July 2012 – Derk-Jan de Grood

The future of testing on my desk

Normally I do not publish articles on this website that are not published by an independent publisher, but this time I make an exception. The screen shot below is from an article that we published in the Value. The Value is Valori’s customer magazine and is issued about 3 times a year.

For the July issue I wrote an article about the future of testing. We decided to give it a playful lay-out, as you can see on the illustration. I think it is a nice change from the normal text like contributions.

If you want to read the article open de PDF (it is in Dutch): Bepaal je koers.PDF

Proud to be a part of it…

Electromind is organising the agile testing fortnight in september this year.

The agile testing fortnight is a “hands-on” training programme that provides practical advice and helpful hints to align your testing with the fast pace of software development. It provides a wide range of topics, just like a conference, but with the difference that we have time to go deep into the subjects. This makes it more rewarding and easier to actually use the stuff you’ll learn.

For this event a number of inspiring trainers are gathered. I am very proud to be enlisted with appreciated colleges like Fiona, Michel and both Stephen’s. Each of these will provide individual training sessions, and as a cherry on the pie we will collaborate on the Saturday session called the masterclass.

Below the schedule of the event.

Trainer	Course Name	Days	Date	Register Online Here
Michael Bolton	Rapid Software Testing	3	10^th – 12^th	http://rst8.eventbrite.com
Michael Bolton	Rapid Software Test Management	2	13^th – 14^th	http://rstm1.eventbrite.com
Derk-Jan de Grood	Practical Test Design	1	13^th	http://ptd1.eventbrite.com
Derk-Jan de Grood	Testing for business benefit	1	14^th	http://tbb1.eventbrite.com
All speakers*	Testing Masterclass	1	15^th	http://tmc1.eventbrite.com
Fiona Charles	Inspiring Testing – Test Leadership	1	17^th	http://psw1.eventbrite.com
Fiona Charles	Determining Business Risks for Testing	1	18^th	http://psw2.eventbrite.com
Fiona Charles	Design behind the plan – Test Strategy	1	19^th	http://psw3.eventbrite.com
Anand Ramdeo	Selenium WebDriver	2	20^th – 21^st	http://swd1.eventbrite.com

* plus special guest Stephen Janaway – testing mobile apps

If you want more information, do not hesitate to contact me, or look on the referred websites.

New test magazine

A few months ago Macro van der Spek, editor of Testnieuws.nl decided to create a Dutch glossy magazine for testers. Most current test journals are international and in English.

“The plan to collect articles that where provided by the Dutch test community,” says Macro, “and that I would merge them together into a beautiful magazine. I have scrutinized all magazines that were laying around in the house to get inspiration for the testkrant. I even looked at the Donald Duck. ”

Personally, I am very pleased to have contributed to this new initiative. Besides my story about kanban for the test organization, the testkant includes contributions from Bryan Bakker, Jeroen Mengerink and Erik van Veenendaal.

Are you going on a holiday soon, why not put the free PDF on your device or print it out for reading next to the pool. But even if you stay home, I wish you much fun with this premiere edition.

You can download the test paper at www.testnieuws.nl
…but be warned…its in Dutch 😉

DTC: “Optimize integration between business and IT”

Op 17 april 2013 wordt voor de vierde keer de Dutch Testing Conference gehouden. Dit jaar wordt er naast de DTC parallel het congres Bridging the Gap gehouden.

Ik ben hier blij mee. Oorspronkelijk was de doelstelling van de DTC om niet een conferentie te zijn ‘voor en door testers’. Het initiële doel was om een juist een meeting laats te zijn tussen business en testers. Een van de problemen was natuurlijk de naam, business komt minder snel naar een conferentie met ‘test’ in de naam. Nu Heliview de organisatie heeft overgenomen, is er ruimte voor nieuwe initiatieven.

Dit jaar zal er daarom niet alleen het DTC plaats vinden, maar exclusief voor de business zal er een extra event tegelijkertijd worden georganiseerd: Bridging the Gap. Centraal in beide congressen staat de samenwerking tussen Business & IT.

Voor meer informatie, ook voor de call for papers, verwijs ik graag naar beide websites:
www.dutchtestingconference.nl en www.bridgingthegapconference.nl

Fact sheet: Kanban for test organizations

Together with a client I was discussing the advantages that kanban can have for his test team. He was really interested. In order to help him communicate our ideas within his organization and get people informed and motivated I made a fact sheet.

Afterwards I made it more generic and translated it to English so others can benefit from it. Click on link for a high-resolution PDF in both Dutch and English: Kanban fact sheet (UK and NL)

SCRUM Master Class july 2012

With two other colleagues from Valori, I joined the SCRUM master class by Ken Schwaber. It was a practical hands-on training. But it contained quite some principles, mind-set and ethics as well. For me it yielded in great ideas and a much better understanding of the true ideas behind SCRUM. With this knowledge I think I’ll be able to support organizations much better in their Agile testing, but Agile is of course much wider than testing alone. Altogether a good way to spent my days in Amsterdam. Below a photo of the July class.