Tutorial by Maaret Pyhäjärvi

Social Software Testing Approaches

Cross-functional teams have team members with specialized in-depth skills. Collaboration between team members has a significant impact on the team’s ability to deliver value efficiently. Software teams are well aware of the need for their developers, testers, product owners and other team members to collaborate. Product backlog refinement, 3-amigos sessions and daily meetings create space for sharing planning of the work, but for much of the rest of the time, people are hunched over their own keyboards and screens, working on their own tasks. Even if developers work with each other during pair programming and code review sessions, testers often work on their own.

In this course, we learn approaches involving a more social aspect that teams can adopt in order to work together and improve their testing, as well as work better with developers. We experience and learn about:

• Traditional pair testing

• Strong-style pair testing

• Ensemble testing

• Bug bash

Why does the social way of doing the work make sense? Software development is not about getting the most out of us, but the best out of us - avoiding the ping pong, creating ideas we
would not generate alone, and sharpening our skills. We don't know what we don't know but can recognize it in the context of doing it. In software development, those who learn the fastest do best. In addition to learning within the team, we can extend from learning within the team to community: testing tours applying these approaches give you hands-on experiences working with others even in other companies. This is a hands-on course, where we experience combinations of four social software testing approaches with three testing tasks: one we pair on, one we ensemble on, and one we do a bug bash on. You learn to successfully set up each of the activities, and recognize how to prepare, facilitate and summarize sessions for a good collaboration experience.

Why should you join this course?

• Improve collaboration skills in paired and grouped hands-on work

• Build mutual understanding and respect for different skill sets

• Learn how to foster collaboration in teams, in times of remote work

Contents

Opening of the Day: Learning Goals
The Brief Basics to Social Software Testing Approaches

• Pair Testing

• Ensemble Testing

• Bug Bash

• Physical and Online Spaces
  

Activity I: Styles of Pair Testing on Exploratory Testing

• Traditional and Strong-Style Navigation in Pairing

• Setup, session, debrief
  

Activity II: Ensemble Exploratory Testing on Exploratory Testing Documenting with Automation

• Test automation as executable notes

• Exploring with Automationist’s Gambit

• Setup, session, debrief
  

Activity III: Bug Bash on Exploratory Testing

• High-energy shared space and time bug finding activity

• Solo and pair in bug bashes

• Setup, session, debrief
  

Introducing Social Software Testing as a Learning Activity

• Facilitation: speak through questions, introduce constraints, concepts and tools

• Learning to learn: removing the need of facilitator

• Possible activities

• Tips for colocated and remote work

    - Others: 800€ + VAT 24% = 992€
    - Tutorial speakers & FiSTB organizers: 0 €

About the instructor

Maaret Pyhäjärvi is a tester extraordinaire specializing in breaking illusions about software through means of contemporary exploratory testing. She is a software specialist with soft spots for hands-on testing, all levels of test automation, helping teams grow and building successful products and businesses.