Seems like it’s been just a few days, but it’s been a month – time for another workshop in our testing meetup! This time we had even bigger attendance. Below I share my experience report.

Participants

Albert Gareev (organizer, facilitator), Kraig Lenehan (event host, presenter)

Niketa Patel, Rachael, Sumant Pujari, Nick Norbeck, Raman Khanna, Vitor Fragoso, Josh Grant, Joti Dhillon, Najiba, Mayura, Natalya Mayzels, Iryna Tsedryk, Alex Tsedryk

Job Finding Club

• Kraig Lenehan gave a talk about his approach and experience in hiring of testers in Toronto, common mistakes to avoid and patterns to use in a resume.
• The talk was followed by a Q&A session.
• Albert Gareev accepted sign-ups for Resume Review services.

Extreme Testing

This was the main theme –

How change of context affects your testing? Or it doesn’t?
How performing tests and learning about the application changes our understanding of the context.

Plan –

• Analyze requirements and testing mission
• Come up with test strategy
• Hands-on testing session
• Debriefing

(On the photo: a famous Triangle Testing Exercise by Glenford Myers, implemented in Web version by Elisabeth Hendrikson (c) Agilistry Studio. Notice bug reports sticky notes attached right on the projected image!)

Requirements

Program accepts 3 values as sides of the triangle and recognizes whether it’s scalene, isosceles, or equilateral triangle.

Mission

• Organize into teams
• Analyze requirements
• Define testing strategy and tactics
• If you were to run only 10 tests what would they be?

Special Conditions

While functional requirements remained the same, Product Owner introduced changes into the purpose of the application in the following order.

• This is a mobile app. User points camera at a triangle. Purpose: take measurements and recognize triangles.
• This is a web app. User manually inputs values. Purpose: geometry app for students to study and take exams online.
• This is a web app. User manually inputs values. Purpose: hands-on training for testers. – Finally, this application was presented and tested.

Team North

Team North had luck with leadership and initiative that emerged quickly and confidently. I loved the ease how they utilized the whiteboard to visualize their ideas and strategy points. Their test strategy planning deserves a special praise too: quick, concise, responsive to change, and well communicated. I noted how they dissected the requirements, used heuristic approach, and communicated their assumptions.

Team South

Team South went into a sharp requirements analysis and brought up many important questions that made the “product owner” to reconsider the original purpose of the product – because of the risks raised. Overall, the team continually kept asking for more direct and detailed communication with the customer and end-users, highlighting the risks of running on assumptions only. They even offered to assist with UI design and writing specifications. They haven’t got the access to the whiteboard but everyone made a good use of pen and paper – they took notes, documented concerns, and prepared test data. The were also astonishingly enthusiastic bug hunters during the testing practice!