misunderstandings when it comes to test automation. The different misunderstandings will then be explained using examples and experiences. This will be followed by an online readiness test: is your project or organisation ready for test automation? And what can we learn from those who have these requirements in place?But there is an alternative for the dark side as well. We will describe what it takes to introduce test automation in the right way.

See our session description and all other awesome speakers on the conference website: TestExpo2019