If you saw a bunch of people wearing black QualiTest polos at Test Bash Brighton (organized by Ministry of Testing), it was because we sent 7 QualiTesters from our UK Teams to the Test Bash conference to boost their knowledge and reward them for being QualiTesters. They not only created brand awareness but also brought back valuable information on various testing aspects like Adaptive Test Strategy, API Testing, DevOps and Continuous Delivery which they will share with their respective teams via lunch-and-learn sessions. It was a cheerful environment with some great talks and fun learning. Topics included:

  • Tester’s Survival Guide to Joining a Continuous Delivery Project – This talk was aimed at joining a project that was already initiated. One of the key points was that manual testing could be inserted anywhere in the cycle shown below (although it would slow things down).
  • Artificial Intelligence and the Net – A Cardiff University professor discussed the theoretical application of A.I. and how this should be looked at. He stated how he has developed questions that need answers and how testers are responsible for creating more challenging Turing tests.
  • Rediscovering Test Strategy – This talk focused on how principles and practices set in stone have become an ever adapting scenario per project, and how the agile influx has changed Test Strategy. When his old experience was copy and paste and update, each project now requires a custom test strategy.  This interesting talk showed how testing has evolved over time.
  • Let’s Talk About Ethics And Software Testing – This was an open discussion on testing ethics and whether the testing community should allow itself to test items that may raise ethical dilemmas. He referenced the ISTQB Ethics and stated that this only talks about using test data ethically.
  • How to turn a 403 into a 202 API Party – This concerned the development and testing of a REST API, ensuring it complied with the process of CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) for the API process. Integrating testers alongside developers during RESTful service production permits quicker and more ready-to-use services.  QA’s proactive role for establishing a TDD (Test Driven Development) was discussed, and the BINMEN (Boundary, Invalid Entries, Nulls, Method, Empty, Negatives) Key tests to run.  This raised concerns I had seen during API testing, now presented with potential ways of overcoming those hurdles.  The presentation also let me ask about field validation at an API level rather than a UI level, to which they said that API level validation always comes first as the API would reject any rubbish.
  • Building Customer Happiness with a Tiny Team – The co-founder and developer of the ticket selling app Tito explained how his small team of 4 can discuss the idea of putting customer happiness first ensuring that their product delivers. He admitted that his team does not follow a standard testing process with having rolling betas going for extended periods, utilizing the end user as a tester rather than validating his product pre-release.
  • Coach, Explorer and Toolsmith walk into a … – The future of testing will see 2 roles become relevant: Coaches (who train people to use tools) and Toolsmiths (who create tools that coachers will train testers to use). The line between tester and developer has blurred slightly, and testers must be able to pick up some developer tasks.