esconfs – Derk-Jan de Grood

Agile Deep Dive week- A webinar on Built-in Quality

Last week EuroSTAR organized the Agile Deep Dive week. We had great sessions from Experts in Agile like Bob Galen, Lisa Crispin, Gitte Ottoson, Selena Delesie, Hanna Dernbran. I was asked to close the week with my Friday session on built-in quality. I enjoyed doing it and was impressed by the good questions and discussion we had afterwards.

In the top of this post, you see an impression of the talk. But the full experience can be obtained on the EuroSTAR Huddle. You need to register but can access the full recording for free. I hope you enjoy it and find it use-full. I was really pleased with the reactions and the enthusiasm of some participant to apply it directly in their organization.

Built-In Quality

Agile Deep-dive

This month EuroSTAR organises their very first deep dive week on Agile. From 22nd – 26th March we will be exploring many facets of Agile including QA, Quality and more. For the first time we will be hosting two AMAs (Ask Me Anythings) with two experts in Agile, Bob Galen and Lisa Crispin. See the full details below. Additionally we have some great webinars to catch up on. I’ll be closing the week with my Friday session on built-in quality.

You can register to any of the sessions at the conference site: Register for the agile deep dive week

EuroSTAR program Committee 2021

Today the EuroSTAR program Committee has been announced. Fran O’ Hara, was already appointed as chair of this years conference and he has selected a nice group of people around him. Meet Janet, Sowmya and Szilárd. I am honoured to be part of the committee and looking forward to the task of making this edition of the EuroSTAR conference an interesting one that is worthwhile, covers all the right topics and trends and is memorable. We are still looking for your story to make it happen, see the call for paper

A challenging task. Meet the program committee members on the conference website.

EuroSTAR program announced

EuroSTAR will be an online experience this year. The program has been announced. It looks like its going to be a great event. I am proud to be part of the line-up. Check out the above mentioned speakers and all the other interesting sessions on the conference website.

Le dernier jour et je ne sais toujours pas – The Last Day and I Still Don’t Know

The EuroSTAR conference is getting close. I will be hosting an interactive session on Do 15 November, 3:15 pm. In style with the conference theme this session is called: le dernier jour et je ne sais toujours pas – The Last Day and I Still Don’t Know. During the session you will be able to ask any question that remained unanswered during the conference. Since I do not hold all the knowledge myself I asked help from:

Egbert Bouman
Declan O’Riordan
Joel Montvelisky
Rob Sabourin

If we do not have the answer you might know! During this informal interactive session, you can share your thoughts or help your fellow participants by recapturing those sessions that they missed. So, if you want an answer to that one lingering question, sort your thoughts and get a wrap-up on the conference. Don’t leave yet; this is the session to attend.

We hope to see you in the room !

EuroSTAR program announced

EuroSTAR

EuroSTAR, one of the leading conferences on software quality in Europe has announced the program for their 2018 edition. EuroSTAR will be held in the Netherlands starting 12 november. What a great line-up of speakers this year’s edition will hold.

You can check out the program yourself. Note that many new topics and speakers have emerged this year! This year’s programme will see the likes of AI, IOT and Blockchain feature throughout, as well as some of our old favourites like DevOps, Agile, Automation, Test Management and so on. The depth of the conference programme tells you where our industry is headed and helps you prepare for what lies ahead.

I am proud to be a part of the program, check out my contribution: Le dernier jour et je ne sais toujours pas – The Last Day and I Still Don’t Know. Don’t worry if your French is just as poor as mine, the session will be in English ;-).

On Wednesday my colleague Egbert Bouman will give a presentation as well: in Agile Testing in a Formal Organisation he shares his experiences at the Dutch Bank.

Hope to see you there…

New Blog post: Agile Coaching is like calibrating

“If you see me at work and spot me grasping in the air and turning imaginary valves. Then I am probably explaining how I visualize agile coaching.”

EuroSTAR published a new post on agile coaching. In this post I explain how I work as an agile coach and compare my team coaching with calibrating a complex imaginary steam engine. The challenge is to find the right setting of each of the valves and balance the pressure. If we succeed in that, we have found an effective way of working that produces a lot of value for the organization. We could than say we have calibrated the machine

Read the full column on the EuroSTAR community pages: Agile Coaching – Calibrating the MachTeam.

Do not become a bottleneck for the agile project

Last November, during the EuroSTAR conference, I was asked to give a soapbox speech in the grand hall. During this “lightning strikes the keynotes” session I stated that if we testers don’t make haste with our test improvements we’ll become the agile project’s bottleneck.

I made a short summary of my arguments in the video below. In my latest edition of G(r)ood Testing 19: Let’s make haste with our test improvements I repeat this message, and also indicate some items that require attention in many organisations. You can read the column and my other columns in the series on the EuroSTAR community pages.

Survival techniques for testers, beyond the T-shape tester

Tuesday 3 November Jan Jaap Cannegieter and I gave a tutorial workshop at the EuroSTAR conference. In this wisdom of the crowd session we searched for and defined our future. Main question throughout the workshop was:

How do we survive as a tester and what skills and knowledge de we need to develop.

We used the T-shaped tester (Rob Lambert, Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory) that combines need for general knowledge with advanced test skills to be successful. But we thought it was time to expand the model. Therefore we introduced the π-shaped professional. Theπ-shaped tester extends his global knowledge (development, project management, agile etc.) and test expertise with yet another specialism to stay in demand, e.g. security, test automation, requirements.

In the workshop we did a brainstorm what other specialism will be in future demand. Jan Jaap and I were astonished by the fast amount of suggestions provided by the group. See the both flip overs they covered below:

In the second part of the workshop we did dot-voting (see the previous pictures) to invest how popular the various specialisms were. The most popular were taking as a starting point for a further investigation. Below you’ll find the skills for each leg of the π as determined by the participants.

Note: I think it is interesting is to see what the teams filled in for the other two legs as well. The generic skills and testing skills they come up with variate with each of the specialisms.

Agile

Test Automation

Business Analyst

Programming

DevOps

Non Functional testing (Security, Performance, UX)

How good are your collaboration skills?

I often encounter discussions on testers competences. One, who believes testing is an easy job, should try a search on the Internet. He’d be surprised how many competences are associated with good testing. Being a tester, what skills should you focus on? What skills should you develop? There is one skill that is rapidly gaining relevance.

Watch the video introduction below (it’s only 29 seconds long) to find out which one it is. Or read the full column. Its my latest column in the G(r)ood testing series.

Happy homecoming, Testing Excellence Award

Today I got welcomed at the Valori-office with Champagne and Cake. I was congratulated by everyone with winning the Testing Excellence Award by many of my direct colleagues. What a nice surprise.

Egbert Bouman held another heartwarming speech and explained, for those that didn’t already know, what the significance of this prestigious award is. The “EuroSTAR Testing Excellence Award” is presented annually to an individual who has made a significant contribution to the field of software testing within Europe. The award seeks to promote leadership, contribution and effectiveness in testing process and implementation.

I am very proud upon receiving this award. I am overwhelmed by all the positive things being said in the nomination that contains quotes of all 26 testers that supported it. More information on the award can be found at www.testnieuws.nl or EuroSTAR website

EuroSTAR webinar on Mobile testing

EuroSTAR is announcing a series of webinars by Zeger Hesse, Fiona Charles, BJ Rollinson and Rob Lambert. My own webinar in the series will be held on 25 February and is called Mobile Testing – the relation between tests, business goals & design considerations. You can read the summary below:

Testing Mobile requires technical tests that align with both the business goals, and the design considerations made by development team. Due to the small size of app projects, tester can fulfill an important role in keeping overview, guiding the business and of course executing the right tests. This presentation will explain what can be tested on an app and adds the relation with the initial goals and design considerations. Understanding these relations will enable testers to bridge the gap between other disciplines.

Registration for this webinar can be done on the EuroSTAR website. I hope to virtually meet you there 😉