January RoundUp of All Things MoT
January was all about looking inwards and defining some goals. You may have followed some of our shenanigans on our first retreat. We have refocused and we’ve lots of plans for the year ahead! How are your goals?
The Club
A few selected discussions from The Club that we thought you might find interesting.
- How to test Bandersnatch posted by rosie. If you haven’t seen this film on Netflix yet, this thread does contain spoilers but also some interesting ideas!
- Creating a Test Strategy From Scratch posted by heather_reid. How have you approached creating a software testing strategy?
- Ask Me Anything: Robots in Automation posted by heather_reid. Resources and discussions following on from our brilliant AMA with Jason Huggins.
- Will AI/ML take my job? posted by lisa.crispin. It can free our time up to do more valuable things than crunch data around but could it take our jobs?
- How do you review test automation code? posted by nwhitter. How do you review automation to make sure it is acceptable for the test suite?
The Club Ninja
Each month we select one of our Club users to be our Ninja of the Month. Our Club Ninja this month is Shey Crompton!
MoT News
Legal & General Sponsor Tickets for TestBash Brighton
We are excited to announce that Legal & General have signed up as Gold sponsors and have chosen to sponsor 3 people to attend TestBash Brighton. We’re particularly excited by this one as the MoT Ethos is all about giving back and supporting the community. This means that we have 3 tickets to give away for the Friday PLUS two nights accommodation. That’s right, the hotel is included too!
We’ve Updated Our Speaker Policy For Full-day Workshops at TestBash by Richard
We’ve made a change to our speaker policy around full-day workshops to make it fairer for everyone. Our previous remuneration was 50/50 profit share, which often resulted in a huge difference in remuneration for instructors. Not to mention the additional overhead from team MoT to produce the profit shares.
10 Amazing Reasons to Attend TestBash Brighton by Rosie
There’s no doubt that the world of conferences, software testing and TestBash has changed in the past few years. In the case of TestBash(es) we’ve evolved and grown in many different ways, I thought it would be helpful to point out some key points and ideas we are working on.
TestBash Manchester: TestBash Of The North
The North remembers what an absolute belter TestBash Manchester 2018 was, so we are coming back, Manchester! For a fourth time! And, we can’t flipping wait! It going to be a spectacular action-packed week-long extravaganza at The Lowry, filled with opportunities to learn, network, have fun, and of course, space to reflect on all that’s going on. Find out about the itinerary for the week.
The Dojo
For now, here is all the new content on The Dojo:
- An excellent new course from Jim Holmes Coding For Non-Coders. You don’t need to have software development skills in order to be a valuable member of a software delivery team. That said, getting a basic level of comfort and proficiency with writing and reading code can open up incredible new opportunities for you!
- An interesting Testing AMA on Robots in Automation with Jason Huggins. We got to see some robots in action as well as discussing the benefits of using robots to carry out certain tester’s tasks, allowing testers to focus on other non-repetitive tasks. Plus plenty more.
- An unmissable Masterclass with Rob Meaney From Testing Hell to Testing Well — Adopting Whole Team Approach to Testability. In this masterclass, Rob recounts his testability journey and the lessons he has learned. He discussed the models, exercises and workshops he uses extensively as a test coach to build a whole team focus on testability.
- A great Community Story Running A Software Testing Workshop For The First Time by Karo Stoltzenburg and Tracey Baxter. Running a workshop can seem like an enormous undertaking, especially after attending a really enjoyable and engaging workshop. When you decide to run one, it can feel like a huge task to put it together, get the right materials and setup going, and then on top of that facilitate paying attendees throughout. It’s not a simple job, but, with the right outlook and planning, it doesn’t have to be a scary one.
- The first lesson in a Beginner’s Guide To Mobile Testing by Daniel Knott(the full course will be live on 7th February… get in your diaries!).
February Online Events
Testing Ask Me Anything — Testability — Ash Winter — 12th February at 8pm UK Time
Our host Vernon is joined by Ash Winter to help answer any questions you might have relating to Testability. Once you’ve registered you can post a question and upvote any question you might have. Here are a few more examples:
- How do I know when something is hard or easy to test?
- What are the principles of testability and what do they mean to my daily work?
- Is testability all about systems or are there social and team dynamics at play?
- How can I convince my team that investing in testability is worth it?
Masterclass — Strategies to make your automated checks reliable and robust — Peter Bartlett — 19th February at 8pm UK Time
Learn how to write automated checks in a way that is fast, reliable, maintainable and becomes a crucial part of your continuous delivery pipeline. Peter shares his experience in writing an automated checking framework using Selenium. He’ll describe how a deployment pipeline that utilises this automated checking framework can give important information on releasability. Peter will demonstrate how to structure your code with re-usable and flexible components, making it less prone to flaky results, easier to update and easier to understand.
Future Events
Just a quick sneak peek at what events are coming up in the next few months
- Testing Ask Me Anything — Testability — Ash Winter — 1 hour Tuesday 12th February at 8pm UK Time
- Masterclass — Strategies to make your automated checks reliable and robust — Peter Bartlett — 1 hour Tuesday 19th February at 8pm UK Time
- TestBash Essentials Brighton — 1 day — Wednesday 3rd April 2019 — Tickets on Sale!
- TestBash Brighton — 1 day — Friday 5th April 2019 — Tickets on Sale!
- TestBash Netherlands — 2 days — Thursday 23rd — Friday 24th May 2019 — Super Early Bird Tickets on Sale!
- London Tester Gathering Workshops — 3 days — Wednesday 26th — Friday 28th June — Sign up to the launch list!
- TestBash Germany — 2 days — Thursday 12th — Friday 12th September — Sign up to the launch list!
- TestBash Manchester — 2 days — Wednesday 2nd — Thursday 3rd October — Submit your talk!
- Test.bash(); — 1 day — Friday 4th October — Submit your talk!
- TestBash Australia — 2 days — Thursday 24th — Friday 25th October — Submit your talk!
- TestBash New Zealand — 1 day — Tuesday 29th October — Submit your talk!
