This year the EuroSTAR conference is bigger and better than ever before! We’ve got a timetable packed with interactive tutorials, hands-on workshops and amazing keynote speakers. What does that mean for you? More learning, more connections – and lots of new skills. There are too many to count so below we’ve narrowed it down to top 20 skills you will learn at EuroSTAR:
1 Develop a super power
We’re about to let you in on a secret. Those who have achieved a work/life balance have a superpower: excellent communication skills. They possess the art of knowing when to be effective and disliked, and when to be liked but less effective. You can learn this superpower too! Get the tools and understanding you need to be an efficient (and beloved) ninja.
2 Solve a chicken-and-egg problem
Question: If you haven’t already found bugs, how do you know where they are going to be? Yes, it seems obvious to focus where the risk is in order to test efficiently but this leads to more questions. When do you stop testing? How much is enough? It’s a chicken-and-egg problem. This workshop answers all your questions – and more. The trick is to think of risk differently…
3 Learn how to play like a pro(tester)
Play! We all love our downtime – but did you know it can really help your team to build connections, to grow and gain valuable insights? If you want to learn how to teach through play, this tutorial is for you. Games include Mend a Spaceship (broad-bandwidth comms and task urgency), Defuse a Bomb (narrow-bandwidth coms and uneven expertise) and Are We Done Yet (task estimation in a discovery environment).
4 Make test management exciting
The best way to learn is from experience – and this double whammy tutorial is based on direct learnings from two expert speakers in test management. With exercises and discussions to help you understand the topics, you’ll go home with some crafty lesser-known test management topics and learnings. Even better, you can apply them straight away to your organisation!
5 Become ace at agile
Agile is continues, non-sequential – and evolving. Software testing expert Fran O Hara’s tutorial nails key elements and practises you need to know for the most commonly used methods and frameworks in agile. You’ll get solutions to real-world issues, insights on challenges and leave ready to implement agile solutions in your company.
6 Become a (risk)storm trooper
Having the right strategy in testing is important to stay as effective as you can – but sometimes you can get stuck in a rut. This RiskStorming session will help you focus your test strategy using 3 key questions, and leveraging the power of teamwork to become a deadly (risk)storm trooper!. Tackle real life cases and problems and leave the tutorial with a proposal for your manager.
7 Learn a new way to do UI testing
You know how it goes with UI testing – sometimes your tests pass, and sometimes they fail, without a clear cause. So, this tutorial looks at options beyond Selenium to complete UI testing. Cue Cypress.io, a new kid on the block, based on familiar open source frameworks. Get behind your laptop and experience it firsthand, with guided exercises to write your first test in minutes!
8 Discover a new test design technique
The Process Cycle Test: You may not have heard of it, but this tutorial is dedicated to this elegant, efficient and highly effective technique for testing business processes. The ISTQB world hasn’t picked up on it yet, but after you’ve tried it during the tutorial you’ll see how easy and effective it is! You’ll leave with the test cases for a life-like business process, so you can apply this technique in your work.
9 Improve your writing
Want to know how to write better, more expressive Behaviour Driven Development scenarios? Say hello to new and different writing styles by reviewing prepared scenarios. You’ll also write your own scenarios during this tutorial using Gherkin, the syntax used by Cucumber and SpecFlow. Leave armed with a checklist of tips that you can use the next time you sit down to write a scenario.
10 Elevate your performance testing
Get a first-hand insight into the life of a performance tester. Expert speaker (and EuroSTARConf 2018 Best Tutorial Winner!) Mais Tawfik Ashkar shares her performance testing experience. She also explores performance stories, challenges and solutions in a collaborative learning session. Learn new skills, techniques and strategies that will help you tackle performance testing challenges and grow holistically in your performance engineering approach.
11 Develop Your BS Detector
Debunk popular myths about what AI is, and what AI will bring in the future with Chris McKillop. AI can be deceptive and as a software tester, your BS detector ensures that your AI systems are valuable, ethical, and successful! You’ll also learn the importance of empathy in testing systems, especially those that make decisions affecting people.
12 Solve an ethical quagmire
Who exactly is watching us, how and why? We are now in the midst of a technological change that the world could not have anticipated – the 4th Industrial Revolution. AI brings brings both power and questions about accountability and liability. Join Fiona Charles in tackling the hard questions about AI and robotics, and get to the truth behind the cost to our privacy.
13 Learn the best way to test complex systems
Alexandre Bauduin shares his experience leading the complex system testing challenges of a real-time Boeing 777 Flight Simulator. Learn how he overcame the challenges he faced by combining his skills in test design and his expertise as an airline pilot. Afterwards, you will have strategies to organize and prioritize automation and develop regression checking suites for very large mission-critical software systems. You will also be able to report meaningful information to stakeholders.
14 Be the lord of your own rings
Hear about how one of the biggest software projects in the world, Windows 10, built a community of 16.5 million global Windows Insiders! Now, these customers are a vibrant community who are co-creating with Microsoft. Come away from this session with the knowledge to set up your own community and fan club and more importantly, how to co-create with them.
15 Master the art of failing faster – and learning faster
What happens when your working method and processes are turned upside down? Enter “Conceptual Development”, a design-driven, lean development process. Here, it’s important to fail quickly and test with actual users before a single line of code is written. Learn how to approach this new way of thinking and implement it in your software development.
16 Evolve from tester to specialist
Do you know about the Knowledge Model? Marta Firlej shares the secret to people growth and company stability, the issues around it and how it’s evolved to this day. Learn about the value of the a knowledge/competence model, how to create one, and go from a good software tester to a professional specialist.
17 Become adept at DevOps
Newsflash – QA isn’t dead, it’s evolving to a higher consciousness! QA is crucial for most DevOps implementations to succeed – but DevOps has a dramatic impact on the way we do QA. This session gives you concrete tips on how you can leverage some of the DevOps principles for your job. Get equipped with the necessary changes you need for this new DevOps world!
18 Learn lessons from a start up
Get a firsthand account of what’s it’s like building a company from the ground up from tesena CEO Phil Royston; the skills he needed, and the challenges he faced. Learn how challenges facing testers can be met with the help of professional development PLUS one of the key elements to growing your professional and business career.
19 Become a test data master
Good test data is hard to get, and unfortunately it’s not unusual to use production data for testing. This causes problems of its own, not least that GDPR (the new EU privacy lay) applies to not only using production data directly. It also applies in almost all situations when test data is based on scrambled or anonymized production data. Here you’ll get inspiration on how to improve test data quality, and learn what it takes to generated high-quality test data from production data in a compliant way.
20 Rediscover exploratory testing
Exploratory testing often leads to more confusion than clarity. Is exploratory testing an activity? Or is it a style of doing something? Isn’t all testing exploratory? These are questions, and Ingo Philipp will answer them- what exploratory testing is, why to use it, and when to practice it. Bring your curiosity to this hands-on, interactive session. Learn how to use this highly productive approach and put the adventure back into your testing.