Just back from my first Agile Testing Days in Potsdam, Germany and have to report that I had a really fun time, met some old friends (made some new ones), and participated in some great conversations about software testing. I was there to present my keynote “Lessons Learned in (Selling) Software Testing” about my experiences trying to help large, enterprise tech organizations through agile transitions or various other “test process improvement” initiatives. I had a great time giving the talk and got a lot of good feedback from the conference as well as on Twitter:
Clearly, I owe this person money… 😀
More importantly, there was a great program to attend with some fantastic presentations and workshops from the likes of Stephen Janaway (Emotions in Testing) Santosh Tuppad (Security Testing), Richard Bradshaw (Test Automation), Huib Schoots and Alex Schladebeck (Storytelling) and Maria Kedemo and Ben Kelly (Testability). But probably my favorite sessions of the conference were the “new voices” that the organizers gave the stage to, including a hilarious comparison of Tinder and “agile” by Ida Bohlin, and wonderful talks/workshops by newcomer Anastasia Chicu and the super cool Ash Coleman.
Of particular interest to me was the closing keynote by Gojko Adzic on “Snow White and the 777.777.777 Dwarfs“. Since reading an article in the Harvard Business Review on machine learning, I have been researching and trying to imagine impact on testing from the dropping cost of technology and compute power. Add into the mix machine learning and you have a powerful thesis on what test management will really be about in the future, and Gojkos’ ideas in his talk on risks, exploratory testing, and devops rang true with a lot of my thoughts – stay tuned!
Aside from the very enlightened conversations about the future of testing, AI, machine learning and the state of our industry catching up with old friends like Ilari Aegerter, Mike Talks, and Lalit Bhamare. I also got to meet some new folks who I hope to keep in touch with including my fellow Marxist Grouch(o) Kevin Harris (Hail, Hail Freedonia, Land of the Brave and Free!) Overall, I was very impressed with the conference and the organizers should be very proud of their effort, as it was a pleasure to be involved from planning to travel/accommodations to attending – I hope to be invited back some day! Cheers!
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