Monday, June 30, 2014

Weekend Testing Americas is Looking to "Go Deep" This Saturday

Yes, it's been quiet here for quite awhile. Too quiet, and I needed to break the silence. What better way than with an announcement of a Weekend Testing Americas session, you say? I agree wholeheartedly!

With that, I would like to cordially invite each and every one of you reading this to come and join us this Saturday, July 5, 2014.

Weekend Testing Americas #52 - Going Deep with "Deep Testing"
Date: Saturday, July 5, 2014
Time: 09:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time
Facilitator: Michael Larsen


So what does "deep testing" mean? well, if I told you all that now, it wouldn't make much sense to hold the session now, would it? Still, I can't just leave it at that. If that's all I was going to do, I'd just as well have you look at the Weekend Testing site announcement and be done with it.


Justin Rohrman and I were discussing what would make for a good session for July, and he suggested the idea of "deep testing", and in the process, he suggested that we consider a few questions:


What if, instead of just having an unfocused bug hunt, we as a group decided to take a look at a specific feature (or two or three depending on the size of the group) and do what we could to really drill down as far as we could with that particular feature. Heck, why not just dig into a single screen and see what we could find? We have an exercise in the AST BBST Test Design class that does exactly this, only it takes it to the component level (we're talking one button, one dial, one element, period). we're not looking to be that restrictive, but it's an interesting way of looking at a problem (well, we thought so, in any event).


As part of the session, we are going to focus on some of these ideas (there may be lots more, but expect us to, for sure, talk about these:

- how do we know what we are doing is deep testing?

- what do we do differently (thought process, approach, techniques, etc.)?

- how do we actually perform deep testing (hint: staring at a feature longer doesn't make it "deep")?

- how do we know when enough is enough?

If this sounds like an interesting use of part of your Saturday, then please, come join us July 5, 2014. We will be starting at 9:00 a.m. Pacific time for this session, and it will run until 11:00 a.m. Pacific.


For those who have done this before, you already know the procedure. For those who have not, please add "weekendterstersamericas" to your Skype ID list and send us a contact request. More specifically, tell us via Skype that you would like to participate in this upcoming session. We will build a preliminary list from those who send us those requests.


On Saturday, at least 15 minutes before the session starts, please be on Skype and ready to join the session (send us a message to say you're ready; it makes it that much easier to build the session) and we will take it from there.

Here's hoping to see you Saturday.