EuroSTAR Conference

A EuroSTAR Committee member looks back at the 2021 software testing conference.

It has been two weeks since the action packed conference has ended but I am still full of thoughts from the amazingly memorable event it has been this year. I have been associated with EuroSTAR for many years now as a reporter and a volunteer but this year was all the more special, with an opportunity to be a part of the programme committee. It was a huge honour and I enjoyed every moment of playing the role, working alongside some of the biggest names in the testing world Fran O’Hara, Janet Gregory, Derk-Jan De Grood and Szilard Szell. This has been a exhilarating experience to say the least! Right from going through the significant number of submissions, to making decisions on sessions for the three days it was incredibly fulfilling and enlightening to witness the programme come together. The collaboration with fellow committee members was brilliant as we went through an incredibly difficult decision of choosing sessions from submissions of very high quality! The programme always feels incredibly impressive but this year, there was a personal connection.  To witness the final form of it get unraveled to hundreds of participants is one of the most unforgettable experiences! This being a second online edition of the conference, there were a number of aspects to be considered but I must say none of that felt like an unsurmountable challenge, thanks to the unwavering support provided by the fantastic conference team. As the event got underway, there was so much energy and knowledge in the virtual environment that I felt transported into a world of unlimited inspiration! So much to learn and rejoice! As always, I want to list the top 10 things from this year’s conference for me. In no particularly order these aspects stood out for me this year: 

1. Engage theme: I felt this year’s theme was a winner in attracting a huge variety of submissions. It was awe inspiring experience to see the various interpretations of it! I found it to have created a welcoming spirit amongst the conference participants as the theme could have multiple interpretations which helped spur creativity and imagination. Many congratulations to conference chair Fran to have come up with this motivational theme – it was a joy to work as a programme committee member on this theme 
   
   
2. Tutorials – I always enjoy this format of the programme as you get to focus and absorb information on one specific topic. This year, once again I have to say the tutorial experience was an absolute delight, being a part of the award winning team of Anne Colder- Jantien van de Meer, who effortlessly delivered  a highly coordinated, superbly crafted session. A stellar line up of speakers including maestros Michael Bolton, Rik Marselis delivered these phenomenal sessions, giving the participants an opportunity to deep dive into topics of interest – a great feature of the conference! 
   
   
3. New terminologies – I learnt a few excellent terms from this year as part of many conversations ‘Critical incident’ is the top one from this year which was shared by Testing Guru Dawn Hayes. As Dawn puts it, critical incident is an experience after which you never return to operating like before. To me, all of this year’s experience has been one such critical experience! Another term is ‘happiness engineer’ – I derived it from an amazing key note delivered by Michiel Boreel who  referred to testers as the guardians of digital happiness and in fact went on to suggest we should consider the above new title for testing professionals! These interesting terms have been duly added to my everyday vocabulary! 
   
   
4. Implementable knowledge: All through the three days the sessions I attended delivered not just the theory behind an idea but gave an excellent focus on practical implementation of those approaches. Be it the concept of Building relationships by Lukasz Pietrucha, Automation pitfalls and possibilities by Sune Engsig, Quality and human factors by Andrew Brown, Dealing with conflict by Marielle Roozemond – I can list possibly every single session I attended which gave me new insight on how differently testers can approach real life challenges. As I am catching up on recordings from the event, my learning is continuing! 
   
   
5. Riveting Keynotes: Each and every keynote session in this year’s conference was a gem, I went on being amazed at how fantastically these topics were presented by the skillful speakers. As one of the participants said “how many times can mind be blown in three days!”. I found all keynotes to be outstanding and to have delivered key messages that are highly relevant to our area of work. Rob Lambert, Aprajitha Mathur, Micheil Boreel,  Maaret Pyhäjärvi and Janet Gregory – a huge round of applause to have made incredibly impactful deliveries.
   
   
6. Lightening talks: This has been my favourite format of talk, ever since I witnessed it back in 2018 with none other than Fran O’Hara on the stage! I was delighted to not only see this format again on EuroSTAR platform but also get the privilege of being a part of it! I was one of the eight speakers who delivered a brief 5 minute talk on a topic of their choice, which delivered great nuggets of thoughts for audience to consider. It was a high energy, fast and interesting session. I personally enjoyed preparing and delivering my short piece, felt honoured to have shared the virtual stage with amazing speakers like Dawn Hayes, Tariq King, Elise Carmichael, Rob Meaney, Sanne Visser,  Chris Armstrong and Raj Subrameyer. Thrilled to have been a part of this fantastic ensemble!
   
    
   
   
7. Huddle sessions: This is an aspect of  the conference I hold close, as my predominant involvement as a reporter / volunteer has been in this space. As always, this was action packed this year with a variety of conversations and activities. Inspirational AMA sessions with Michael Bolton, Rob Lambert, Jyothi Bhatt and Sune Engsig, career advise from Raj Subrameyer, Ensemble testing by Maaret Pyhajaravi,  exploratory bug hunt with Marek Lof and so much more! The breaks from sessions had many engaging activities to relax and to network with fellow participants. The feedback sessions were great in hearing from the members of community. Always a hugely uplifting huddle of people! 
   
   
8. Award winners: It was an absolute delight to learn of the most deserving winners of the award which was actually a top secret and not known till announced at the ceremony! Hearty congratulations Kari Kakkonen on the Software Testing Excellent award! I had the privilege of attending Kari’s session last year’s conference and I have since been in awe of his dedication, enthusiasm for testing, particularly about educating younger generation. The winner of best paper Adonis Celeste is again someone I have seen on EuroSTAR platform back in 2018. His white paper has deep insight and excellent pointers for tester role, a highly recommended read. We are fortunate as a community to have such brilliant thought leaders! 
   
   
9. Conference team:  I have known this team for a few years now and I guess I have run out of superlatives to express how much I admire them! It was yet another extraordinary experience to see the event being brought together skillfully and coordinated to perfection. What was an additional aspect was how experienced the team has in running the conference and how deftly they apply it in real time. The process was smooth flowing in spite of how complex the three day long event can be in terms of logistics and planning. Their tireless efforts, commitment and professionalism is simply top notch. Truly a wow team! 
   
   
10. Testing community spirit: This entry has stayed in my top 10 list ever since I started attending EuroSTAR conference. This is an aspect I am so proud of and so very much enjoy during this event. The enthusiasm and community spirit just shines through on every occasion. This year too the participants proved that the format is secondary and the spirit of being in company of fellow testing professionals is much more! The conversations during the talks and the engagement with Q&A sessions from this year’s talks was outstanding! It was really nice to get to meet many participants from near and far, covering a big spectrum of career experience. The celebration of diversity in this community is exemplary and I feel really lucky to be a part of it!

As this year’s conference comes to an end, the new one is already looking hugely exciting! To be held in the beautiful city of Copenhagen, the conference is going to be first in-person event after 2 years of being virtual. It will be headed by none other than testing Guru Graham Freeburn,  accompanied by the team of experts Sue Atkins, Morten Hougaard, Bart Knaack, and Tone Molyneux. I am sure this fabulous team will come up with a brilliant programme that we all look forward to! 

In conclusion, I must mention, this year has been particularly emotional for me as EuroSTAR has been on my mind for the last 8 months. I am immensely happy for the conference Chair Fran, fellow committee members and the conference team on the success of this year’s event. My hearty congratulations to everyone involved  – the speakers, the audience, the sponsors – what a festive experience that was from start to finish! I also feel a bit philosophical about the year that has been to us in the larger sense. We have all been through strange times and this event made reflect on how we have managed to stay connected as a community in spite of multiple challenges. Human resilience and adaptability will hopefully see us through as society as we transition back to the ‘original normal’. Here’s to the new sprouts of hope that have started to appear and here’s to good health, well being for everyone! 

About the Author

Sowmya Ramesh is a testing professional with over 18 years of IT industry experience currently working as a consultant with 2i Testing. She has a deep interest in the area of non-functional testing, in particular, accessibility testing which she has promoted for a number of years in the testing community. Sowmya writes blogs on topics of professional interest and has been a speaker at events for MOT Edinburgh, DevTest Summit. Sowmya was awarded a reporter role on Eurostar Conferences in 2017 and 2018 and in 2021 was part of the EuroSTAR Conference Committee.

Woohoo, finally it’s that time of the year again – the EuroSTAR Conference is on. This year it took place as an online edition which gave people from all around the world the opportunity to take part in this amazing conference without needing to travel during the pandemic times.

Although it is an online edition, there was plenty of space to meet other attendees. You could do a speed meet sessions and talk to someone randomly for 3 minutes. You could join a lean coffee session and discuss interesting topics. You could get solutions to your problems from the Test Clinic. Or you could check out the demos of the sponsors and stroll through the Expo area.

The Programme Committee around the Programme Chair Fran O’Hara made an amazing job when choosing the speakers for this year’s edition and you could listen to talks from different areas of testing, speakers with different backgrounds and from different cultures. Let me summarize my first day at the EuroSTAR Conference 2021 by using my sketchnotes.

Moving to frequent releases. The 10 Communication Principles that support rapid change.

Rob Lambert
The first keynote of the day was held by Rob Lambert. Rob started by explaining the 5 step thinking model. First, you paint a picture of the bright future (like a vision). Then you lean into the problem and ask if the team is the right one to get it done. Afterwards it’s all about routines, habits, disciplines and processes, and finally there is a lot of learning.

He then talked about the 10 (+1) Communication Principles to support rapid change. These are:

1. Enthusiasm
2. Purpose, audience, context
3. Communication is something the listener does
4. Use stories
5. Don’t waste people’s time
6. Practice is preparation
7. People remember how you make them feel
8. Non-verbal is a superpower
9. People resonate with those who sound like them
10. You can hack your body
11. Listening is the greatest compliment

Quality is not about testing … it’s about value!

Gitte Ottosen
Gitte thinks that is not that easy to define what quality is, as it doesn’t mean the same to everybody. It is the value to some person, at some time, who matters. So you have to find out who the people that matter are.

More important, you have to think about what value means to you and get a common understanding throughout the whole team. You can do so by using the VOICE Model: Value, Objectives, Indicators, Confidence, Experience. As value is time dependent, you have to think about what you want to get out of the things you do right now – this will change over time.

5 myths and anti-patterns to refactor out with continuous performance

Paul Bruce
Nowadays, organizations want to deliver things quickly. They run into a more continuous future where they do smaller releases more often and share knowledge along the way. This only works if continuous performance feedback is given.

Paul used 5 myths/anti-patterns to explain how to get to having a continuous performance mindset:

1. Prohibite Ubiquity
2. Expedited Gridlock
3. Mandated Ignorance
4. Escape Philosophy
5. Predictable Unreliability

Have a look at my sketchnote to learn more about the mantra and possible actions for each anti-pattern.

CSI testing – investigate like a pro

Adam Matlacz & Elzbieta Sikora
Adam and Elzbieta think that exploratory testing brings many opportunities for testers, especially when the sessions are held with people with different roles. While being a tester, you can behave like a detective when you are on a bug hunt. That’s how they came up with CSI Testing.

The CSI Principles are: Concentration, System thinking and Impartiality (+ break the rules). Focus on a goal, use a holistic approach and treat all fair without prejudices. A CSI Tester should build skills around different types of thinking, tools and gadgets and approaches and techniques.

The CSI Procedure would look like that:

1. Approach the scene: Find out what you deal with
2. Start investigation: Narrow down
3. Release crime scene: Team work
4. Conduct the trial: Confront suspects, call witnesses, judgement
5. Debriefing: Retrospect

Lightning Strikes

Lightning Strikes are short talks of 5 minutes in which 2 slides are allowed. This year there were 8 speakers who were giving a lightning talk.

Lightning Strikes 1

Tariq King, Sanne Visser, Rob Meaney & Elise Carmichael
Tariq thinks that the world is full of bad software and by filling AI & ML systems with bad data and biases, the problem is being made even worse. By testing your software and using a holisitic approach, you can unlock a revolution and make a difference.

The essence of Sanne’s talk is, that you should always remember that there are different ways to get to where you want to get and that you should take a look around and think outside the box to not get stuck on the way things should be.

Rob shared two philosophies with us: Seek problems, solve problems share lessons, which is basically about sharing what you’ve learned with everyone and working in a holistic matter to enhance quality. The other one is: Fewer, smaller things together – which means fewer as in the variety/volume of work, smaller as in slicing things down more and together as in cross-functional teams that start and finish together.

Elise thinks that next to maintaining, analyzing and creating tests there is a huge portion of test debt, a backlog of work not done. She thinks that flipping the test pyramid upside-down helps you to refocus on the customer’s experience and therefore also reducing some of this debt.

Lightning Strikes 2

Raj Subrameyer, Dawn Haynes, Chris Armstrong & Sowmya Ramesh
Raj compared pre- and during covid work to each other and found that from having onsite interviews, working from home as a luxury, limited virtual meetings and mandatory travel it all transfered to no onsite interviews, work from home as a necessity, virtual meetings as a normality and travel not existing any more. This leads to a huge change in the future of work in which a social media footprint, personal branding, remote working, going the extra mile and re-tooling your skillset become crucial.

Dawn’s approach to finding and hiring awesome testers is usins these attributes of a CRACK tester:

• Curious
• Resourceful
• Adaptable
• Creative
• Knightly

In short, Chris’ talk is about not overlooking any rules when doing test automation. A small mistake as letting someone and not the whole team decide on which tool to use might turn into a huge problem.

Experimentation is pivotal to success. Sowmya encourages us to be open to changes, so that we don’t lose any opportunities. But while experimenting, you should not forget to do extensive research, monitor and measure, improvise as required, document the lessons learned and implement with confidence.

The seeds of toxicity we’ve been trained to overlook at work

Raj Subrameyer
Raj has been dealing a lot with stereotyping and racism himself – mostly microagressions (actions/words that can be offending). He discovered that those often appear at work places and should definitely be fought. He has 5 proposals on how to curb microagressions:

• Diversity & inclusion training
• Having open conversations
• Own your mistakes
• Anonymous help hotline
• No tolerance policy

Continuous performance testing in DevOps

Lee Barnes
Traditional performance testing, which often comes too late and takes too long, is dead. Continuous performance, which means evaluation at each stage and more frequent feedback, is uprising. But you have to think about performance factors early on in your development process. Incorporate the requirements as contraints or/and as acceptance criteria for existing user stories.

Lee advises us to start small and expand to move from a centralized to an integrated performance team. Gather feedback and continuously improve.

Testing and monitoring in production is important, but don’t forget to consider to:

• eliminate requests to 3rd parties
• ensure system “knows” that it’s being tested
• identify an ideal test window
• coordinate with infrastructure providers
• solicit broad IT input

The journey of testing software for DNA analysis

Aprajita Mathur
The last keynote of the day was held by Aprajita Mathur. She was talking about testing software for DNY analysis. The standard workflow for analysis of genome sequence data is:

1. Alignment
2. Reference Genome
3. A) Somatic or B) Germline variant calling
4. Variant filtering & annotation
5. Data visualization & reporting

Machine learning applications help testing and can be supervised, unsupervised or predictive. While testing – also called Bioinformatics Analysis Pipelines – keep in mind:

• Statistical models are used
• The models are trained on data sets
• The model is as good as the data or worse
• You aren’t testing the exact output, but expected behaviour
• You have to test in different situations
• There are lot of changes, which lead to complexity, but also exploration and fun

Between testing software for DNA analysis and “normal” software testing there are a lot of common grounds. But to DNA analysis, there are also some challenges as Gold Standards, domain knowledge, population genomics and that nature always has its way.

As you can see, on the first day of EuroSTAR 2021 there were a lot of different topics already. From communication principles over performance testing and racism at work to testing software for DNA analysis – that’s what I call a huge variety. And there are so many talks that I haven’t attended and might re-watch after the conference.

About The Author

Katja Budnikov is a software tester and sketch noter from Northern Germany. Katja is passionate about software testing and sketch noting! She loves attending events like EuroSTAR and sharing her experience and learnings with others on her blog Katjasays.com. Katja first started sketchnoting in 2016. First analogue with pen and paper and now digitally with an iPad and Apple Pencil.

In her work life Katja started out in online marketing, then specialized in search engine optimisation and is now a quality assurance specialist in both manual and automated software testing. Away from work Katja loves photography, especially taking photos of nature, including many of her dog Auri, a young Australian Shepherd, who is super cute and fun to take photos of. She loves to spend time with her dog and partner, going out for walks, traveling and eating cake at a nearby coffee shop with a beautiful garden.