How I went to the first in Russia "Testathon", hackathon for testers

Good afternoon, Habr! On October 8, 2016 in Moscow (and on October 9 in St. Petersburg) a very curious event called “ Testathon ” took place. The organizers advertised it as “ Russia 's first international hackathon for testers .” Despite the initially cautious attitude (before that, I was only at one real-life game development hackathon, and it was bad enough), I decided to visit the Moscow stage of Testaton . As a result, I participated in all stages of the competition ( and even won something ), and I want to say that it was really worth it.

Today I will talk in detail about how great it all was ( observing all the NDA signed, of course ) so that if these wonderful guys return to Russia, more people will be able to overcome their sound skepticism. If you are not fundamentally involved in hackathons ( that is, your life motto is “hurry up - make people laugh” ), then you can simply evaluate the story of one unusual and extremely memorable day of my life.
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What it is?

Testaton is a hackaton format event organized by crowd-testing by Global App Testing in partnership with major software development companies, including Spotify , Dropbox , Facebook , Uber and others. As you can guess from the name, the peculiarity of this hackathon is that instead of high-speed software development, this is where high-speed testing is performed. The Moscow stage was called Chapter 9 , from which it followed that they already had some experience in holding such events. Previously, the " Testatons " were held in the UK, Nigeria, South Africa and other countries, i.e. The guys are clearly suited to their "international" very thoroughly.

check in

I learned the " Testatone " from a friend-tester thanks to a small note on Habré. Nowhere did I notice more information about him (only in a couple of small QA-communities, and even then it was quite late), so I was initially suspicious of the small caliber of this event. But my friend and I "for any movement", so we decided to register.

The registration form asked in sufficient detail about work experience and relevant skills, which meant that participants would be selected - this was a good sign. In addition, the form was interested in how many mobile devices I would bring with me (the organizers themselves do not provide any devices) and reported that the participant who brings the most devices (as well as the one who brings the oldest working device) is entitled to a separate prize. It is not at all related to the theme of the event, but it is unusual.

A few days later the registration was closed, and I received a confirmation of participation. At first, a friend received a letter about entering the waiting list (at the event itself we were told that there were more than 150 people left), but quickly transferred it to the main team.

A few days before the start, an information letter arrived, which, surprisingly, practically carried no useful information. It contained the “tips” of the winners of past Testatons, who looked like an artistic reprint of the very foundations of the tester's work: “Consider the application from different points of view, prepare several characters in your head and think about how they would use this application ...” After reading it there was a strange sense of uncertainty: after all, we were really going to go to the event, without having the slightest idea what was going to happen there. In addition, I like nothing more than a strictly methodological “metaphysical” approach to testing. The only really important point was that we would test only mobile applications, and we would need laptops only to use the bug tracker.

Start

So, having borrowed a few test phones at work ( thanks, Sasha ), we hit the road. Testaton was held in a large business center Silver City on Serebryanicheskaya Embankment, a very comfortable and cozy area. Almost without delay, at 9 am registration began with verification of documents and the signing of the NDA. Inside, we were offered to divide into teams (11 teams of 5 people) in a free manner and take the corresponding tables. Here some participants had a surprise - the main language of the event is English. That is, none of the organizers speak Russian, the presenter speaks English, bug reports need to be written in English ... Directly this was not reported anywhere (although in all materials and letters, participants did not have a word in Russian before the start of Testaton) ), but without proper knowledge of technical English, participation in this event becomes difficult.

And then HUNDREDS of devices began to connect to the unfortunate Wi-Fi business center ... and he died.

Cheerful and groovy presenter (and part-time co-organizer of Testaton and co-founder of Global App Testing, Ronald Cummings-John ), urged us not to panic ( it did not work ) and wait for a solution to the problem. This and the subsequent delay of the process for half an hour were the only failures of the organization.

After the introductory words from the organizers, the start of the first round was announced. Between the teams divided the areas of testing, and already among themselves the team members shared the platforms, devices and everything that occurred to them. In practice, the division turned out to be quite conditional, since any bugs were received from each participant: most likely, the organizers would thus like to minimize the likelihood of duplication.

There could be an entertaining story about bugs found, discussing defects with the organizers and fantastic ideas from the participants, but the NDA. Sorry.

Each participant found a bug could report in its own bug-tracking system Global Apps Testing (as far as I understood, the same system is used in the commercial activity of the company). A group of moderators located in Romania reproduced each case, evaluated the criticality of the defect and presented one of three resolutions to the ticket: Rejected , Accepted or Shortlisted (the ticket with such resolution began to participate in the best bug competition). Each checked ticket added (or subtracted, in the case of Rejected ) a certain number of points, the sum of which allowed determining the winners in the Best QA nomination. In addition to checking the reproducibility and severity of the bug, the moderators also evaluated the quality of bug reports (for which a separate prize was relied).

Following the results of one and a half hours of the first round, the teams were instructed to give a summary feedback. In it, we described which testing patterns we used, which command thinking frameworks we used, etc. I did not understand why it was necessary, because the best team was determined solely by the maximum amount of points scored by each participant.

Dinner

Talking about any public event that lasts a whole day, not to mention the food. Everything was all right with him (: Delicious borsch (the donut appearing to him was EXTREMELY turned out to be a meat pie ), chicken or meat skewers ( though finding a place to give it was nontrivial ), a couple of decent salads, dessert and surprisingly decent tea and coffee Praise for the efforts of the business center, the benefit of the participants was not so much that the lunch in a small cafe turned into hell.
The organizers here decided to focus on one of the main goals of the event - communication between the participants. And so everyone had a task for dinner: to sit with strangers and try to get to know each other better. I was lucky to share a table with a friend with Owais Peer, the second co-organizer of Testaton . He told us about the work of Global App Testing , the organization of " Testatonov " in different countries and impressions of Moscow. We also shared our reaction to the event (including the initial distrust, which he frankly surprised; we hope that in the future they can be more “open”). And he tried borsch for the first time in his life, and he liked it ( although he didn’t want us to believe that the color of the dish was not at all the abundance of tomatoes ).

On the eve of the second round, we came across a new condition: it was necessary otherwise to be distributed among the teams so as not to overlap with anyone from the first team. So we with my friend became opponents. Team F ( at ) for the win!

Completion

The second and third rounds were a breeze. Their process was significantly different from the first one, therefore there was neither boring nor routinely ( however, the very presence of the third round turned out to be news for us, since there were only two rounds in the tour schedule originally distributed to all participants ).

During the break, there was a small coffee break, filling in feedback forms and voting for a participant in the Most Talkative nomination. I expected “self-promotion” hubbub and general fun, but it was calm enough. Still, IT people are not the easiest people to climb: (

By the time the third round was completed, the organizers were ready for the start of the awards ceremony. Each winner received a nice personal certificate and a prize ( Ronald asked us at the mention of this word to publish together an enthusiastic “Ooooooo!” And knock on the table with his hands ). There were quite a few nominations, among them were prizes for the best bug, and for the most understandable bug reports, and the aforementioned prize for the most talkative person. Your humble servant won in the nomination Best Participation During Feedback . Yes, you can consider this a consolation prize just for the fact that I was sticking to the organizers with questions and advice more than anyone else :) Most of all the devices were brought by a girl with a stunning set of EIGHT POINT pieces. But what device was the most ancient, I never found out. But my veteran HTC Hero helped me discover a lot of interesting cases.

In the end, I did not regret a single minute spent on the Testaton. Some things, of course, the guys still need to be polished: for example, a little strange impression was left due to the fact that almost half of the participants received prizes because of the abundance of nominations, and the rest had to feel very embarrassed by this. But still, the impressions remained mostly positive. I would strongly recommend Badoo to cooperate with these great guys to conduct the next Testaton under our flag!



Unfortunately, besides quite interesting photos from the Petersburg Testaton stage, I no longer have any feedback about how the event was held in the northern capital. If there are happy participants on Habré, I will be very glad to hear your impressions!

And once again, a special thank you to Ronald for selflessly entertaining us all during this extremely serious event and allowing Testaton to become one of the most memorable days of my life.

Kudinov Ilya, Sr. QA Engineer, Badoo Development