2-Day Test Obsessed Workshop: Getting a Grip on Exploratory Testing
When: June 26 and 27, 2006
Where: Royal Statistical Society, 12 Errol St, London EC1Y 8LX
Cost: £660 ex. VAT
Instructors: James Lyndsay, Elisabeth Hendrickson
What This Workshop is About:
Exploratory Testing is a style of testing in which you explore the software while simultaneously designing and executing tests, using feedback from the last test to inform the next. Exploratory Testing engages directly with your products and systems to uncover unexpected behaviours, implications of interactions that no one ever considered, and misunderstandings about what the software is supposed to do.
Because Exploratory Testing is so good at finding surprises, Agile/XP/Scrum teams often find Exploratory Testing helps to augment and strengthen pre-defined acceptance tests. In addition, Exploratory Testing can facilitate story/feature discussions with Customers/Product Owners. Although the contents of this course can apply to both Agile and non-Agile projects, we anticipate spending a portion of the discussion time talking about how to integrate Exploratory Testing with Agile processes.
In this workshop, James and Elisabeth guide you through a series of hands-on, practical exercises and discussions designed to hone your Exploratory Testing skills. You'll learn about designing tests on the fly using states, models, maps and variables (no, we don't mean the "int x;" kind of variable). We'll work on discovery of risk, verification of value, and how to make sure the information your Exploratory Testing reveals is the most valuable information possible. You'll also learn how to manage and integrate Exploratory Testing with your existing approaches. Throughout, we'll present techniques and heuristics you can start using right away to uncover those surprises that traditional, pre-planned tests tend to miss.
Outline
Day 1
Introduction - concepts and terminology
Exploration and Testing
Exploratory Testing and Agile Development
Using your Judgement
Exploratory Frameworks
Considering Variables
Working with States
Sequences
Mapping
Day 2
Personae and attacking
Use of Tools
Charters, sessions
Exploratory testing in a team, on a project
Feedback and Empowerment
Note: This is our expected outline - ordering may change.
Course Objectives for participants
Learn how Exploratory Testing fits in with other kinds of testing on both traditional phased projects and Agile projects
Understand how Exploratory Testing contributes to the discovery of risk and verification of value
Become more adept at observing what the software or system is doing
Use the Inconsistencies-Absences-Extras model to determine when an Exploratory Test has revealed a bug
Discover how identifying Variables can lead to more interesting explorations
Learn techniques and heuristics for testing based on states, data, environment, sequences, and personae
Use attacking techniques to reveal deep information
Find out about tools to support Exploratory Testing
Learn how to use Charters and Sessions to manage and control your Exploratory Testing
Who Should Attend:
Testers who want to learn more about Exploratory Testing
Agile/XP/Scrum team members who want to find out why Exploratory Testing is so useful on Agile projects
Programmers who want to learn how those pesky testers find bugs in their software, even when they rigorously practice TDD, pairing, refactoring, collective code ownership, and automated acceptance testing.
In order to ensure the workshop is a rich, interactive experience, we're limiting participation to 20 people. We expect the course will fill up quickly. Reserve your space now!
To reserve your place, email James, call him at +44 (0) 20 7372 6986, or use this form.
About the Instructors:
James Lyndsay formed Workroom Productions in 1994, and has been an independent test strategist ever since. He's worked in startups and multinationals, been part of agile teams and monolithic methodologies, tested hand-helds, mainframes and all points in between. James has won awards for his work on the management of exploratory testing, and over the last three years has refined his hands-on course in exploratory test techniques. This is his only scheduled public course in the UK this year.
Elisabeth Hendrickson is the founder and president of Quality Tree Software, Inc. For almost two decades, Elisabeth has worked with a wide variety of software development teams and organizations ranging from tiny start-ups to members of the Fortune 500. Elisabeth has held positions as a tester, test automator, programmer, lead, and manager - most recently, she's been working with Extreme Programming/Agile teams to bridge the gap between developer and customer testing. In addition to consulting, Elisabeth is a popular speaker and an award-winning author, and her energy, wit and keen understanding of software have made her a sought-after teacher all over North America. This is the first opportunity to take a class with Elisabeth in the UK.
Logistics:
The course runs from 9am to 5pm on both days. The Royal Statistical Society is in the City of London, just north of the Barbican. The nearest tubes are Old Street, Barbican and Moorgate, and there are three hotels of widely varing quality and price within easy walking distance. Details will be supplied on request.
Registered participants have access to a project site built specifically for this event. This facility puts all particpants in contact with the instructors and with each other. It also acts as a repository for useful information, and enables discussion before and after the course.
Cancellation
If you are registered to attend the workshop but can't be there, you are welcome to substitute another workshop participant at no additional charge. Simply notify us of the substitution before the first day of the workshop. If you notify us that you wish to cancel your participation in this workshop before June 1, 2006, we will refund your full fee. If you notify us that you wish to cancel between June 1 and June 23, we will refund 50% of your fee. After June 23, no cancellations will be accepted.
If we have to cancel the workshop for any reason, we will mail you a full refund check within 1 week.