"Agile Testing" workshop in July

[UPDATE] I think I will include some interesting Innovation Games to demonstrate the need for collaboration and more effective working. Or it could be something more specific to Testing on Agile projects. So many options ... 

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As part of Unicom's World Conference Next Generation Testing, I am doing a 1-day workshop on "Agile Testing", on Friday, 24th July 2015 in Bangalore. You can register for the workshop from here, or contact me for more information.

Below are the details of the workshop. 

Agile Testing

Abstract

The Agile Manifesto was published in 2001. It took the software industry a good few years to truly understand what the manifesto means, and the principles behind it. However, choosing and implementing the right set of practices to get the true value from working the Agile way has been the biggest challenge for most!

While Agile has now gone mainstream, and as we get better at the development practices to being Agile, Testing has still been lagging behind in most cases. A lot of teams are still working in the staggered fashion - with testing following next after development completed.

In this workshop, we will learn and share various principles and practices which teams should adopt to be successful in testing on Agile projects. 

Agenda

• What is Agile testing? - Learn what does it mean to Test on Agile Projects
• Effective strategies for Distributed Testing - Learn practices that help bridge the Distributed Testing gap!
• Test Automation in Agile Projects - Why? What? How? - Why is Test Automation important, and how do we implement a good, robust, scalable and maintainable Test Automation framework!
• Build the "right" regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT) - Behavior Driven Testing (BDT) is an evolved way of thinking about Testing. It helps in identifying the 'correct' scenarios, in form of user journeys, to build a good and effective (manual & automation) regression suite that validates the Business Goals.

Key Learnings for participants in this workshop

• Understand the Agile Testing Manifesto
• Learn the essential Testing practices and activities essential for teams to adopt to work in Agile way of working
• Discover techniques to do effective testing in distributed teams
• Find out how Automation plays a crucial role in Agile projects
• Learn how to build a good, robust, scalable and maintainable Functional Automation framework
• Learn, by practice, how to identify the right types of tests to automate as UI functional tests - to get quick and effective feedback

Pre-requisites

• At-least a basic working knowledge and understanding of Agile

Push the Envelope at vodQA, Bangalore

[UPDATED - Slides added]

Yet another vodQA begins today, Saturday, 25th April 2015 - this time at ThoughtWorks, Bangalore. The theme for this vodQA is - "Push the Envelope". The detail agenda can be found here.

I conducted a workshop on "Client-side Performance Testing" in vodQA Bangalore. 

Abstract of the workshop:

In this workshop, we will see the different dimensions of Performance Testing and Performance Engineering, and focus on Client-side Performance Testing. 

Before we get to doing some Client-side Performance Testing activities, we will first understand how to look at client-side performance, and putting that in the context of the product under test. We will see, using a case study, the impact of caching on performance, the good & the bad! We will then experiment with some tools like WebPageTest and Page Speed to understand how to measure client-side performance.

Lastly - just understanding the performance of the product is not sufficient. We will look at how to automate the testing for this activity - using WebPageTest (private instance setup), and experiment with yslow - as a low-cost, programmatic alternative to WebPageTest.

Here are the slides used in the workshop:

Enabling CD & BDT in March 2015

I have been very busy off late .... and am enjoying it too! I am learning and doing a lot of interesting things in the Performance Testing / Engineering domain. I had no idea there are so many types of caching, and that there would be a need to do various different types of Monitoring for availability, client-side performance testing, Real User Monitoring, Server-side load testing and more ... it is a lot of fun being part of this aspect of Testing.

That said, I am equally excited about 2 talks coming up in the end-of-March 2015:

Enabling CD (Continuous Delivery) in Enterprises with Testing 

- at Agile India 2015, on Friday, 27th March 2015 in Bangalore.

Abstract

The key objectives of Organizations is to provide / derive value from the products / services they offer. To achieve this, they need to be able to deliver their offerings in the quickest time possible, and of good quality!
In such a fast moving environment, CI (Continuous Integration) and CD (Continuous Delivery) are now a necessity and not a luxury!

There are various practices that Organizations and Enterprises need to implement to enable CD. Testing (automation) is one of the important practices that needs to be setup correctly for CD to be successful.

Testing in Organizations on the CD journey is tricky and requires a lot of discipline, rigor and hard work. In Enterprises, the Testing complexity and challenges increase exponentially.

In this session, I am sharing my vision of the Test Strategy required to make successful the journey of an Enterprise on the path of implementing CD.

Build the 'right' regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT) - a Workshop

- at vodQA Gurgaon, on Saturday, 28th March 2015 at ThoughtWorks, Gurgaon.

Abstract

Behavior Driven Testing (BDT) is a way of thinking. It helps in identifying the 'correct' scenarios, in form of user journeys, to build a good and effective (manual & automation) regression suite that validates the Business Goals. We will learn about BDT, do some hands-on exercises in form of workshops to understand the concept better, and also touch upon some potential tools that can be used.

Learning outcomes

• Understand Behavior Driven Testing (BDT)
• Learn how to build a good and valuable regression suite for the product under test
• Learn different style of identifying / writing your scenarios that will validate the expected Business Functionality
• Automating tests identified using BDT approach will automate your Business Functionality
• Advantages of identifying Regression tests using BDT approach

Enabling Continuous Delivery (CD) in Enterprises with Testing

I spoke about "Enabling Continuous Delivery (CD) in Enterprises with Testing" in Unicom's World Conference on Next Generation Testing. 

I started this talk by stating that I am going to prove that "A Triangle = A Pentagon". 

A Triangle == A Pentagon??

I am happy to say that I was able to prove that "A Triangle IS A Pentagon" - in fact, left reasonable doubt in the audience mind that "A Triangle CAN BE an n-dimensional Polygon".
Confused? How is this related to Continuous Delivery (CD), or Testing? See the slides and the video from the talk to know more.

This topic is also available on ThoughtWorks Insights.

Below are some pictures from the conference.

Future of Testing, Test Automation and The Quality Analyst

In this edition of vodQA - "Let your testing do the talking" at ThoughtWorks, Bangalore, I spoke on what I think is the "Future of Testing, Test Automation and the Quality Analyst". 

The slides from the talk are available here and the video is available here.

Watch out for updates from other exciting and intriguing talks from this edition of vodQA.

Below are some pictures from my talk. 

Join the vodQA group on facebook to keep updated on upcoming vodQA events and happenings.

 

Let your testing do the talking

The next edition of vodQA is here - on 21st June 2014 at ThoughtWorks, Bangalore. The theme of this event is "Let your testing do the talking".

To attend, you can register here.

See you on 21st June.

Automate across Platform, OS, Technologies with TaaS

[Updated - link to slides, audio, experience report added]

The talk at Agile India 2014 went really well. A few things happened:

• My talk was the 2nd last talk on a Saturday. My hopes of having a decent sized audience was low. But I was very pleasantly surprised to see the room almost full.
• Usually in conferences I have spoken at, the ratio of technical / hands-on people Vs leads / managers is around 20:80. In this case, that ratio was almost inverted. There were about 70-80% technical / hands-on people in the audience.
• Due to the higher technical audience, there were great questions all along the way - which resulted in me not able to complete on time ... I actually went over by 5-6 minutes and that too had to really rush through the last few sections of my presentation, and was not able to do a complete demo.
• Almost everyone was able to relate to the challenges of integration test automation, the concept and the problem TaaS solves - which was a great validation for me!
• Unfortunately I had to rush to the airport immediately after the talk, which prevented me from networking and talking more specifics with folks after the talk. Hopefully some of them will be contacting me to know more about TaaS!

The slides from the talk are available here on slideshare. You can download the audio recording from the talk from here. The pictures and video should be available from Agile India 2014 site soon. I will update the links for the same when that becomes available.

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After what seems to be a long time, I am speaking in Agile India 2014 in Bangalore on  "Automate across Platform, OS, Technologies with TaaS".

I am changing the format of the talk this time and am hoping to do a good demo instead of just showing code snippets. Hopefully no unpleasant surprises crop up in the demo!! 

Other than that, really looking forward to interacting with a lot of fellow-enthusiasts at the conference.

Slides and experience report to follow soon.

Evolution of vodQA - The Software Tester's Conference

Evolution of vodQA - The Software Tester's Conference!

Anand Bagmar

The birth of vodQA

Back in 2009 / 2010, I was looking to attend and speak in Testing Conferences, especially near, or close to my hometown, Pune.

My search results were very disappointing for the following reasons:

• I found that the conferences were not catered towards hands-on Testers.
• The conferences were catered for Leads / Managers/ Directors.
• The speakers spoke mostly about process, very high-level “things” related to Software Testing.
• There was a significant “cost” to attend the conferences – which meant that if one is really interested in attending to learn more, they had to think multiple times before doing so.

This was clearly not working for me, as well as other like-minded people I was interacting with.

Thanks to my colleagues in ThoughtWorks, we decided to do something about this.

In June 2010, we decided to start our own conference, hosted by ThoughtWorks, with the objective of “purely sharing our learning with the community, and also learn from the community”. This was the birth of “vodQA – value oriented discussion about Quality Analysis”.

To start anything, especially external / public facing, we needed to plan it well, and the first part of the planning is – what are we trying to achieve?

vodQA – Mission Statement

To make vodQA valuable to us, and other attendees, we came up with some guiding principles. These principles have kept on evolving over time like a natural process.

• vodQA is a practioners / hands-on conference.
• Anyone interested in the aspect and practice of Software Testing, regardless of role or organization, should be able to attend vodQA.
• Any topic related to Software Testing (manual / exploratory / techniques / tools / technologies / process).
• At ThoughtWorks, the Quality of the Software we build is of prime importance. To cater to that, we have a very strong Testing capability, skills and practices within the organization. Using vodQA as a platform, we want to share our learning with the Testing Community, so they can learn from what has worked well, or not so well, based on real experiences.
• Though at ThoughtWorks, we have “good” Testing practices, there are many more practices and experiences we can learn from the experiences of other organizations and individuals. The vodQA platform should able to provide new learning from the industry for ThoughtWorkers, and others who attend.
• In order to keep learning from what we do, and keep doing better in the future, we take feedback from attendees and speakers. Also, with an immediate after-the-event retrospective, we attempt to do the best for all participating in next vodQA.
• vodQA is a community event. Each community hosting vodQA should have the flexibility to structure the event in the way they see best suited for the attendees.
• Each vodQA should have a specific theme. This allows proper expectation setting from attendees, and also invites specific themed-topics from internal (ThoughtWorkers) and external speakers.

How we connect with like-minded people?

We started by using the database of people who had expressed interest in working with / being associated with ThoughtWorks, and spreading the event by word-of-mouth.

Then we started using the power of facebook (vodQA group), LinkedIn (vodQA group) and Twitter (#vodqa) to also spread the word, and bring the community together during non-event times, to share and collaborate with each other.

The journey so far

The first vodQA event in June 2010 at ThoughtWorks, Pune was a huge success. As a result, we immediately planned and hosted another vodQA in Oct 2010, again at ThoughtWorks, Pune.

The feedback and retrospectives provided us great motivation and inputs. As a result, we decided to make vodQA an India level conference.

As we took vodQA to other ThoughtWorks India offices out of Pune, (Bangalore, Chennai, Gurgaon), the respective community planned and executed this event, the way they felt best.

Till date, we have hosted the following vodQA events:

Theme	ThoughtWorks Location	Date
vodQA – The Testing Spirit	Pune	Jun-10
vodQA	Pune	Oct-10
vodQA	Pune	Mar-11
vodQA - Agile testing  for Enterprises	Gurgaon	Dec-11
vodQA - Continuous Testing For Total Quality Assurance	Chennai	Jan-12
vodQA - Agile Testing for Team and and Enterprises	Bangalore	Feb-12
vodQA – Testing and Beyond	Pune	Mar-12
vodQA – NCR	Gurgaon	Jun-12
vodQA Geek Night – Behavior Driven Testing (BDT) workshop	Pune	Jul-12
vodQA - The ABCs of testing - Automation, Big Data Analytics , Cloud Testing	Bangalore	Sep-12
vodQA – Going Beyond the Usual	Pune	Oct-12
vodQA Geek Night – Test Automation workshop	Pune	Apr-13
vodQA – Get, Set, Test	Bangalore	May-13
vodQA - Served on Mobile	Chennai	Jul-13
vodQA - Agility In Mobility	Gurgaon	Jul-13
*vodQA – Smarter | Faster | Reliable	Pune	Oct-13
*vodQA Gurgaon - Selenium for Beginners -	Gurgaon	Oct-13

*Upcoming events

Some interesting quotes from attendees:

• Liked the participation, interactive approach of the organizers and the passion and energy to make sure that audience goes satisfied
• A Saturday well spent @ThoughtWorks #vodQA. Got a chance to meet some highly motivated & inspired ThoughtWorkers & industry professionals!
• This is our QA family, and we want to see it grow

Overall we have had 800+ external (non-ThoughtWorker) participants and 75+ talks / workshops / games / sessions across all vodQA events. There have been a decent % of Developers / Business Analysts / Software Coaches attending and speaking, though the majority of attendees has been Software Testers.

I am very happy to see vodQA become popular and valuable to all passionate about Software Testing, all across India.

My dream is to take vodQA across the world as a community driven, Testing practioners conference!

TaaS and BDT - back to back at WCNGT, Bangalore

I had a great time talking about TaaS and BDT at WCNGT conference in Bangalore on 11th July 2013.

Here is more information about the talks:

Integrated Testing in Enterprises using TaaS:

http://essenceoftesting.blogspot.in/2013/07/taas-in-wcngt-bangalore-and-agile-2013.html
The audio recording of the talk is available here.
The slides for the talk are available here.
TaaS is available on github and as a gem on rubygems.org.

Building the "right" regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT)

http://essenceoftesting.blogspot.com/2013/07/building-right-regression-suite-using.html
The audio recording of the talk is available here.
The slides for the talk are available here.

Building the "right" regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT)

As a last minute surprise, I have been requested to talk about Building the "right" regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT) in the World Conference on Next Generation Testing on 11/12 July 2013 in Bangalore. This is another of those topics I feel very strongly about and am very excited at this opportunity.

What this does mean though is that I have back-2-back 2 1-hour sessions at WCNGT2013 - first - Integrated Testing in Enterprises using TaaS, and immediately post lunch - the BDT talk. 

Should be fun ... and hopefully I don't mix up the content in the talks :)

Here is the high-level agenda of the topic: Building the "right" regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT):

• Overview of Agile Testing
• The Test Pyramid
• Different flavors of TDD
• BDD – Behavior Driven Development?
• ATDD – Acceptance Driven Development?
• BDT – Behavior Driven Testing?
• Difference between BDD and BDT
• Tools that support BDT
• The value proposition for the team - live documentation, business rules, onboarding, etc.

TaaS in WCNGT, Bangalore and Agile 2013, Nashville, USA

A busy couple of weeks for me as I talk about TaaS in World Conference on Next Generation Testing in Bangalore, on 11/12th July 2013, and in Agile 2013 in Nashville, USA, on 4-9th August 2013.
 
My session details are as follows:

In WCNGT - Integrated Testing In Enterprises Using TaaS, on 11th July, from 12pm-1pm. Detail program is available here.

In Agile 2013, Integration testing in Enterprises using TaaS - via Case Study, on 5th August, from 2pm-3.15pm. Complete schedule is available here.