Paul Gerrard's Blog
Paul Gerrard's Blog
Website:
Description:
Hi. At last, I've gotten round to setting up a web log. I'm using it to collect in one place some musings, announcements, ideas, opinions, criticisms and stances on issues that, well, seem to be of interest to me at the time. Feel free to comment.
Last update:
1 year 27 weeks ago
26th Test Management Forum - 28 July 2010
Submitted by Paul Gerrard on Mon, 12/07/2010 - 10:44.The 26th Test Management Forum took place on Wednesday 28 July 2010
Many, many thanks to the facilitators, delegates, the sponsors SQS UK, Original Software and Tricentis Technology & Consulting and of course our venue Balls's Brothers, Minster Pavement. for making the latest Forum a big success.
The web page for the event, and facilitator slides etc. can be found here.
User Acceptance Testing - A Practical Approach
Submitted by Paul Gerrard on Tue, 04/05/2010 - 17:34.James Windle has published the second edition of his book, "Acceptance Testing - A Practical Approach". Last week James asked me to give the book a plug at the Forum, but I didn't have time. So here's a plug on a TMF site instead :-)
From the back cover:
"This book is a step-by-step distillation of James's experiences of Acceptance Testing in a variety of industry sectors. The second edition has been fully revised in the light of feedback from readers, clients and industry leaders."
Click on the image to visit the book's website where you'll find full details of how to buy.
April Test Management Forum
Submitted by Paul Gerrard on Fri, 26/03/2010 - 06:51.The 25th Test Management forum took place on Wednesday 28th APRIL at the conference centre at Balls's Brothers, Minster Pavement.
The meeting was sponsored by our patrons: SQS UK and Original Software and was as usual FREE to attend.
PROGRAMME
| Designing a killer agile test management system - David Evans, SQS and Gojko Adzic, Neuri Ltd. Join David Evans and Gojko Adzic in an interactive session to design your perfect agile test management system. We will run a variant of the Product Box innovation game to work out together what features the community would like to see in such a tool. While we are doing that, we'll discuss new features and limitations of current tools, the ways teams use them and tips and tricks for successful agile testing. Finding Quality Assurance Harmony in Agile – A Practical Road Map to Success - George Wilson, Original Software Performance management: from black art to process - Peter Holditch, Dynatrace Software We will be discussing what information needs to be gathered from production, test and even earlier, what tools need to be used – and in which of the dev, test, prod silos they apply, in order to systematically manage this without distracting developers by making them into part time ‘ninja operators’. We will also look at the common bugbears of troubleshooting: reproducing issues in test and effectively narrowing down the root-cause of complex application issues, with a final reflection on how some of these elements might be brought together into systematic processes. Essentially, how can we attempt to put an end to today’s requirement for ad-hoc non-functional wizardry and foster harmony between developers, testers and operators? Seven Things That You Might Not Know – (But may find really useful) - Graham Thomas, Independent The tools, and their techniques are easy, fun to learn, and very powerful to use. And they will help you to master testing in the industry’s currently very demanding transition from that of a structured V-model history to a leaner, more agile and exploratory approach. Effective Load Testers. Who are they? How are they created? - Gordon McKeown, Facilita
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If you have a suggestion for a future session topic, or want to facilitate a session for us, please do get in touch.
My Blog is moving to gerrardconsulting.com
Submitted by Paul Gerrard on Thu, 03/12/2009 - 17:03.I haven't blogged for a while because I have been working on my new website. It has just gone live at www.gerrardconsulting.com
Like this site, it uses Drupal as a platform. My blog is moving to the new site. I'll continue to post blogs on the www.uktmf.com site, but only to make announcements regarding the Test Management Forums and Summit.
So here are the new blog and blog feed details:
Please change your news reader accordingly :-)
The www.uktmf.com website will take this feed and display my posts here. I'll be copying some, but probably not all, of the old posts to the new site. I've got lots of stuff I'd like to talk about queued up - watch this space.
Free Windows Azure Assessment Survey
Submitted by Paul Gerrard on Mon, 30/11/2009 - 22:08.A friend of mine (Michael van Noorden of DotNet Solutions) asked me to forward an interesting offer they are making. There's a brief white paper What is the Azure Services Platform? that gives some background. Perhaps you could pass this onto your technical architect to see if he's interested? Ask him to take you along perhaps - it could be an interesting and informative session. See below...
"Dot Net Solutions have been asked by Microsoft to provide a handful of Azure assessment sessions during the first half of December. These free sessions comprise a half day technical overview of the platform, followed by a half day chalk and talk and written assessment. If you are interested in exploring whether the Windows Azure Platform might be applicable to some of your customers’ applications or business please get in touch now as places are very limited.
A fast track review is an opportunity for a company to lay out their technical, business and architectural problems in front of some Microsoft experts, and gain advice and guidance on choosing the best path for their future development. These are interactive, conversational engagements which typically last for around 3 to 4 hours, and have proved very successful and useful for participants in the past. For these specific sessions, the focus is on Cloud computing, and in particular Windows Azure, SQL Azure and the Azure platform.
The format is that of an informal meeting - some chairs, a table, a couple of whiteboards and a lot of imagination and honest speaking. The conversations are all about problems and solutions, and if customers come with an open mind then they should leave with a lot to digest and think about, and a good idea of their next steps.
The best Fast Track Architecture Reviews tend to happen at the stage when a customer is looking at a specific upcoming new project or software release, and is starting to think about what features or capabilities around Cloud Computing and Azure might influence their own plans (e.g. "Can we offer both on-premise and off-premise solutions?", “How do make sure we can scale up?”). An open mind and a willingness to discuss ideas are essential.
Conversely, a few things can prevent a good Fast Track Architecture Review session. If they have already made their mind up and are simply looking for more detailed discussions, then this is possibly not the right forum - let us know and we can suggest the best routes forward. Similarly, if management are not behind the changes, or they are unable to bring a senior decision maker to the meeting, or there are no specific time scales for a new version, then these sessions can be less then optimum, and we recommend them only to apply when the time is right for this."
DotNet Solutions contact details are here.
Ask for Michael van Noorden. Do let him know that you heard of this on the Test Management Forum Website.
2010 Test Management Summit - 26/27 January 2010
Submitted by Paul Gerrard on Tue, 24/11/2009 - 10:10.REGISTRATION FOR WORKSHOPS (26TH) IS CLOSED | |
| WORKSHOP PROGRAMME (Word) | SUMMIT PROGRAMME (Word) |
| WORKSHOP PROGRAMME (PDF) | SUMMIT PROGRAMME (PDF) |
| The FOURTH TEST MANAGEMENT SUMMIT will take place on Tuesday 26th and Wednesday 27th January 2010. |
Our Generous Sponsors are:Original Software and SQS UK, Microsoft UK, Facilita and nFocus |
| Day 1 - Tuesday 26 January 2010 Test Management Workshops Venue: Balls's Brothers, Minster Pavement £95 plus vat | Day 2 - Wednesday 27 January 2010 The Test Management Summit Venue: Institute of Directors at 116 Pall Mall, London £75 plus vat |
| DOWNLOAD WORKSHOP PROGRAMME | DOWNLOAD SUMMIT PROGRAMME |
| Workshop Timetable 09.00 Coffee/Register 10:00 First Workshop 12:00 Lunch 12:45 Second Workshop 14:45 Tea/Coffee/Networking | Summit Timetable 09.00 Coffee/Register 10.00 Sessions 1-4 11.15 Tea./Coffee 11.45 Sessions 5-8 13.00 Lunch 14.00 Sessions 9-12 15.15 Tea/Coffee 15.45 Sessions 13-16 17.15 Closing Talk - Dorothy Graham 17.45 Drinks Reception 18.30 Dinner 21.00 Close |
To book places at the Workshops, the Summit and dinner, download the booking form here, complete and email, fax or post to us.
Any questions? Contact us here.
2010 Test Management Summit Topic Survey - RESULTS
Submitted by Paul Gerrard on Tue, 17/11/2009 - 16:07.Results of the Survey
The results of the Topic Popularity Survey are listed below. 61 people responded and their names have been entered into a draw for a free Summit Place.
| Rank | Topic |
| 1 | Agile Test Management |
| 2 | Agile Testing - how to adopt a successful process |
| 3 | Measuring the performance of our testers and team – how? |
| 4 | What's new in Test Automation? |
| 5 | Pitching Senior Management on Quality |
| 6 | Successful Agile Testing - How did you make this work? |
| 7 | Establishing an effective automated regression pack |
| 8 | Innovative Testing Practices |
| 9 | Introducing automated testing effectively |
| 10 | How to sell your testing methods |
| 11 | Agile and Offshore - oil and water ? |
| 12 | Hands on security testing |
| 13 | How choose what to automate and what to leave as manual |
| 14 | Bringing traditional testers into the Agile world |
| 15 | Getting the most out of Testing Tools (tips, hints secrets) |
| 16 | Free test tools - there are so many |
| 17 | Non-functional testing - why is this done so badly so often? |
| 18 | Test Driven Development |
| 19 | Setting up offshore development and test centres |
| 20 | The Role of the Test Manager. Why testing shouldn't be run by the project manager and the development manager. |
| 21 | Test Process Improvement and how it helps |
| 22 | Test Strategies for SOA |
| 23 | Turning your testing service into a product (to make testing more tangible) |
| 24 | Risk Based Reporting |
| 25 | Establishing an effective performance testing environment |
| 26 | Cloud Testing and the "Virtual Test Environment" |
| 27 | From Requirements to tests |
| 28 | Performance testing strategy document |
| 29 | Effective Exploratory Testing Techniques |
| 30 | Cost effective use of Test Tools; their selection and implementation |
| 31 | Experiences in implementing testing improvement |
| 32 | Global Test Teams |
| 33 | Usability Testing |
| 34 | Open Source or Commercial Test Tools -- pros and cons |
| 35 | Lean test management processes |
| 36 | Deriving test cases from Agile Stories |
| 37 | Agile development/testing |
| 38 | Reporting & monitoring testing info and presenting testing results |
| 39 | Modular test automation frameworks. How to build lightweight automation frameworks that can be easily customised for a particular test execution scenario |
| 40 | Expanding the testing remit to cover the whole business process and the impact on the customer experience. What do we need to change? How to get testers (who are technical IT people) to change their approach and think in a more warm fuzzy way about things |
| 41 | Test Plans & Planning - fitting into the project plan |
| 42 | Running effective test teams (plus how to id & develop, encourage effective testers) |
| 43 | No requirements, no time - how do I plan and execute the testing effectively |
| 44 | Managing UAT effectively |
| 45 | Specification Workshops for Agile Projects (aka How to do Agile Planning) |
| 46 | Raising testing profile/perception and demonstrating value outside of test team |
| 47 | Test Strategies and Plans - What should each achieve; how do they interconnect |
| 48 | Configuring test management tools for projects |
| 49 | Testing effectively on a limited budget with tight timelines |
| 50 | Test Planning during Requirements Gathering |
| 51 | Next generation test tools? Tools that build complex data to fit to test cases, or tools that can derive test cases from business rules or other new things? |
| 52 | Assembling a toolkit for the Non-Functional Test Manager (contacts/tricks/tips/standards/templates/tools/etc) - to produce something like PG's Tester's Pocketbook (?) |
| 53 | Test Team Roles and Responsibilities |
| 54 | Building an enthusiastic test team |
| 55 | outsourcing - at what point does it become a viable option. We've had presentations saying it's a good idea, and how to do it - but at what point should I seriously consider it? |
| 56 | How to derive performance test from Use Cases |
| 57 | How to get the most from project managers |
| 58 | Developing a "Time Zero" Approach to Software Defect Detection & Prevention |
| 59 | Tester hiring and interviewing |
| 60 | Distributed Test Process Improvement |
| 61 | Tester skill set, why do we have so many with little real testing skill still, and why do people still buy them? |
| 62 | Simulated Global Testing (24hr follow sun test execution) |
| 63 | How to build a short-term team |
| 64 | Is the UK is more cynical than the US? Does this cause team based methodologies such as Agile to be less likely to succeed due to unwillingness to change and a lack of enthusiasm for embracing new ideas and new ways of working? |
| 65 | Managing the construction of Automated test suites |
| 66 | TMMi overview and assessment |
| 67 | Estimating - practicalities of estimating, how to relate them to assigned tasks, how/when to update them, how do we relate them to actuals - how do we keep the information usable? |
| 68 | Tools for system testing SOA and Quasi SOA systems |
| 69 | Agile projects - case studies/experiences |
| 70 | Test case creation |
| 71 | Specifying Non-Functional requirements |
| 72 | Date control in testing real-time systems |
| 73 | Testing time management (pre-project estimation, re-assessment during projects etc) |
| 74 | Tightening the Regression Set |
| 75 | How to choose and get the best from testing services companies |
| 76 | Operational Acceptance Testing |
| 77 | Live demo of unit test automation tools used for TDD |
| 78 | How do we see why a test project went wrong and learn what we could have done to stop it? We learn from our own problems; this workshop would give an opportunity to learn from others and spot the signs in our next project in time to do something about the |
| 79 | Where are our next generation top flight testing professionals coming from? |
| 80 | Growing your own test experts |
| 81 | Vendor relationship management |
| 82 | Improve early documents (requirements, specifications) |
| 83 | How can we challenge the "non-functional dumping ground" mentality |
| 84 | Lessons learned from company mergers, data migration and integration projects |
| 85 | Going back up the food-chain - the importance of the non-functional tester providing input to the NFRs |
| 86 | An Integrated Approach to Software Testing - using Architecture, Source Code Analysis, and Dynamic Testing with Code Coverage |
| 87 | Real life examples of changing from Waterfall to SDLC, approach, obstacles, biggest changes to overcome |
| 88 | Influencing the business to test throughout the SDLC |
| 89 | Load testing using load runner |
| 90 | How to upload test cases in Quality Center |
| 91 | The place of Source Code Analysis in an Agile World |
| 92 | Defining objectives, measures for improvement Proofs of Concept |
| 93 | Can Testing become a truly virtual discipline (Virtual Crowdsourced Teams Accessing Virtual Test Environments) |
| 94 | Establishing an effective security testing regime |
| 95 | Hiring Technical Testers - practices and pitfalls |
| 96 | How to manage an ever-growing testing team |
| 97 | Bringing in whitepapers on the best practices adopted by successful companies |
| 98 | Lessons learnt from large bank integrations |
| 99 | To Find out throughput and response time of a system |
| 100 | Establishing an effective review process. |
| 101 | Create Testing Tollgates and Review Process |
| 102 | Transitioning between tools and vendors (pros, cons, pitfalls) |
| 103 | Learning from Problem Projects. |
| 104 | Unit / Component / Module testing best practice |
| 105 | Pros and cons of being acquired/merged with another company - experiences |
| 106 | To debate ways & means of preventing non-functional testing (and sometimes Operational acceptance testing) from becoming the phase of testing which is used to pick up the dregs from unit, CIT and system (functional) testing. Maybe define a solid entry cri |
| 107 | Strengthen Unit Testing |
| 108 | Review real life examples and management techniques to keep testing on track within a project. Practical advice to Test managers from other Test Managers |
| 109 | Project Information Flow Through QA |
| 110 | Can reuse save money in multiple release projects? |
| 111 | A Tools-based Approach to Complete Validation of an Embedded Safety Critical System |
| 112 | Get a better understanding of how others use estimate info, keep it up to date, and then compare to actuals. |
How the results will be used
We will consider the results above in choosing topics for the 2010 Summit, the one-day Summit Workshops as well as topics in Forums throughout 2010.
Test Management Summit Topic Survey
Submitted by Paul Gerrard on Fri, 23/10/2009 - 16:49.Which topics are most popular?
The 2010 test Management Summit will take place on Wednesday 27th January 2010 at the Institute of Directors. We are planning to add a WORKSHOP DAY to the Summit on Tuesday 26th January and will comprise a series of half-day workshops on topics chosen by YOU. Day 2 workshops will cost delegates only UKP 95 plus VAT for the full DAY. More details will follow as we get further into the planning.
We need to start planning for the Summit now, so we are asking you, as a member of the test management community, to indicate your preferences for sessions (Summit Sessions or Post-Summit Workshops).
This is the SECOND survey to identify the most popular topics.
As your incentive to contribute, one FREE Summit place will be given to a randomly picked responder each month.
We have also secured a number of “Helicopter Rides over London” worth UKP 100 for our prize draw to be made at the Summit itself. All survey responders will be entered into the draw to win one of the places at the Summit itself. (But you must attend the summit to collect the prize).
Please take a few minutes to help us to make the 2010 Summit the best ever. Thank-you and good luck!