Test Labs 2009

200 testers in the same room may well worry more than a dozen developers and project managers. But there are cases when such a meeting has quite peaceful goals. This was the case that happened in Kiev on September 26, 2009, the reason for the meeting was Test Labs 2009 . The conference was organized by Luxoft training center, and, as the name implies, was dedicated to the work of quality engineers, testers and software quality in general. Recently I haven’t found events of this kind in the city of Kiev, so I registered with great interest. So, look at Test Labs 2009 through the eyes of one of the participants.

Registration has been scheduled to start at 9:40, which is an early morning for Saturday morning. But looking at the program, it became clear that it would not have been possible to start later. 14 reports in 3 streams, 2 flip-chart sessions, plus a break time between performances. In general, the day promised to be active.

Once at the venue ( International Exhibition Center on (m) Levoberezhnaya) I had to rest against the tail of the queue at the registration. To the credit of the organizers, the line was moving fast, and meetings with former colegas finally brightened up the wait. Then received badges, handouts and the conference opened.
Considering that the reports were made simultaneously in 3 sections - “Quality and Processes”, “Approaches, Tools and Strategies”, “Testers and QA” - all participants had to choose which third of the reports to visit.

In my case, the first speaker was Igor Luzhansky (Luxoft), who spoke about testing requirements. The story turned out quite structured, and moderately formal. On the one hand, it is necessary to test the requirements, but on the other hand, not only the QA team, but also all the participants in the development have to do this. The tools are also not complicated - reading requirements, prototyping and discussion. Such a method requires a certain qualification, and largely depends on people. Here you do not create scripts for tests, you have to rely on human logic and attention.
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Nikita Nalyutin (Deutsche Bank), starting with a description of the rigorous testing process of embedded software for aviation, talked about how to create a zone of order for a tester in general chaos when developing. To the aid will come the control of their time, the control of configurations and diagrams. Particularly memorable are the charts: a calendar for controlling priorities, a bar chart for the remaining tasks, a bubble chart for accounting for critical places, and a wind rose for displaying labor costs. Quite clearly and does not require much effort to prepare.

Yulia Nechaeva from Nix Solutions from Kharkov told about the specifics of hiring testers. It turned out that recruitment and food consumption have much in common. We can hire ready-made specialists (a trip to a restaurant), people without experience and train them in the process of work (we eat at home) and organize a training program (preparations for the winter). Of particular interest and the bulk of questions to the speaker was caused precisely by the training program. The flow of questions did not stop, almost overgrown in the discussion. However, the representatives of the organizers managed to cope with the pressure and accurately transfer the discussion into the lobby. So timekeeping and here was sustained.

Flip-chart Sasha Balabanova ( Testlab2 ) I will not evaluate, somehow it does not work together . It turned out to be a short and capacious talk about the expectations of outsourcing customers based on personal work experience. Although the startup is quite young, the experience of communicating with different customers allows us to draw conclusions. We identified three types of orders for ourselves: small shareware projects, auditing the work of other QA teams, and working in the mode of a remote project test team. Accordingly, everyone has their own expectations, to whom submit the maximum number of output defects, to whom beautiful reports, and someone wants a clear and reliable integration into the streamlined development process. In my opinion, the topic was solved, despite the time limit (15 minutes).
At the end of the conference, he appeared on the Monkey vs. Robots report by Maksim Dorofeyev . Although a classic report is difficult to call. Rather, the presentation on the confrontation of manual and automated approaches to testing. One hand-drawn presentation is worth something. Not to mention the style of presentation, video examples and animation of the development process and tests. I am really looking forward to the publication of the presentation on the conference website, although without the comments of Maxim, there will not be a good part. As a result, the pros and cons of automation have been described, but the conclusions remain for the audience. Finals quite a success.

This is how the Test Labs sample from 2009 looked like from one point of view. There will be many such points of view, someone went to other reports, others remembered other things. I also liked the conference, both from the point of view of organization and content. Still, testing is a very interesting process, and testers are even more interesting people. And in the calendar of events for 2010, you can safely draw another red date.

Ps. Presentations and conference materials organizers promise to post on the conference website in the near future.