» Giving Back aclairefication

I care about my community, so I like to give back in different ways including speaking, writing, and attending events related to agile, software, testing, and development.

Where I’ve been lately:

Software Testing Club Atlanta

Our first Meetup in Atlanta, GA took place on October 15th. I ran a Lean Coffee session of 15 attendees and acted as community manager for several people in the virtual audience through a GoToWebinar provided by our host VersionOne as well as through social media channels, including Twitter and Google+. Read more about our successful experiment here. Social media pages for STC ATL are on Software Testing Club, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn.

Next Meetup:

STAC – Software testing atlanta conference

Board of Directors for Atlanta’s first “locally sourced” software testing conference

STAC was started by a group of testers that wanted to create the conference they’ve collectively always wanted to attend. We envisioned a forum for local testers to not only listen to keynotes from industry heavyweights, but that also grows our local testing community.

Attendees will get up-to-date knowledge and experience-based practices for software testing and what’s happening around the world, while networking with local, like-minded testers.

While our conference is for the Atlanta testing community, we invite any and all testers interested in attending to join us.

Targeting quality 2014

My first full day workshop, Value for People

Hey there, tester. You deliver a lot of value in your work life. Who defines this value? Who receives this value?
In this course, we’ll work our way out from you at the center of value delivery to the external customers who use the software you test.

We’ll explore the ways you deliver value to:
Yourself
Your testing team
Your product team
Your end user/external customer
Your testing community

How do we get there? We wrestle with our current information and assumptions together through interaction with both other classmates and the instructor. This is a whole class learning experience.

CAST 2014

On staff as the social media community manager.

The Association for Software Testing is pleased to announce its ninth annual conference, CAST 2014 “The Art and Science of Testing”, to be held in New York, NY, August 11-13.To some, software testing is an outgrowth of engineering, mathematics and physics, while to others, testing is an exploration of psychology, philosophy or sociology. At CAST 2014, conference speakers will share their stories and experiences surrounding software testing, whether bound by rules and laws of science and experimentation, or expressed through creativity, imagination, and artistry.

TESTRETREAT NYC

Open spaces never fail to teach me more than I ever expected. I <3 this unconference crowd

Led a session on exploratory environments.

At Test Retreat, you’ll find something different. A chance to connect with old friends, make new ones, and build the test experience you really need. It’s not a conference … it is a test retreat.

Bring together the best and brightest minds in Software Testing and perhaps a few from the overall process of software (and value!) delivery.

We’ll start Saturday’s “Main Event” by organizing our thoughts ideas on new ideas — how to do testing better, how to exlain it, manage it, and maybe even measuring it. You might call this “thought leadership.” Our facilitator, Matt Barcomb, will help organize interests and ideas, then we’ll break into small groups to discuss, then present on our ideas. After a short break for lunch we’ll resume in the afternoon in open space format, gathering a list of proposals for topics. After proposals, the group will create the schedule together, based on interest.
In other words, the attendees will build the schedule they want, in real time, based on what we want to talk about now.
The day ends with a retrospective to collect our learnings.

We put the best people in the field in one room – people doing software testing, test coaching, and helping others do it, along with a few experts from related disciplines.
The format combines a workshop with just enough structure with plenty of unstructured, informal time. Or bring your own ideas for what to do Sunday!
We will share our stories, approaches, and ideas about testing
We will invent and experiment with new testing and coaching practices
It may involve discussing new, fundamental roles for testers and leaders of testers
We will discuss, document, and create new ways to influence the state of the practice, as well as projects to move things forward
How often do you get a chance to sit back and envision your next few years, surrounded by colleagues that can encourage you and offer realistic feedback?

AGILE2014

Coming soon! Come to see either of my talks at Agile2014 and be sure to say hello!

Whole Team Testing

Presented at Agile2014

Sometimes there just isn’t enough testing time for all the testing we’d like to do as a team. For those testers stuck in a phased approach, testing can end up feeling like a bottleneck in the system, with testers constantly asking for more time or more help. Having experienced that team dynamic, I know that I can’t do all of this testing alone and I wouldn’t want to. Whole team testing reduces the time waiting for feedback and improves communication to deliver customer value sooner.

So let’s say you live in this utopia of collaboration. Everybody tests! The unparalleled beauty of your shared understanding astounds everyone and satisfies your clients. You get more feedback earlier and from different perspectives. Okay, now I envy you. When can I move in? Or I guess I could just build my own little utopia right here. But where do I start?

During this session, we will draw upon the collective wisdom of the attendees to compare notes on challenges and solutions that we have experienced as well as walking through a case study of whole team testing.

Whole team testing: because teams who own testing have more confidence in the customer value of their results

Refactoring Test Collaboration

Presented at Agile2014

Collective ownership for testing starts with understanding testing. Rework your team dynamics to evolve past duplication and improve performance through whole team testing. Take home practical patterns for improving your team’s collaboration on testing. Because teams who own testing have more confidence in the customer value of their results.

As the Pragmatic Programmers say, “refactoring is an activity that needs to be undertaken slowly, deliberately, and carefully,” so how do we begin?

In this session, we will experience the complex interactions of an agile team focused on demonstrating customer value by answering a series a questions:
Where do testers get their ideas?
How are you planning to accomplish this proposed testing, tester?
Why not automate all the things?
Who is going to do this manual testing and how does it work?
How do we know whether we’re testing the right things?

Build your own list of TODOs from these various practical collaboration approaches and begin deduping your team’s testing for a better first day back at the office.

CAST 2013

The theme for CAST 2013 is “Old Lessons applied and new lessons learned: advancing the practice and building a foundation for the future.” What we learn from our experiences helps shape us as human beings. What we learn from the experiences of others can give us new insight and new perspectives.The industry we work in is multifaceted and the technologies we work with are rapidly changing. Some testing truisms stand up over time. Some fall into obsolescence as others rise to take their place.

At this year’s conference speakers will share with you the lessons that they have learned in Software Testing, as well as how these lessons influence the way that we approach testing both now and in the future. These sessions will be filled with real-world experiences, stories, thoughts, observations, and demonstrations.

Sessions where I contributed:

TestRetreat

A chance to connect with old friends, make new ones, and build the test experience you really need. It’s not a conference … it is a test retreat. Every attendee will sign up on the conference wiki, and list what they want to talk about — their own professional development plan, along with ideas on how we can influence the state of testing as it is practiced. Each attendee should expect to offer at least one session to host. Hosts can lead discussion, present, or facilitate … a full-day open space conference, with a short theme of “Deliberate Practice.” The longer theme is “Advancing And Influencing the Craft while growing personally and professionally.” After gathering a list of proposals, the group will conduct a rapid vote, called a dotting exercise, then create the schedule based on interest. In other words, the attendees will build the schedule they want, in real time, based on our interests. The format combines a workshop with Just Enough Structure with plenty of unstructured, informal time. The goal of this meeting is to impact the practice of testing while growing professionally. We expect to leave with a half-dozen projects. No just “project ideas”, but projects, actively underway, with the opportunity to impact the test community in a wildly positive way. Sessions where I contributed:

My Is Testing For Me? exercise in the style of Gerry Weinberg‘s Mary had a little lamb

Agile2013

Each year Agile Alliance brings together attendees, speakers, authors, luminaries, and industry analysts from around the world in a one-of-a-kind conference. The Conference is considered the premier Agile event of the year, and provides a week-long opportunity to engage in wide-open interaction, collaboration and sharing of ideas with peers and colleagues within the global Agile community. Teams, managers, executives, developers and practitioners across all disciplines and levels of experience will be well-served by this week-long event. In 2013, 1780 Agilists from 38 countries converged to learn, share, and collaborate while exploring Agile approaches, methods, technologies, tools, leadership principles, management philosophies and processes, plus the latest in policies, theories and research. Sessions where I contributed: