We are delighted to inform you have secured a speaking slot at the 2011 EuroSTAR Conference and we look forward to meeting you in Manchester later in the year.
So I got lucky enough to have my first submission to EuroSTAR accepted :-) The next months were needed to slowly build up the presentation (which also got accepted for Testnet).
Tuesday the 22st of November we went to Manchester. The mist cancelled some flights, but our flight only had a delay of about 20 minutes. The first day we missed out on some presentations due to a slow restaurant, but I was able to hear Gojko Adzic speak about "Death To The Testing Phase". The main things I got from this presentation were that it is important to visualise quality and to apply post release testing. My colleague Kees Blokland was all day preparing for his presentation the next day.
In the evening Dorien and I went to visit the local Christmas market. We were surprised to see a lot of Dutch stands there, supplying Dutch cheese, Dutch mini pancakes and more. The touristic route (read: we got a bit lost) back to the hotel took a while, but we saw some nice parts of Manchester.
Wednesday I got to see more of the presentations. The day started with a keynote of James Whittaker: "Pursuing Quality? You Won't Get There By Testing". The story proved to be good, but only applicable to large companies. Smaller companies can't just use thousands of people to perform some beta testing like Google can...
Next I went to one of the short tracks where Martin Mussmann told us about "Mind Maps As Part Of The Agile Testing Process". In the high change rate that he has to work in, mind maps proved to be a nice way to show the backlog items and connect test ideas to them. By describing only what to test and not how to do it, these maps could be used as a help in talking to both the business as the developers.
I just had to attend Kees' presentation about "Chasing Quality In Cloud Computing - Testing Different Levels Of Quality Requirements". He showed us that using the cloud incorporates different types of risks that need to be mitigated. Of course the obvious ones like performance, security and functionality, but also new risks in the area of legislation and regulations and suppliers. After describing the risks he also described test measures to be taken. Ending with a description of the broader role of the test manager which needs involvement in selection, implementation and operation of cloud services.
Since automation is one of the topics I like, I also went to Julian Harty who introduces us to "Pushing The Boundaries Of User Experience Test Automation". He provided some nice examples of automatable user experience tests. Not everyone can (or will) use the mouse to navigate through websites, so tabbing and hotkeys should also be tested. We accept that the number of steps needed to perform a task by using the keyboard is more than with using the mouse, but there are limits. So also the number of tabs needed to return to the same point on a page should be limited, which can automatically be validated.
The closing keynote of wednesday was Daryl Elfield with "Power to the People - Achieve Fast, Sustainable Change in Quality by Harnessing the Crowd". He gave nice examples of how communities within the organisation not only provided ideas for change, but also created the footage to actually perform the change. So by giving power to the employees, the commitment to the company increased.
In the evening our friends from Hauwei invited us to eat with them in Chinatown. It was really nice to have some decent Chinese food again :-) We went for hot pot! I chose the spicy one, but was uncertain of my choice when two out of three Chinese took the normal while saying that spicy was too spicy for them. The first couple of bites were extremely spice, but I got used to the taste and had a great dinner.
Thursday started with Ben Walters' keynote "Create Customer Value with Agile Testing". I know I visited this keynote, but can't remember much of it. Probably I was too busy with preparing for my own presentation this day.
I attended the presentation previous to mine by John Montgomery "What The Top 10 Most Disruptive Technology Trends Mean For QA And Testing". He described a nice list of disruptive trends like agile, cloud and mobile, but in my eyes lacked to really show what it meant for testing.
Then finally my debut on the big stage with "How To Test Mobile Applications" ;-) A quick count showed more than 100 people in the audience, a new record since my 30 people audience at Testnet. I provided a road map for building mobile applications. Testing needs to be aware of store requirements, next to the normal business and user requirements. Another important part is that the impact of the app on the features provided by the phone and vice versa need to be tested. It would be a pity if the phone wasn't able to receive calls while using an app... After my presentation I had quite a lot chats with people that had attended and wanted to know more.
My state of mind didn't allow me to take in any information after my presentation, so I took the rest of the afternoon strolling around the Expo. At the end of the afternoon we flew back home. I have really enjoyed my first visit to EuroSTAR and saw good presentations. I hope to attend again next year in Amsterdam.
