Blog

So, together with about 30 other People we followed the Feature Mapping workshop done at the Agile Testing Days by John Ferguson Smart at the Agile Testing Days. This workshop was really great, because it taught me a lot. Especially that what we do is not as Feature Mapping, but maybe a simplified version. But I believe it works just as well, so I promised some of the participants of the conference, to do a short blog post about it.

So first of all. My simplified Feature Mapping is part of a workshop about how to do refinements more effective. It’s called ‘Powerful Refinements with BDD’. What I try to show people is that if you collaborate in your refinements you start building the product right and build the right product as Gojko Adzic also mentions in his book ‘Specification by Example’.

So the emphasis is put on visualizing and structuring your conversation and enabling the conversation to take place. Something I started to miss at the workshop, where the focus was on doing the exercise right and making a feature map and not about having the conversation anymore.

Now I decided to create a short vlog to explain it, because otherwise I will spend a lot of time writing it down. You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/gNCfJ7DQx_E

At Testcon Vilnius 2018, I was asked a few questions about Metrics. Metrics is always a thing that is depending on your context. All the Metrics that I used during the different work experiences where created by using the GQM-method. This stands for Goal, Question, Metric.

Goal: Metrics always should have a purpose, to make sure they have always ask yourself the following question first. What is the goal? What do I want to measure or of what information do we want to uncover?

Question: What are the questions that will help you to determine that you are on the right way to achieve this goal? What questions will give you relevant information and insights to change your approach. This can be multiple questions for one goal.

Metric: Now you come to the Metric part. Because the answers to those questions, they are in the metrics that you will use. The Metrics on focus on answering the questions. Multiple metrics might be needed to answer your question, but also one metric could answer multiple questions.

An example:

Goal: Within our company we invest in Test Automation to improve the quality & speed on which we deliver to our customers!

Questions:

1. Whats the quality of the provided delivery?
2. How much time is spent on deployments?

Metrics:

For question 1 the following metrics could apply: unit test coverage, bugs found by test, deployment build failure rate.

For question 2 the following metrics could apply: Amount of deployments per production release, deployment build failure rate, time spent on deployments;

Today we (Mehmet and i) gave a workshop about how to do Powerful Refinements by using techniques that apply to the behavior driven development way of working. Read more about our workshop here.

Slides are found here: https://www.slideshare.net/secret/4v57rY6bQ4zLdz 

Some pictures of the workshop.

The first assignment “who to invite & what’s needed for your refinement”.

Going towards one model in the Specification by Example workshop.

Feature mapping example.

The last part in which we created Gherkin code.

This post is to show a bit more about the workshop, the video will follow later.

 

I know there is a lot of stuff on the web about me. So I used google to search around to see what i could find. To find the relevant stuff for IT Engineers and/or people with an interest in software testing. So, I did a summary of results in a top 3:

1. Testbash: Lessons from famous detectives for testers

Earlier this year was at TestBash Utrecht. This being my first big Dutch conference I was a bit nervous being on that stage. David Evans had an amazing talk just before me. A lot of people who’s opinion I really value and see talking at conferences were now watching me talk. Those people how’s opinion I really value, also blogged about me. Google helped me to find those back:

Maaike her blog: https://www.maaikebrinkhof.nl/2018/04/testbash-utrecht-2018-liveblog/

Marianne her Visual note: https://twitter.com/marianneduijst/status/984794722735714304 

Renate, who I did not know also wrote something cool : https://www.testpeople.nl/blog/renate-blogt-testbash-2018-vrijdag-13-april/

My slides and video are found here if you are interested. Thanks for all the positive vibes I got from this amazing conference!

2. Testconf in Russia: QA in the DevOps Timeperiod

For me this was a really amazing experience, getting to open a conference with my keynote about Quality Engineering. In front of 500+ Testers and QA loving people I got to share my vision. Thing that I find really awesome is: This page about me and my keynote in cyrillic.

The video is found here, the slides here.

*Awesome to do this again at TestConf Vilnius in a few days! So workshop attendees, please wait 2 days!!!

3. Agile Testing Days: Be a Detective, Use Forencis Sciences, Improve your Skills

Working Together with people from Brazil on a Workshop that’s going to be epic (At least that is the goal). Well more about this will follow at the Agile Testing Days, so just go there and experience it I would say. Read more on: https://agiletestingdays.com/speaker/geoffrey-van-der-tas/ 

Conclusion

Google yourself and find out how special you are. Its fun and it might tell you something about yourself.

Why..

Well I have been working hard last years on new workshops, presentations and getting on the podium. People writing about me and my exposure is slowly increasing. So time to add my own flavor into the mixture.

What..

This will be a blogging website, adding information about workshops, presentations, training’s that I give for Ordina. If you are interested in a kick-ass workshop or learning experience for your team and/or a knowledge transfer session. Feel free to reach out.

How..

At this moment, just contact me on my Email, LinkedIn or Speakerton.