EuroSTAR Conference

Tips for Preparing an Online Talk

June 16, 2021 by Suzanne Meade

Speaking in front of an audience can be daunting and thrilling at the same time. There are many ways to become a better speaker or perhaps you are a great speaker and looking to fine tune your skills. Over the past year, speakers all over the world came to grips with virtual talks and began adjusting their approach to online. In November we hosted the very first EuroSTAR Online and it was awesome! Everyone learnt so much, both the attendees that joined us and the speakers who were giving virtual talks, a new experience for many!

This year, EuroSTAR Online is back and taking place 28-30 September. We are welcoming 57 speakers from 14 different countries and will be organising community sessions throughout the conference which will bring even more speakers to the virtual EuroSTAR stage.

A number of experienced EuroSTAR speakers have come together to share their top tips for preparing for your talk. We hope these help you!

Keep it short, keep it focused.

I know that all your ideas are totally brilliant, but you really do only have 20 minutes to get one idea across and embedded into your audience’s minds. With a typically tight schedule and an abundance of interesting information, you will need to be tactical about this.

Try this: Put each point you have onto a separate, rough slide, then practice talking through each slide. You will run over the 20 minutes. Now, think about your one central message, that one idea you need inside people’s minds at the end. Ask yourself – is the point on this slide absolutely necessary to that message? If not, ruthlessly cut that slide out. Also, cut it out, don’t trim it down, hoping that you can briefly cover this plus a myriad of other points. You most likely can’t.

If you think it tough to get your idea over in only 20 minutes, have a look at a few of the totally brilliant TED talks for inspiration; none of which are longer than this time.

The above tips are provided by Andrew Brown of Expleo. Check out Andrew’s talk on Software Quality and Human Factors – our next challenge at EuroSTAR 2021

Your talk is a distillation of your knowledge.

In general for presenting: Your presentation is a distillation of what you know. Remember you have a story to tell, which needs to be gripping. But to tell your story – to make the distillation – you need to know the back-story. In other words, you have more material in your mind and your notes than you will present, because you won’t have time. Having that background will help you tell your story. Writing a paper can give you the chance to expand on your ideas. Think how J K Rowling built up a whole world: her notebooks have details that didn’t make it into the books, and the books have details that didn’t get to the films.

Take time to set up your recording location.

For speaking on-line on zoom: Take a few minutes to get set up, as people are going to have to look at you and your backdrop for the duration of the talk. Check your camera angle, background, appearance before you start – for example if this is a zoom meeting, you can check your set up before the meeting by having a zoom meeting by yourself to see what you look and sound like. Plain background, and check there is nothing that shouldn’t be visible in the broadcast. Raise your laptop/device up so it is level with your face (I put my laptop on a shoe box) – then you won’t be filming the inside of your nose. Lighting from the side and front, not from the back, gives a good light to your face.

Isabel Evans provided the above tips and you can check out Isabel’s talk on Who are we? What are we doing? How are we doing it? at EuroSTAR 2021.

Imagine your talk is a Q&A.

Many speakers are much better in Q&A than presenting their topic from prepared slides, so turn this to your benefit: Imagine your talk is a Q&A and think about what questions your audience would ask. Structure your talk in a way like you would answer these assumed questions. You can even show or say out loud the question you are going to address as a kind of section intro. This way you can ensure that your talk will be more relevant. When you record/present the talk, imagine a person behind the camera as one who was asking the questions – it will appear more natural both for you, and also your audience.

Gáspár Nagy is a coach and trainer with Spec Solutions. Check out Gáspár’s talk on Living Documentation with BDD: Structure, Consistency, Traceability at EuroSTAR 2021.

Keep it Simple

Don’t try to squeeze too much in! I was really challenged with the shorter 20-minute time that works best for online talks compared with the usual longer 40 minute in-person track session. I created a shorter presentation focused on fewer key points, took some notes, and did a dry-run or two on my own to ensure that I did not run over.

Practice

Do a couple of dry runs so that you are certain about what you want to say, how you are going to get your message through. The better prepared you are, the less focused on your notes during the presentation.

Stand Up!

If at all possible, stand up during your presentation 🙂 I found that I got more energy when I was standing up, and using my gestures as I would normally do in a physical presentation.

Gitte Ottosen (Key2Quality) won the EuroSTAR 2020 Best Paper Award. Check out Gitte’s talk on Quality is not about testing… It’s about value! at EuroSTAR 2021.

Everyone has their own approach to speaking and these are just a few helpful tips for giving an online talk. If you are attending EuroSTAR and wish to get involved in hosting a Community session then keep an eye on your emails this summer. We will release all details of how to get involved and would love to welcome you. We will also be hosting a free community event Testing Voices on 29th June if you’d like to attend.

In the meantime, check out the full EuroSTAR Programme and get in touch if you have any questions.

First Steps to Approach Test Automation

June 11, 2021 by Fiona Nic Dhonnacha

Test automation is a top priority for today’s companies. All, or almost, are betting on this aspect to reduce the effort of carrying out manual tests, avoiding the turnover of people in the projects, motivating employees, and saving time in the commercialization of products and services. But before jumping into the automation topic, several key aspects must be considered to fulfill the goal we establish.

The first thing to do is to analyze those three important areas need to be included in any test automation process: tools, test environment, and scope; although it is not necessary to do it in this order, because they are related.

Tools

The first step is to consider which tool meets our needs. The important thing is to analyze our needs and observe the types of validation, architecture, and tools that allow us to build, manage and report the automation project. The process of selecting an automation tool for web or mobile is not the same if we are thinking of an SAP system. Therefore, in this case, it is necessary to take a more specific approach concerning technical support and tools that suit the type of system chosen.

Test Environments

We need software, licenses, and infrastructure, in addition to a log of executions and parameterization. Therefore, it is necessary to define the test data management strategy and the requirements for continuous testing. In many cases, it is important to keep in mind that to get these sandboxes up and running, we need a lot of data. This is an aspect that cannot be ignored.

Scope

In terms of reach, what we must evaluate is what we want to automate. The initial assessment should aim to define which business processes we are going to automate. To do this, we must identify what kind of applications we have, the repetitive tasks and what we want to automate. Likewise, we have to define at what level we will implement test automation.

With these three fundamentals well established, we can observe some additional steps, such as the identification of the pilot application, the definition of small validation steps, which must be carried out step by step to manage expectations properly, and the automation criteria, which are used to identify the stability of the application in a test state. In this sense, we have to be sure of what will be used and evaluate the application’s life cycles; if it will be used for a long time, if it is obsolete or if the test time is acceptable.

Return On Investment

Last but not least, we must look at ROI (Return On Investment), taking into account both automation costs, with the remaining costs that we will have. The important thing here is to estimate the break-even point for the development, support/maintenance effort, and the tasks that must be performed manually. We will find the balance when we reach approximately 80% profit (considering the use of automation) and 20% effort (that would be the total amount to automate 100% of the reach).

In this sense, each organization must define the levels of automation that it will implement, and its level of scales, starting from 0 that corresponds to having no automation, and gradually going through levels 1 to 4. The first level corresponds to a basic level; the second at a more productive level, where we already have a roadmap, defined objectives, and KPIs; the third with a more consolidated automation framework, in which we already work on processes and not just on applications; and a fourth, and last, more advanced, in which we have already introduced artificial intelligence. These levels give a priority reference to guide us and the ideal is to have a detailed scale of priorities. Thus, as we increase coverage by 60-80%, investment starts to decrease. This is an important aspect to consider before starting.

Ultimately, it is important to focus on the future uses of test automation, based on good market practices, as well as how to get the ROI we want to achieve and good ways to measure it.

Noesis are exhibiting at EuroSTAR 2021 Online. Looking to learn more on test automation? Check out the EuroSTAR 2021 programme, and join us September 28-30th.

Author

Eduardo Amaral, Quality Management Director at Noesis

Quality Management Director at Noesis – Portuguese QM Services Market Leader, Eduardo worked as analyst/developer, project manager, program manager and service delivery manager. He has a background and certifications in several areas, including quality assurance, project/program management, process management and product management. Over the last 21+ years, Eduardo has been involved in a variety of software project development lifecycles and solutions integration, at high levels of complexity and customer experience exposure, performed in some of the major national and international companies, from different business areas – Industry, Banking, Insurance, Telco, Retail, etc.

The EuroSTAR Conference 2021 Programme is Here

May 20, 2021 by Fiona Nic Dhonnacha

The EuroSTAR Conference 2021 programme has dropped, and we’ve got a meteor shower of star speakers ready to spark your testing over 3 days of learning, connecting, and making new friends. Our speakers will share their expertise and help you become the best tester you can be. Start planning your 2021 EuroSTAR diary. 📝

3 days – 50+ countries – 1000+ testers – you

It takes a village

Let’s say hello to the 2021 Programme Committe, who carefully curated our incredible programme: Programme Chair, Fran O’Hara (Ireland), and his committee: Janet Gregory (Canada), Derk-Jan de Grood (Netherlands), Sowmya Ramesh (U.K.) and Szilárd Széll (Finland). They were helped by our community reviewers from all over the world, who gave their time, knowledge, and experience to help create the programme.

Check out some of the incredible topics and speakers we’ve got in store for you.

Keynotes for aha! moments

EuroSTAR Testing Excellence Award winner Maaret Pyhäjärvi talks about automation, Michiel Boreel discusses digital happiness in the age of customer obsession, while Rob Lambert will take attendees through 10 communication principles to support rapid change. Hear Aprajita Mathur on testing software for DNA Analysis, and Janet Gregory on engagement being a state of mind…

Tutorials for actionable tactics

The programme features 14 half-day training tutorials on day one. Get ready for a blast of knowledge from 14 tutorials, covering all the topics that you want to know more about: QA, automation, communication, BDD, testing in the cloud, artificial intelligence, and so much more. The EuroSTAR tutorial trainers are ready to teach you how to improve your testing, and ensure you leave with a toolkit armed with new skills, tactics, tips, and tricks.

Track talks to make you think

Choose from 30 sessions on a wide range of testing topics. Gitte Ottosen shows why quality is about value, Peter Collewijn & Hannie van Kooten talk testing AI systems, Andrew Brown delves into the next challenge in software quality, Mili Oruevic discusses the end of the world (it’s not what you think), and SO much more.

Connections & conversations

EuroSTAR is a global gathering rooted in community, so of course we have plenty of community sessions on diversity, career advancement, wellness and much, much more. Get your testing challenges solved at the Test Clinic, take part in Lean Coffee, stretch out with yoga, and enjoy non-stop networking opportunities with testers from all over the world.

If you book your ticket before 30^th June you unlock 6 headliner talks that you can access right away – so you can start your upskilling journey with us now.

Take the whole team and save up to 30%. Team tickets start at €385 per person, which includes access to all 3 days and post conference on-demand talks.

See you in September!

EuroSTAR Summer Tutorials

April 13, 2021 by Ronan Healy

Over almost 30 years EuroSTAR Conferences has been a indispensable source of learning and connections for the software testing community in Europe. Through live events in Europe EuroSTAR Conferences have supported software testers in exploring the realms of software testing through our live events. One part of these live events that always prove to be the most popular and (for many) the most beneficial are the EuroSTAR Tutorials. The opportunity to engage with others and learn from real experts has always proven to be a really popular experience for EuroSTAR attendees.

Now get ready for your chance to attend EuroSTAR Tutorials wherever you are. The EuroSTAR Summer Tutorials take place virtually on 11th, 12th, and 13th May. Running all day from 9am to 4:30pm, each tutorial promises to be an immersive experience. Places are limited to allow for real interaction with the speaker. This will not be a lecture. This is a immersive experience. Let’s take a look at what is taking place at the EuroSTAR Summer Tutorials.

The first tutorial to take place on Monday 11th May is with Michael Bolton on Test Reporting. Michael Bolton needs no introduction. Co-author of Rapid Software Testing (RST), he has taught and educated testers all over the world. In this session titled “What’s The Story? Powerful Test Reporting” Michael will examine the elements of test reporting, what to include, what to exclude, how to justify what you include and more.

Then on Tuesday 12th May, the topic of Test Management – An Overview (in many different phases) will be explored with the help of three world class speakers. Join trainers Iris Pinkster O’Riordian, Bob van de Burgt and Bart Knaack as they explore test management skills you should be using. Utilising theory, discussion and exercises, the trainers will look not just at “standard” tools like Risk Based Thinking, Stakeholder Management and Test Approach but also the skills required to manage your environment. With real work examples from the trainers own experiences, there will be takeaways that you can apply to your own work.

Finally on Wednesday 13th May to round off a great three days of learning, Agile coach Huib Schoots with Martijn Langhorst will deep dive into risk. With the aim of sharpening your skills as a strategic thinker, “How Should We Test This? Practical Risk Analysis and Test Strategy Skills” will explore evaluating context, risk analysis and modelling products. You will get the opportunity to jump into groups to discuss risk using heuristics. Huib and Martijn have promised a fast-paced session with lots of fun included so you better get booking now. Even if you have not written risk strategy before, the session will welcome you to learn and explore in a engaging environment.

Live online learning is here. Join us and these great speakers for three days of in-depth exploration of these topics. Learn from thought leaders, get new ideas and explore with like minded professionals. We will see you there. Find out more how you can attend here.

Preventing Burnout While Working in the Tech Industry

March 31, 2021 by Fiona Nic Dhonnacha

‘Preventing Burnout While Working in the Tech Industry’ is a talk given by Raj Subrameyer at EuroSTAR Online 2020. Raj is an international speaker, author, and tech career coach. He helps people in the industry find their dream job, and become successful leaders.

Now, Raj has put together his tried and tested strategies in a blog post – packed with information to help you prevent burnout in work (and in life); including tips, tricks, and tools he’s used on himself and his coaching clients.

Here’s Raj’s talk from the conference:

Where it started

Growing up, I was a shy and introverted kid. I was also average – in everything from academics, to sports, to dating. So, I put a lot of pressure on myself to emulate the overachievers around me – I wanted to be recognised, and for other people to see me as worthy. My biggest fear was being ignored.

When I started my career, I made a vow to myself: I would be famous, a recognised name. So I said ‘yes’ to every opportunity that came my way, and put in a lot of hard work. I tried to push myself out of my comfort zone constantly, in order to get the recognition that I wanted. What happened? Well, I got the fame, money and credibility I desired. Life was good.

Burnout

Then, in June 2018, something happened: one night, I suddenly blacked out while I was going to the bathroom. The next thing I knew, I was in the ER, undergoing lots of tests. The diagnosis? Severe anxiety, depression, dehydration, and burnout.

Burnout is a serious issue, and it’s attributed to a lot of mental and physical health issues. About 60% of people in tech have burnout on some level – but they just don’t realize it.

Let’s ensure this doesn’t happen to you. I am sharing strategies to help you prevent burnout, including tips, tricks, and tools I’ve used on myself and the clients I coach, who are leaders in the tech industry.

Trust me, these things work! So let’s start your transformation process…

Pick up a book

There are two books which were instrumental for me at the start of my journey to productivity and mindfulness.

Deep work by Cal Newport

Deep work is focused time block sessions on cognitively demanding tasks, without any interruption. Research has found that we check our emails 30 times per hour, and it takes us, on average, 23 minutes and 15 seconds to regain concentration after this kind of interruption. That’s why doing deep work is really important in order to be highly productive. If you want to know more about my deep work process, check out my blog, 72-Hour ‘Deep Work’ Week.

Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden

Everyone talks about time management, but no one talks about self-management. The thing is, you cannot manage time, because time moves no matter what you do. The one thing you can manage is how you prioritize your work and tasks within a given time. The system I have in place to prioritize tasks is the focus funnel, which is detailed in this book. It’s been very influential in my transformation process.

Pick a task, and ask 3 questions.

Can it be eliminated?
If it can’t be eliminated, can it be automated?
If it can’t be automated, can I delegate it to someone else?

If all three of these answers don’t work, then you have to make a decision on whether to do that task later on, or work on the task right now, because that’s the highest priority task.

This is a good decision-making system because it incorporates priority dilution, which means that you are focusing on the lower priority task compared to the higher priority ones.

Then, you have priority concentrate – where you’re trying to concentrate on the most important task at that moment right now.

Hack your week

You can implement planning hacks and mindfulness hacks in your daily life to help increase your productivity significantly. Have you ever had an overwhelmingly huge to do list? I was always overwhelmed with my to do list, because it always had around 30 tasks on it. But there’s only so much time in a day, and you need to know where to start and what to focus on. So I came up with a system – a daily and weekly planning routine.

Daily planning routine

Every day, I spend 5-10 minutes coming up with a to-do list of different things I want to accomplish that day.

I then prioritize my to-do list from 1-10 in order of importance. My motto is to finish 3 top things every day. I started blocking my calendar to do focus work on these priority tasks. When the time comes, my mind does not need to think about what task I have to do, because it’s already there in the agenda.

At the end of the day, I spend 5- 10 minutes reviewing what I’ve accomplished that day. What I haven’t done gets carried over to the next day. That’s a simple way you can prioritize your work on a daily basis.

Weekly planning routine

I run my own business, and as part of my job, I have five tasks to do, no matter what: learning, reading, content creation, career coaching, and speaking. I already know how much time I have to invest in each of these buckets.

I spend about half an hour every Sunday on my weekly planning routine, and then schedule time blocks throughout the week, for example 2 time blocks for learning and reading, 4 for content creation, 8 for career coaching.

These buckets will be different for you, but make sure you are spending time in every priority task.

Meetings, meetings, meetings

Meetings are one of the most unproductive things you can do at work.

on average, 92% of the people in meetings multitask.
$219 billion dollars per year is spent on unproductive meetings.
72% of the meetings which happen in the world are unproductive.

I highly recommend a Ted Talk on unproductive meeting from David Grady, How to save the world (or at least yourself) from bad meetings to get more insights on unproductive meetings.

Unproductive meetings suck the time, effort and life out of people and the company. So how do we prevent this from happening?

Pizza, anyone?

Amazon implements what’s called the Two Pizza Rule: no meeting should be longer than it would take to eat two boxes of pizza, which would be enough for approximately eight people. Printouts are given to attendees beforehand, and the first 20 minutes of a meeting is spent going over information before the meeting begins. This is a great way to ensure meetings run as productively as possible.

Another way to help avoid unproductive meetings is to ask yourself, do you really need that meeting? Could it be solved just by talking to someone via chat or email, or a phone call?

Try to avoid having more than 7-8 people in your meeting. If you have 15 to 20 people in attendance, it’s not a meeting, it’s a conference. You need to have a clear agenda, and ensure everyone comes prepared for the meeting, and then start and finish on time. The most important thing to ensure an effective meeting is to follow up on the action items, and make sure they’re completed.

Remote meetings

Have you ever joined a meeting remotely, where nobody announces who is in attendance? Or had to endure the slurping of coffee, munching, rustling, and other office noises? It might sound trivial, but if you’re wearing noise-cancelling headphones, then you know what I’m talking about.

People often start presenting something for people in the room, without sharing their screen for the remote attendees. There are also many little conversations happening in the room throughout the meeting – very annoying for the person who’s attending remotely.

How do we solve these problems? There are some simple steps you can employ: Announce who is there in the room. Have a webcam to project the room to remote attendees. Make sure to keep conversations to a minimum, and be cognizant about the different sounds which people make. The mute button can be very effective here!

Get good at email

Every year, close to 219 billion emails are sent. Research shows that by end of 2021, that number is going to increase to 316 billion emails per year. There are going to be around 4.1 billion email users by the end of 2021. The way we use email is going to be really, really important for companies, especially if you’re working in high-performance teams.

Here are some effective email strategies:

Ensure there’s a clear subject line
Don’t write long emails – just have three to four bullet point hitting on the main topic. When you have five or six paragraphs in an email, it’s hard to get your point across to people. One rule which I follow is that your email should fit within a 11-13 inch laptop screen. If it’s more than that, then you have to sharpen it.
Emails with more than two email threads are a red flag, because that’s the sign that you have to pick up the phone and talk to the person directly, or do something else instead of continuously emailing the person.

Set reminders for everything

I work on multiple projects, including writing, work, consulting, and coaching work. So how do I manage all these things? Reminders. Set reminders for yourself, and make use of project management tools like Trello and Asana, to help send you reminders and make sure you follow up on different tasks.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness can be an immense help in productivity. Research has found that the human mind can concentrate for an average of 45 minutes to an hour. If it’s more than that, you start losing focus. The mind also has to refocus for 5-10 minutes before you start a new task.

So throughout your work day, you need to practice focus and de-focus. Make sure you take breaks, and do something to reset your mind after every 1 hour time block. I take 5 minutes to do push-ups!

Find your appy place

On your lunch break, try to go for a walk, watch TV, read, listen to podcasts, or just sit in silence! You need to recharge your mind properly. Studies find that on average, we spend 4 hours per day checking our smartphones. That amounts to 20 hours per day in a 40-hour work week.

Try out meditation apps like Headspace to take breaks between work, whether it’s one minute, 10, or 20 minute sessions. Make sure your phone is on ‘Do Not Disturb’ during focus work. You could also create a playlist specifically for doing creative work.

Join a community

When I started off in my career, I found it really hard to find groups of like-minded people who wanted to discuss the same things as me – career advancement, leadership, motivation. So I created my own private Facebook group called Skyrocket your Career. This now has over 150 people, and all our testers and developers who want to share resources can learn from each other. If you want to be part of our community, check it out, because we’d love to welcome you!

Start living!

To quote Confucius, “we all have two lives. The second one starts when we realize we have only one.” So make sure you follow some of these hacks, implement them in your life, and see what works for you. That’s when the real transformation happens – and that’s how you can prevent burnout.

Even more resources:

Skyrocket Your Career

EuroSTAR Conference takes place online, September 28-30^th. The 2021 programme will be released very soon – sign up to be the first to hear all the details.

Author: Raj Subrameyer

Raj Subrameyer actively contributes thought leadership and enrichment to the software community through conference talks, contributed articles, blogs, and YouTube videos; where he shares his experiences in development, testing, leadership and productivity. Contact Raj on LinkedIn or Get career advice

EuroSTAR Programme Review Process

March 1, 2021 by Suzanne Meade

Ever wonder how conference submissions are reviewed or how the overall review process works? Well we can tell you that the EuroSTAR Conference Programme is the culmination of a community wide collaboration.

Led and crafted by the EuroSTAR Committee, who first call for submissions in line with a theme chosen by the Programme Chair. In 2021, this is Fran O’Hara. Testers far and wide then submit their suggested talks. Each year, there are hundreds of submissions to be reviewed, and, in order to create a balanced and varied programme, each submission is reviewed by up to 5 people (anonymously i.e. talk details viewed, not the submitters’ name).

This is where the community get involved and each year, the EuroSTAR team welcome reviewers from the testing community. Some are past speakers, some have been involved with shaping EuroSTAR since the beginning and all are valued members of the EuroSTAR family.

This is time intensive and we are very grateful to each of our reviewers for their time and dedication. Following the community review, the Programme Committee will then come together to start crafting this year’s programme of talks.

This blog is a behind the scenes introduction to a first time reviewers experience, written by Sérgio Freire of Xray, and details how he approached his reviews.

EuroSTAR Behind the Scenes – Sérgio’s Experience

I was invited to review some submissions for EuroSTAR 2021 testing conference. I had never done it before, and even if time is scarce I understand that this is important for many who submit during the Call For Speakers; it’s also a learning experience for me. But how have I tackled this task? How can I make sure I’m fair enough to everyone? Can I test my review process somehow? This is the story of how I tested my review process. Let’s check it out.

Background

Before starting, it’s important to understand the conference context. EuroSTAR 2021 theme is “Engage”. Engagement is a broad topic. It’s about involvement, commitment, challenging, seeking understanding. We deep dive problems and challenges, we embrace them and we overcome them, no matter if they live within us or in our teams. Engaging is, in my perspective, about giving a step forward.

Infrastructure and supporting assets

The review was done using an online tool where we can easily jump between submissions. The tool itself has an interesting and scary bug that may mislead you to think that your already reviewed submissions/scores are lost… however, I found out that it is just a UI glitch 🙂 a forced browser refresh solved the issue.

EuroSTAR Programme Submission tool

To assist me as a reviewer, I had scoring instructions that I read before starting reviewing the submissions. These instructions were always open in one of my screens.

Criteria

There were 5 main criteria for me to score:

engaging
new ideas
scope
relevant to theme
overall feeling

I felt a bit of doubts on “engaging” vs “relevant to theme”, as the theme is “engaging” and thus some overlap exists. I used the scoring instructions several times, to decide how to score each one of them. Nevertheless, I would prefer a more clear separation between them as they’re not independent variables. The “scope” criterion also left me some doubts, as we’ll see ahead. Finally, there was an open text field “comments” where we could leave a qualitative assessment.

How I did it?

Day 1

I had a setup a quiet room (i.e. my office), so I could read and think carefully. I went over each one of the submissions and scored them; I skipped the “comments” section on purpose so I could not loose much time with them in the first iteration but also to try avoid a bit of bias. Whenever scoring, I regularly looked the scoring instructions if some criteria was not clear to me. I noticed that I was probably assigning “scope” not the meaning it should, as the scoring values were almost identical. Even so, I decided to look at it more carefully on a second iteration. Besides leaving the scores on the online tool, I also took notes in a spreadsheet; thus, I would have a backup 🙂 and I could use it for analysis.

EuroSTAR Programme Review Process

After scoring all submissions, I decided to go over the submissions once again to leave qualitative comments, that I structured in these bullets:

First impressions: Mostly based on the title and takeaways.
Takeaways & The Day After: Is it clear what to learn in the end of this session?
Final assessment: My overall feeling, i.e. a brief summary.
Would I attend: A yes or no, or eventually a perhaps.
Cliffhanger/invite to discover: Was there any mystery left? Any invite to learn something intesting during the session?
Suitable for: beginner, intermediate, advanced.

I was curious to understand if I had some bias that would be reflected more towards time. Thus, I traced a chart with the average scored and a trend line. The result was not shocking. I also made a column with the max score I add assigned in a specific criterion… and I didn’t see any relevant change with time.

Sergio's review process

I slept over and I was curious to see what would happen whenever I iterated on this.

Day 2

I went over the submissions once again, but in reversed order. Why? To avoid some possible bias related with time and exhaustion.

In terms of criteria, I also did a subtle change. While in the first day I considered “scope” as the criterion for being adequate for the time slot, in the second day I considered more the message clarity because it would be a factor that would help the fit for the available time slot.

Even though overall scoring is a bit lower, the results are not very different from the 1st iteration, where the chart shows also a similar trend line.

EuroSTAR Programme Review

In the spreadsheet, I calculated the absolute difference on the average and on the total score.

Sergio's blog

I flagged in red suspicious cases, that would affect my confidence:

absolute average scoring difference >= 0.5
absolute difference in individual scores > 1
absolute total scoring difference > 2

Gladly, only a few reviews appear that I need to have a look at once again. After going over them (i.e. scoring) in this localized 3rd iteration, I seem to be in my confidence interval except for one submission that remains flagged. Why? Well, because in the total score it had 3 points of difference. I read that submission all over and scored it once again. In the end, it was once again in my confidence interval.

sergio review process chart

Remember the “Comments” section? Well, I decided to go over it and look at “would I attend” bullet and compare it with the “overall feeling” criterion, that implictly should have that reflected. I notice that my decision to attend was correlated with the “overall feeling” criterion but it was not a consequence of it.

Conclusions and final thoughts

On the review process

I had quite a few doubts at start, especially this one: am I going to be fair? But also, I had doubts about how I would perform in this task, my biases, etc.

After looking at the results, my first iteration was trustworthy. I scored the submissions a bit lower during the second day, when I performed the 2nd, 3rd and 4th iterations. However, my first iteration was balanced and scores should reflect that.

I don’t assign 5 or 0 easily. I need to be quite impressed or reject something completely, which for me was not the case.

Scoring talks can be relatively fast but if you want to implement a process such as this one or your own, you’ll spend a lot more time. Even if you don’t, if you consider all the points that can affect a single criterion then it will consume more time indeed.

This whole process of revieweing submissions is also a discovery process about how each one of us works and is able of handling tasks. What works for someone, may not work for someone else.

On submitting a talk

Talks touch us in subtle different ways, so we value them differently. It makes sense, from a quality perspective: we assign value accordingly with our own definition of quality.

There are some generic rules that apply though in most cases and questions that you can think of:

Having a clear message, not that long not that short is crucial; if we get lost, we tend do discard it rightaway.
Why should we attend? What can we expect from it?
How will that talk help the attendee?
How does that talk align with conference?
Is it presenting something new, or your own learnings and challenges?

I’ve done a few submissions on the past and I have been unlucky most times. Yes, true. Therefore, I still have much to learn in this matter. I remember when I did a scientific submission for a Usenix conference few years ago, and even though it was a different audience, I had to iterate on the paper a couple of times before it was accepted and I was invited to present. Therefore, as everything, we need to iterate and learn.

Going over this review process, being on the other side of the fence, made even more clear some points mentioned above. By understanding the challenges a reviewer faces, when looking at dozens of submissions, I am a bit more aware of the things I need to have in mind for any submissions I may perform in the future.

It was an interesting thing to do and I’ve learned a bit more on the overall process of submitting (and reviewing) talks for testing conferences. I also appreciate the effort reviewers and program committees have to make, no matter what conference we’re talking about, because this is a process that requires considerable effort if you want to do it right and make it fair.

Note: the 2021 EuroSTAR Conference is taking place 28-30 September this year instead of November and the programme is usually launched at the end of April.

RECEIVE EUROSTAR PROGRAMME NEWS

Sérgio Freire – Xpand IT – Portugal

Sérgio Freire is a solution architect and testing advocate, working closely with many teams worldwide from distinct yet highly demanding sectors (Automotive, Health, and Telco among others) to help them achieve great, high-quality, testable products. By understanding how organizations work, their needs, context and background, processes and quality can be improved, while development and testing can “merge” towards a common goal: provide the best product that stakeholders need.

Sérgio spoke at EuroSTAR 2020 and you can check out his personal blog at www.sergiofreire.com

Why Speak at the EuroSTAR Conference

January 21, 2021 by Suzanne Meade

An experience talk from EuroSTAR 2020 speaker, Jorgen Lund:

Speaking at a conference is a daunting task for most people. There are so many inner voices telling you why you can’t or shouldn’t do it. I want to be that outer voice, telling you why you CAN and why you SHOULD!

My name is Jørgen. I’m a two-time, moderately successful speaker at EuroSTAR. I’m also suffering from some undiagnosed stage fright/anxiety.

Being anxious about doing public presentations is a common phobia – but we all experience it in different ways. I’ll tell you my story, and hopefully you can relate.

In school, I was a really obnoxious child. Sitting in the front row, raising my hand every time the teacher asked a question, and never being shy about pointing out others’ mistakes. I was also the smallest boy in the class, had a funny voice and some front teeth that were eager to see the world, until I had dental correction done in the 8^th grade – making me an easy victim for kids to get back at me. Being good at school stuff was my one thing to hang my hat on.

But answering questions is one matter – you can pop your head up when you have something to say. Attending oral exams – when you’re in front of people who don’t know you, but judge you based on your knowledge and ability to present it, is another. I worried for days ahead. And in the moment, I couldn’t think clearly, my heart was racing, my speech stumbled, and my mouth dried up in seconds. In high school for an oral exam, I got so nervous that I vomited in a trash bin when I had to pick the exam question (fun fact: a friend told me, when I told this story, she had done the same thing – you’re not alone out there!).

I’m 40 now – and while school and high school are a long time ago, those traits are still part of me today. Every public speaking engagement is a new exam. The good news is that it hasn’t stopped me from doing what I wanted to do. When I’ve opened up about my anxiety, I have found nothing but empathy and understanding – and I may have finally started realizing that many of the small mistakes that pile up in my head, are sometimes imperceptible to those listening.

I hope that by sharing my story and offering a few hints about my own EuroSTAR presentation, I can encourage you to quiet your inner critic for a short while and submit your story – big or small!

Why you CAN

First, a few words on psychology that has helped me see the world in a different way. I’m no expert – I only hold a YouTube degree in basic psychology. It helps me to understand my responses to certain situations – which is a good way for me to ‘hack’ my anxiety. I also have the attention span of a TED talk, so instead of recommending some books to collect dust on the shelf, I’ve included a few inspirational videos.

At EuroSTAR 2019, I was introduced to Carol Dweck’s theory on growth mindset vs. fixed mindset and the impact of a growth mindset’s ability for kids to thrive and succeed in school. A central part of a growth mindset is understanding that you’re always on a journey towards something. I think in many ways EuroSTAR embodies a growth mindset. Nobody attends to test if you know your stuff. People come to the conference to learn, connect, share, inspire and be inspired. I’ve met nothing but curious, helpful, friendly and compassionate people – from the delegates to the speakers, and the whole EuroSTAR staff. If you’re selected to speak, you are among friends all the way, who only want to help you succeed.

https://youtu.be/hiiEeMN7vbQ

The second part is about Imposter Syndrome. If you feel like you’re not skilled enough, not eloquent enough, or your ideas are not interesting to others to stand on that stage – there’s an above average chance that you’re doing just fine, and you’re just suffering from this common condition. Don’t let that nagging doubt convince you that you shouldn’t give it a go. Mike Cannon-Brookes, who’s the CEO of a ‘small’ Aussie tech company called Atlassian made a TED talk on the subject here:

https://youtu.be/ZkwqZfvbdFw

Why you SHOULD

Are you passionate about testing or other aspects of your work life? Then I’m sure there is someone out there who wants to hear about your passion!

EuroSTAR is a very diverse crowd. Some attendees have been around since the beginning – others are attending their first conference. Their projects and organizations are diverse as well. What’s trivial to some, will be a real eye-opener to others. Each year, the programme committee put together a program that has something for everybody – which means that what is near to your heart, is likely to appeal to somebody else as well.

Another reason why you should apply is, it’s good for you! You get to practice a lot of useful skills – writing a good abstract, creating a video to present your idea and showcase your speaking style (unless you’re part of the Tik Tok generation who grew up recording yourself) – and if you get selected, putting together a good presentation, and getting some experience under your belt in front of a crowd of wonderful people. And if you don’t get selected, maybe your idea will mature for another year and you’ll be clearer on your message, or you’ll get a new and even better idea that might not have come if you didn’t submit the first one!

It is likely to put you out of your comfort zone – but you’re never in too deep, and you’re always among friends. You don’t grow as a person if you don’t occasionally push the boundaries a bit!

My EuroSTAR Experience

By some miracle, I got selected to speak at EuroSTAR back in 2014. It wasn’t a great performance by any means, and the feedback reflected as much. It’s been nagging at the back of my head for a while. After some years of shying away, I applied again in 2019 where I didn’t get selected. I did attend the conference in 2019 as a delegate and really got hit by the EuroSTAR bug again. I wanted to go back! When the theme for 2020 was announced at the end of the conference, I was all in. Testing in the Wild. My biggest passion, making software that works for our military customers in the wild, was right in line with the theme.

I put all my energy into making a good abstract. I solicited help from some colleagues to zoom in on the key points of my presentation. I’ve shared my ideas with testers in my own department, testers in other departments, and colleagues in other job functions as well. It helped me get a better grasp of what was important, and whether it would be relevant to others as well.

The EuroSTAR team highly recommends submitting a video along with your abstract. This was another one of those mental barriers for me, but I enlisted the help of some colleagues in our marketing department to help me record it. Being comfortable in front of a camera and a crowd of one was a good, first step for me. I also sent the final result to my parents to see – for some reason it’s less scary for me to get up in front of a crowd of strangers than to present it to the people close to me.

I went into the registration system early to learn what information was required. At first, it was a bit overwhelming for me, so taking the time to letting the sections materialize really helped. I maintained an offline copy of the registration formular until I was ready to submit. The system does allow you to save a draft online, but I found it more accessible in a separate document – and easier to get feedback from my colleagues. There’s also some bits in there, like writing a bio and summarizing your speaking experience that takes a little time – don’t let it linger till the last minute.

It was a nerve-racking period for me, trying to put together the best possible presentation, and then enduring the excruciating waiting period until the speakers were announced. I had poured my heart and soul into it, and if it wasn’t gonna happen this year I would have been at a loss of what I could have done better. But in the end, it was all worth it, and getting accepted was a great confidence booster.

Since this post is already getting very long, I’ll spare you the details of how the preparation and presentation itself went – but in the end it turned out alright. I got a very respectable grade for my presentation. As a true imposter, I of course don’t trust any of the nice things people say to me – but anonymous reviews is a small window of truth!

After EuroSTAR, my colleagues in the marketing department were kind enough to put together a small video spot (shameless self/company promo alert). I can tell that I’m nervous in the video, but I feel that I’ve managed to not sound like a complete idiot – which is a major milestone for me! So even if it was a long and stressful journey, I can see the progress I’ve made

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/systematic_walk-a-mile-in-your-users-boots-activity-6737715389016375296-vGZ_

To sum it all up in the immortal words of the British speed metal band Dragonforce:

We all face our fears in the world,

We all hold our place in the (EuroSTAR) universe,

For eternity…

Check out the EuroSTAR Call for Speakers and consider submitting for this year. Submissions close on November 15th.

Author

Jørgen Lund, Systematic A/S, Denmark

After graduating with a master’s degree in Computer Science, I found my way into testing. Over the past 12 years, I have been part of building, testing, training, deploying and supporting software for our users – and I have used all of the knowledge gathered to become a better tester. Today, I work as a Senior Test Manager where I coach other Test Managers and Testers, implement strategic initiatives and train new employees in testing.

EuroSTAR 2020 – A Sketchnoter’s Summary Part II

November 23, 2020 by Ronan Healy

EuroSTAR 2020 – A Sketchnoter’s Summary Part II

This is the second instalment of a two part series on my experience at EuroSTAR 2020. You can read part one here.

Day 3

The second day of the conference began with a keynote by Tomasz Dubikowski. He was sharing some “Real life stories of microservices testing“, including stories about micro mindset, contract testing, macro mindset, and the quality doctor’s toolbox.

Following that was “Surviving and thriving in the automation jungle” by Martin Gijsen. Martin presented the PUPPET Model which consists of the elements: Product, Understanding, People, Processes, Execution and Technology.

It’s all about making the difference for your users. In “Walk a mile in your user’s boots” Jørgen Lund shared how you can achieve great results for that by improving communication, building a learning culture and being passionate and enthusiastic.

The midday keynote was held by Tanja Vos. “GUI testing: From developing scripts to creating AI-enabled agents” was all about scriptless testing of the GUI, testing oracles, reinforcement learning and the tool Testar.

After the lunch break, Andrew Brown continued with “The Peltzman Effect – Why adding more test phases may not reduce bugs“. The Peltzman Effect, also known as risk compensation, is present in the software testing world and other IT areas. Not only this effect, but also other cognitive biases influence our way of working.

One of the hardest things about testing is showing the value of it to others. Ingo Philipp addressed this in his talk “Doing excellent testing is one thing, selling it to management is another“. He explained 8 selling principles:

selling
targeting
consistency
practicing
collaboration
connectivity
differentiation
debunking

In his talk “APIs are loose in the wild; how do we test them” Adam Sandman made clear, that once an API is published, it is out in the world and you can’t just change it as this might affect lots of applications. With versioning, looking at data formats and authentication and mocking, testing of APIs can be made a little easier.

The final talk of the day, and the conference, was the keynote by Jason Arbon about “AI testing in the wild“. He presented us the AI Superpowers and how you can use test.ai to release those.

The EuroSTAR Conference ended with the Award ceremony in which the winners of the best tutorial (Rikard Edgren) and the best paper (Gitte Ottosen) were announced. The highlight of the Awards ceremony was the Testing Excellence Award which was awarded to Maaret Pyhäjärvi this year. Finally the programme chair for 2021 was revealed to be Fran O’Hara.

All in all I can say that the EuroSTAR Conference 2020 was quite a success and that I had a lot of fun being there. I enjoyed the talks, the tutorials and connecting to the testing community all over the world. Well done, EuroSTAR team!

Read EuroSTAR 2020 – A Sketchnoter’s Summary Part I here.

About The Author

Katja Budnikov is a software tester and sketchnoter 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.