The complete write can be found here. This post is focussed on what I took from the meetup & how I can learn from it.So my first attempt at a geek night is complete, but as for how it went I’m not sure I have an answer. 8 people showed up, so that’s a good start!The idea behind the night was the see one, do one, teach one concept - I’ve Learnt about exploratory testing, I’m trying to practice it & now its time to try & explain it to others!
The purpose of the dojo was to highlight the fact that software development teams don’t need full & complete documentation in order commence testing. I tried to prove this by giving a high level overview of exploratory testing (as I understand it), the use of heuristics & how we could apply heuristics to test the Delorean time machine.
I shoehorned some testing techniques/criteria from other heuristics into my own heuristic, created especially for the purposes of the dojo - the MARTY heuristic:
- Maintainability
- Automation
- Risk
- Time & Date
- Your Brain (thanks to Joe Strazzere for the prompt reply on the STC request!
Key takeaways for me were:
- Arranging a geek night is hard & time consuming
- Not having a ‘big name’ attending means the night isn’t going to sell itself
- People who did attend actually wanted to be there so provided great input
- I need to know my material better - help overcome my nerves.
- I need to stop saying “errm”
- I need to send a link to the write up to all the people who didn’t attend so they can see what the night was about - might entice them to the next one!
For me, the night was a success. The group were great at providing input into the dojo & I hope that was a reflection on my preparation & delivery of the presentation.
After laying down the challenge, I only needed to give a few more pointers to get the dojo flowing. One or two brave members put their ideas forward, setting the expected standard, & after that everyone knew where they stood & how to proceed.
Discussion around the post-its after ideas dried up was good & people could see where I was coming from. Certainly the ideas fitted with the heuristic I had knocked up.
Hopefully the overview I have given them on exploratory testing is enough to enable to them to investigate it further & hopefully look to implement it where applicable.
What would I do differently? I think I have my head around the big picture enough of exploratory testing to do it myself, but I struggled to go that bit further & help others understand it. I need to work on this.
I need to be able to fluently talk about the topic without notes. The annoying thing is, although I know the topic, my thoughts are not logical enough to talk about the topic yet. They would come out as a confusing diatribe!
Not associating any blame, but having a family does make preparing for an event (albeit software & running) trickier. The girls haven’t been well this week, so sleep has been patchy & its all contributed to me being slightly less focussed than I could have been. This said - I wouldn’t change this week, & if it came to it I would have been happy to cancel the meetup if I didn’t feel I was up to it.
So, all in all, attempt #1 wasn’t so bad - I can only improve! I’ve been approached to do the same dojo again, so I can take some valuable lessons learned and make it better!
I really hope the others enjoyed it as much as I did.
Slides form the night can be found here.
Here are the videos of the night - I’d really appreciate some feedback on the delivery & content of the presentation as well as my understanding of exploratory testing
Introduction & dojo set up
Dojo in progress - some of the ideas generated by the group (apologies for the ratio - i’ll sort it when I get more time)
UPDATE - feedback from an attendee! (Massive Thanks!)
- Even though I thought I was keeping it high level, I was still using jargon & buzzwords - need to stop that!
- I need to relax - slow down on my delivery & be prepared to accept questions mid presentation - need to be more confident about my topic!
- Be clearer on what expected goal of the session is - identify what I expect the attendees to do
- Don’t make assumptions - I assumed that people would be familiar with the concept of writing down notes on post-its. Luckily this attendee was familiar with Sharpies & post-its so was able to get the ball rolling!