Agile Testing Days - Day 3

Uhh so much new stuff, so much inspiration - today I think I'll take another approach than "just" listing the sessions I have been attending and in stead think a bit more om what I got with me home from Day 3 at the Agile Testing Days 2012.

Be an Inspirational Speaker

I attended the first and the last keynote (missed the one in the middle, needed to go out and see daylight :-)), and you cannot see and hear people like Jurgen Appelo and Gojko Adzic without being inspired. And inspired in two different ways actually;

1. I want to improve the way I do presentations - I want to be better at using visual effects (other than unicorns) and to use humor as a weapon to keep people awake. Tell the story in a way that visualizes your points and make them understandable to someone who doesn't know what is going on in your head :-). And more than anything believe in what you are presenting - when you do that you will "burn through" and get your message out there. I don't think I would be able to make a great presentation if it was about something that I wasn't passionate about.
2. New things to try out (of course!). Listen and read and observe, steal (I actually don't think it is stealing - more borrowing) what you can use and tweak it to fit into your context. Oh yes I used my favorite buzzword - CONTEXT.

Key Learnings - day 3

• The only person you can reliably influence and change is you
• You get more out of what you focus on - so focus on positive stuff
• Track happiness to measure improvements
• Many of our traditional testing (and test management) skills still applies - we just have to tweak them so that they match the agile world we now excist in.
• If there are rules and regulations about how you track and document stuff - have a discussions with the ones who "audit" and find the most effecient way of doing it. Eg. ways to extract comments from code to create reports automatically rather than writing the stuff in Word.
• Maslow's hierarchy of needs - now for test and quality
• Focus on what business need you are going to satisfy with your code rather than focusing on requirements in a traditional sense.

When I come home again after day 4 I need to compile a list of books and articles to read - so much new stuff that inspires me right now.