We have left behind very first UKSTAR 2017 which organized by EuroSTAR at London.

There were many QA Specialists, Test Automation Specialists, QA Team Leaders and Developers from different industries.

We had taken a lot of takeaways from workshops, keynotes, conversation tracks and even also coffee breaks.

The purpose of writing this blogpost is to remember my takeaways and share my observations with other people.

I wrote my observations track-by-track. Unfortunately, there were parallel sections on the conference, hence i could only write which tracks that i attended. You know, maybe i needed Hermione’s time turner :) .

via GIPHY

DAY 1

Test Automation Patterns: Management -Dorothy Graham, Seretta Gamba

In this workshop , we learned how to diagnose the test automation issues. Test automations issues and patterns were separated in 4 main branch; execution, design, process, management . After the diagnostic, we learned to solve issues with test automation patterns.

We learned to overcome issues with psychological techniques besides technical solutions. Seretta and Dorothy were performed excellent and enjoyable play for show us psychological technics :)

You can get more information from testautomationpatterns.org .

Mob Testing - Maaret Pyhäjärvi & Llewellyn Falco

I had read a few things about Mob Testing from Maaret’s blogposts. It was pleasure for me to listen Maaret and Llewellyn. They performed nice presentation to us.

They talked about application of Mob Testing sessions and how make affective mob testing sessions. We took lessons from their stories from their mob testing experiences.

Mob testing with @maaretp and @LlewellynFalco @UKSTARconf pic.twitter.com/p8oCrJjaGk

— Can Yıldırım (@cyildirim_) 27 Şubat 2017

These are my notes from presentation:

• Apply mob testing like test with your friends
• Interesting bugs and UX issues may came to light because of driver and navigator different people.
• To changing of navigator and driver may find out different bugs and sights.

I didn’t write about details of Mob Testing. But you can find all details at Mob Programming Guidebook by Maaret Pyhäjärvi and Llewellyn Falco.

Gatling – Tales from a Journey - Siegfried Goeschl

Siegfried spoke about open-source Performance Testing Tool : Gatling. He mentioned their story to introduce Gatling. And also, we learned many technical details about the set up, configuration and integration at Gatling.

As a performance testing tool Gatling written in Scala, and their scripts should write in Scala. You can find documents in gatling.io. I am going to give a try to Gatling after that presentation :).

Sigfried had release a project named as Gatling Blueprint Project , i recommend to you have a look it.

Monitoring System Performance - Mirjana Kolarov

In this section Mirjana told us that how they monitor their system performance and their good and bad experiences. Also we learned how a tester approaches to graphics at monitoring tools in different cases.

Forecast: Cloudy with Testable Security – Paco Hope, Amazon Web Services, UK

Thing have changed after systems move to cloud. Though most of the security issues are resolved, there are still problems at the application layer. Paco told us how can we handle security problems at applications layer.

Assure that your software doesn’t have well-known vulnerabilities

Featured tools on keynote:

• A utility for arming (creating) many bees (micro EC2 instances) to attack (load test) targets (web applications).| https://github.com/newsapps/beeswithmachineguns
• Security auditing tool for AWS environments | https://github.com/nccgroup/Scout2

DAY 2

Fearless Development Kristian Karl, Spotify, Sweden

“Fearless Development” was thing which i had just heard. Fearless development needs fearless teams.

Fearless teams :

• do not know release dates are (assertive !)
• have plenty of automated test and thrust them.
• agile,
• low technical debt,
• dare to innovate and fail

Kristian told us how we get that speed and reliability for fearless teams and fearless development by implication.

So we need these to get fearless:

• TDD - Drives good design, and generates lost and lots of unit tests,
• Lots of integration test,
• Failing tests automatically breaks build,
• guard the team from themselves and other teams
• create traceability

Ways of working depends on consensus and agreement in your team.

“In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn” - Experiences from  the Software Testing Clinic - Dan Ashby & Hannah Mason

Dan and Hannah told us about software test clinic , how testers can improve themselves. We got that communities play important role in career of the testers.

Also we listened interesting story from Hannah which her transformation nurse to tester. That was a great story.

Agile Testing - Adding Value to Agile Teams - Amela Teftedarija & Adisa Sinanovic

It was pretty enjoyable presentation. That presentation pushed us to think our team dynamics.

They mentioned about challenges : Continuous testing, communication, time limitation, manual testing, automation and distributed teams.

We got tips that how we act against to these challenges from Adisa and Amela. These are a few of  them:

• be creative,
• get new skills
• focus big pictıre : focus on costumer,
• stop saying “i wish” say “i  will”

Book Recommendation : Agile Testing by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory

 Conversation : Automation and People -  Isabel Evans & Alan Richardson

Isabel and Alan handled the trending conversation. So their session was so crowded. Here is a few view from conversation :

• A Developer : Tester should more technical otherwise we can lie much to you.
• Tester  should reach the logs
• It depends on what tester are testing.
• Instead of go into the detail and disappear in the details, tester should think customer and business.
• My opinion : It depends on tester type. I believe that tester has types. Some tester has strong business cognition, some tester has sensitive vision on UX or UI, other one catches technical details.

Moving into Software Management Gave Me a Different View of Testing - Stephen Janaway

It was cheerful presentation. Stephen has started Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career path example to tell his career path :)

He talked about how should we act to improve ourselves and understand quality.

Testing is changing, be the one who adapts.

Everyone is responsible from the quality.

The Future of Tech - James Whittaker, Microsoft

I think it was the most enthusiastic presentation. We got a lot of take aways about testing. James expanded our horizons at the end of the conferences.

He gave inspiration about the future. So that thinking push us to think , how is going to be testing in future.  Part of the technology eras  influenced us in terms of changing. It is look like new era is going to be IoT,  Big Data and VR eras.

If you won’t to predict , you will may be victim of the technology.

It was outstanding conference. We listened great speakers, met great people. Thanks for everyone especially UKSTAR 2017 Team.