Wednesday 9th: Let’s Test day 3: sessions

Keynote Scott Barber

Last day of this awesome conference. Because we went to bed quite late (or early, it depends how you look at it), I was a bit hungover. But the adrenalin for my upcoming talk made my hangover disappear unbelievable quickly. The day started with a keynote by Scott Barber titled “Testing Missions in Context From Checking To Assessment”. I had no clue of where this talk would bring us but the title intrigued me. Scott started with a fun incoming message where he was asked to test a website and all discrepancies in production would be blamed on him. The message ended with the rhetorical question: “do you accept this mission?”. Scott talked about missions and tasks and he gave some nice examples using his military history. His advice: “always look at the mission two command levels up”. At the end of his talk he presented his new “Software System Readiness Assessment” and the Software System Assessment Report Card. I think I like his model, but I have to give it some more thought.

Scott Barber - Testing Missions in Context From Checking To Assessment

Scott relaxed on a bar stool on stage

Sessions

On Wednesday there were only 2 sessions because there was also a second keynote in the afternoon. I went to Michael Albrechts talk “from Good to Great with xBTM”. Michael talked about Session and Thread based test management. Both are very good, but combined they are great, he claims. He showed the tool SBTExecute. I haven’t had the chance to try it yet, but it looks promising. His talked showed how SBTM and TBTM can be combined using mind maps and how this approach can be used in agile.

My talk “So you think you can test?” was planned in the second session right after lunch. The rooms was packed and Zeger van Hese (did I mention that he is program chair of EuroStar 2012?) was facilitating the session. What could go wrong? After my talk there was a nice Open Season with some great questions. Thanks all for attending and participating, thank Zeger for facilitating. I hope everybody enjoyed my talk as much as I did.

Michael Albrecht - From Good to Great with xBTM

Look who's talking

So you think you can test? (Photo: Zeger van Hese)

Keynote Julian Harty

Julian did a magnificent keynote titled “Open Sourcing Testing”. He called testers to action to share their stuff with others so all can benefit, learn and eventually become better testers. One of his slides said: Ask “what you I share?” that doesn’t risk “too much”. And I think he is right. We should share more and we should be more open about what we do. Sure there is a lot of stuff which is too privacy-sensitive to share, but why should we reinvent the wheel in every organisation or project? By sharing we can also learn faster…

Julian Harty - Open Sourcing Testing

The End: Organisors on stage saying goodbye

The end…

Here you find all the presentations and lots of other blogs about Let’s Test 2012. I had a wonderful time, met loads of great people and learned a lot. So I think I can truly say: it was an awesome conference. I already registered for Let’s Test 2013 … Count down has begun. See you there? Or if you can’t wait so long: maybe we meet in San Jose at CAST 2012 in a couple of weeks? This promises to be an awesome conference as well!

People leaving, taxis driving on and off

My physical take aways: Julian, Rikard, Torbjörn and Scott: thanks!