Within my introductory blog post for EuroSTAR 2015, I boldly stated four issues I wanted to solve or gain more insight into and proactively selected which track talks I would attend to potentially address these, for a reminder, here they are:
- Integration testing, how do the best in the business handle this?
- Management, is this a viable next step for me?
- Process improvement, are there any easy wins we’re currently missing?
- Can we make environment setup easier?
After attending another fantastic EuroSTAR event I can categorically say this was an absolutely terrible idea that I would not recommend and certainly did not work for me! Perhaps my implementation was poor but I found myself in a very automation heavy set of talks, with the key conclusion I came to being that we currently handle automation very well in comparison to 99% of attendees I spoke to at EuroSTAR. At first I was frustrated by this, I felt like I was going fail in my only true measurement of success for the conference but nearly a month later, I’m pleased to be working for a company that is doing the right things, apparently a lot better than the majority of companies out there. My failure has proven that our processes are well thought out and in most cases, ahead of the curve.
That said, it’s still difficult to accept that while I was sitting in a talk learning about how to implement DevOps with a test focus (we already have CI/CD pipeline used by each feature team.) I could have been learning how the coffee cup is mightier than the keyboard, which I heard rave reviews on from numerous attendees and which could have changed my thinking.
And that’s where I made my key mistake, EuroSTAR is a place to learn new things, to get introduced to bright ideas that can be taken back and implemented in a personalised way to boost the overall quality in your product. Track talks are not the optimal place to eke out the final 5% to get to world class in a chosen area.
Hence, ladies and gentlemen, what is your why? Be certain you’re attending EuroSTAR to learn new approaches, challenge your existing thinking and connect with great minds. Take this as a cautionary tale that if you aim to please anyone but yourself by attending, everyone suffers. With that said, I’m extremely lucky that the lineup EuroSTAR delivers is astounding in quality and even when my why was confused, I was still challenged in my thinking and offered new perspectives that could potentially transform testing efforts in my organisation.
Variety is the spice of life
This summed up for me why EuroSTAR is the number one software testing conference in Europe and why it repeatedly attracts not just top speakers, but premier vendors and passionate attendees. It left an impression on me that EuroSTAR knows it cannot sit on its throne and expect to remain there without taking action, they’re constantly trying new things to see what’s a hit and what isn’t.
What do I mean by variety? For the first time EuroSTAR attendees got to enjoy the brand new concept of, “Lightning strikes the speakers!” In this format a number of speakers were given just five minutes to leave a lasting impression on a full auditorium which I found hugely energetic and exciting after a long day of processing new information. I was also lucky enough to attend some discussion sessions hosted by experts in the field of automation, which was a welcome change of pace from standard track talks. Participants in my group were coming at testing from wildly different angles by comparison to me. For instance a consultant for a major corporation who saw the current flavour of automation as wasteful when only contracted to a project for six months. Or an investor in an up and coming test product who wanted to gain a little more insight into what testing really meant to those doing it on a daily basis. Talking with these individuals about their testing problems really showed me that context is everything, my standard approach to automation on a project would have been disastrous for them!
Overall the best new addition had to be the Test Clinic, it is exactly why I rate these creative attempts to try new things at what is already Europe’s top software testing conference so highly. Throughout the conference it was a hive of activity and I do not have enough fingers to count how many people I saw walk away from there with beaming smiles. A special well done to Huib Schoots and Iris Pinkster for overseeing it and making it run so well.
The Conference
With that said, what most people attend conferences like EuroSTAR for is to learn from those that are ahead of the curve, below are my top picks throughout each day of the conference along with some videos made before, during and after:
Tuesday
Tuesday Preview with Nick Shaw from EuroSTAR Conferences on Vimeo.
The best talk of the entire conference for me was Seb Rose’s talk on Mutation Testing. I’ve already waxed lyrical about it in some of the review videos but I really was impressed and think it’s very much worth your time if you have the opportunity. In the talk, Seb made the case for why code coverage metrics aren’t enough, why mutation testing should be used and more importantly, how you can do this in your organisation. Seb is an excellent speaker, someone I was unfamiliar with before EuroSTAR 2015 but someone who I intend on following closely now. Ultimately Seb offered me an entirely new approach that my company can use to increase our code quality and consequently our overall quality.
Wednesday
I’ve often mentioned Rob Lambert as someone I respect massively and one reason why is that he always delivers an even better performance than you’re expecting. This was a talk attended for my own selfish reasons relating to career advancement and I have no regrets. Once again Rob gave a clear and concise presentation, this time on becoming a manager and his ideas for how you can be a great manager rather than blend into the masses of the mediocre. I don’t believe this answered my question of whether I want to take a managerial role, but that is because no talk can make a decision for you. It did however teach me what kind of manager I want to be, should I decide to take that opportunity. Rob is a true leader and someone with a wealth of knowledge that extends far beyond software testing, if you have the opportunity to learn from him, grasp it with both hands.
Wednesday at EuroSTAR with Nick Shaw from EuroSTAR Conferences on Vimeo.
Thursday
Last but not least comes the man, the myth and the legend that is Michael Bolton. Michael gave a talk titled, ‘No more exploratory testing’ which approached the question of why exploratory testing is classified in its own right when testing is by its very nature exploratory. I generally don’t enjoy talks that I see as largely based on semantics but things were different on this occasion. I hung on every word as Michael took us on a journey from the origins of testing and exploratory testing to present day. Truly an elite level speaker, it would be hard not to enjoy Michael’s presentation even if you weren’t involved in testing, it has given me food for thought on perhaps why I need to pay attention to such debates on the correct definition of a term. Bonus points earned for spotting Michael at 5AM, mere hours before he was on stage!
Community Reporter, Nick Shaw, talks about his Highlights from EuroSTAR 2015 from EuroSTAR Conferences on Vimeo.
So for another year…
EuroSTAR 2015 has come to a close and we now have EuroSTAR 2016 in Stockholm to look forward to. My overriding memory of Shmuel Gerson the Programme Chair for EuroSTAR 2016 was his frankly insane ability to deliver a track talk and deliver a keynote with only one day to prepare when the original keynote had to pull out due to illness. Some might think it’s not too difficult to deliver the same talk you prepared again to a bigger audience, except he gave a completely different talk! Hopefully that has some of you salivating at the prospect of what Shmuel will deliver come November.
Once again I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the EuroSTAR conference staff and the TEST Huddle team. I still cannot fathom how they operate for so long and at such a pace during the entire conference. Somehow they have time for absolutely anyone that approaches them with any query big or small, yet are also taking care of anything and everything that needs to be done to make the conference run smoothly. I consider myself extremely lucky to have had the privilege to work alongside these guys to the point where I now consider them friends.
Looking forward to meeting you in Stockholm,
Nick
