Client-side Performance Testing Workshop in TechJam, 13th August 2015

I am conducting a Client-side Performance Testing workshop in TechJam on Thursday, 13th August 2015.

You can register for the same from the TechJam page.

Abstract

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.

Expected Learnings

1. What is Performance Testing and Performance Engineering.
2. Hand's on experience of some open-source tools to monitor, measure and automate Client-side Performance Testing.
3. Examples / code walk-through of some ways to automate Client-side Performance Testing.

Prerequisites

1. Participants are required to bring their own laptop for this workshop.
2. Also, please install phantomJS on your machine (http://phantomjs.org/download.html)

What is Agile Testing? How does Automation help?

I spoke in a conference recently on "What is Agile Testing? How does Automation help?"

Abstract

Agile Methodology is not new. Many organisations / teams have already adopted Agile way of Software Development or are in the enablement journey for the same. 

What does this mean for Testing? There is no doubt that the Testing approach and mindset also needs to change to be in tune with the Agile Development methodology. 

Learn what does it mean to Test on Agile Projects. Also, learn how Test Automation approach needs to change for the team to be successful!

Video

Slides

What is Agile Testing? How does Automation Help?

Here I am on the stage, in Main Hall, in front of 150+ people, delivering the talk - What is Agile Test? How does Automation Help?:

Experiences from webinar on "Build the 'right' regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT)"

I did a webinar on how to "Build the 'right' regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT)" for uTest Community Testers on 18th Feb 2015 (2pm ET).

The recording of the webinar is available here on utest site (http://university.utest.com/recorded-webinar-build-the-right-regression-suite-using-behavior-driven-testing-bdt/).

The slides I used in the webinar can be seen below, or available from slideshare.

Build the "right" regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT) from Anand Bagmar

Here are some of my experiences from the webinar:

• It was very difficult to do this webinar - from a timing perspective. It was scheduled from 2-3pm ET (which meant it was 12.30-1.30am IST). I could feel the fatigue in my voice when I heard the recording. I just hope the attendees did not catch that, and that it did not affect the effective delivery of the content.
• There were over 50 attendees in the webinar. Though I finished my content in about 38-40 minutes, the remaining 20 minutes was not sufficient to go through the questions. The questions itself were very good, and thought provoking for me.
• A webinar is a great way to create content and deliver it without a break - as a study material / course content. The challenge and the pressure is on the speaker to ensure that the flow is proper, and the session is well planned and structured. Here, there are no opportunities to tweak the content on the fly based on attendee comments / questions / body language.
• That said, I always find it much more challenging to do a webinar compared to a talk. Reason - in a talk, I can see the audience. This is a HUGE advantage. I can understand from their facial expressions, body language if what I am saying makes sense or not. I can have many interactions with them to make them more involved in the content - and make the session about them, instead of me just talking. I can spend more time on certain content, while skipping over some - depending on their comfort levels. 

Testing in the Medical domain

I had the opportunity recently to do some testing, though for a very short time, in the Medical domain - something that I have always aspired to. I learnt a lot in this time and have gained a lot of appreciation for people working in such mission-critical domains. 

Some of these experiences have been published here as "A Humbling Experience in Oncology Treatment Testing" on ThoughtWorks Insight. Looking forward for your comments and feedback on the same.

Perils of Page-Object Pattern

I spoke at Selenium Conference (SeConf 2014) in Bangalore on 5th September, 2014 on "The Perils of Page-Object Pattern".

Page-Object pattern is very commonly used when implementing Automation frameworks. However, as the scale of the framework grows, there is a limitation on how much re-usability really happens. It inherently becomes very difficult to separate the test intent from the business domain.
 
I want to talk about this problem, and the solution I have been using - Business Layer - Page-Object pattern, which has helped me keep my code DRY.

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

Video taken by professional:


Video taken from my laptop:


Slides:

Perils of Page-Object Pattern from Anand Bagmar

If you want to see other slides and videos from SeConf, see the SeConf schedule page.

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.

Disruptive Testing - An interview with Justin Rohrman

See how heuristics, domain knowledge and music are related to Software Testing in my next interview with Justin Rohrman available on ThoughtWorks Insights.