Hairballistics: An #AU4H and #WeekendTesting Introspection

We're back again at Agile Up 4 Here, and we were furiously getting things ready for presentation at what would be Weekend Testing Americas session #28. For those who didn't see my post yesterday, Agile Up 4 Here (#AU4H) is a code retreat that goes for one week. Elisabeth Hendrickson hosts it in her Agilistry Studio in Pleasanton, CA, and participants come from all over (Elisabeth and I being the most local; the other participants this time around are from the midwest, the East coast, Germany and Sweden).

The week started with a clean slate, no code and no idea what they would create. As the week progressed, the team decided to make a simple JavaScript based game called "Hairballistics". Imagine shooting a cannon, but in this case, the cannon is a cat and the ballistic in questions is a (wait for it...) hairball!

Our app, in real time.

That's what we have been up to during the week, and I got in on the action on Wednesday, going in and exploring the deployed application and features as they can available. What's more, we had a chance to work as a group and focus on the issues as a group and work them in real time up on the screen.

...and you thought *your* monitor was big!

there's been a mild sense of urgency today, since we want to make sure that we get as much wrapped up, committed and tested internally as possible before our deadline of 2:00 PM, since that's when the Weekend testing session will begin. What's going to be interesting about the "weekday" Weekend Testing session is that I'll be doing it up on the projector with the full development team looking, reacting, learning and making changes based on feedback. I think this is a first for Weekend Testing, in that an entire development team will be watching and reacting/learning in real time from  a weekend testing session (it's unique for Weekend Testing Americas, in any event).

2:00 PM came around and even with the short notice, we had about 12 participants join us and test the Hairballistics game. We had a fun session, with a lot of confusion, frustration, discovery, understanding, and feedback (lots of feedback) based on what was in the game at the time of delivery. We were able to cycle through and fix a number of the issues in real time and push two releases during the testing session. We also had a discussion at the end about the variety of testing possibilities that were available to the testers, even with a relatively simple game. We shared the github code base with the testers, and some availed themselves to the opportunity of checking out the code and seeing if they could manipulate the environment to better test certain sections.

The board below shows the issues that are/were in play during the testing session. Cards with pink tags on them are those that were either found by Weekend Testing participants or confirmed by them.

The working board. Pink tags denote issues Weekend Testing discovered or confirmed areas.

This was an interesting experience to do a Weekend Testing session with a full development team in earshot of everything, as well as having the product owner actively participating during the session. It gave me a chance to see better into the application under development, and to also help facilitate and understand the challenges the testers were facing as they worked through the product and tested various areas.

Your host for today.

A Little View Into "Agile Up 4 Here"

Today and tomorrow i will be getting the chance to do something really cool. I get to join an Agile team for a brief part of a code retreat and an active master's session on working with agile teams, Agile testing, and rapid software development.

Elisabeth Hendrickson of Quality Tree Software and Agilistry Studios has a group of people come together each year and participate in a code retreat called "Agile Up X Here" (as you might guess, the first one was called "Agile Up 2 Here" and this is the third iteration of this retreat. We have a number of cool people participating in this event, ranging from product owners, UX designers, programmers, and yes, in my case, dedicated testers.

One team, two tables and just a few days.

Our focus is to create from scratch a simple web game using HTML 5 and JavaScript. We've had a focus of starting from nothing and creating stories, defining acceptance criteria, doing test driven development, pulling stories from the board and working on them, and yes, testing! Today has been interesting in that I've spend the better part of the day directly pairing with one of the developers in a "driver/navigator" capacity. While he wrote code, I had the chance to consider areas we should test, as well as performing exploratory tests on other modules as they are delivered. We also expressed a profound propensity for spontaneous silliness, which made the entire experience a great deal of fun.

Me and Alex Bepple automating the deployment of the app.

For those who want to get in on the fun with us tomorrow, we will be holding a weekday edition of weekend Testing. It will be held tomorrow (Thursday, May 24, 2012) at 2:00 PM Pacific. For this session, we have a simple mission and charter to share: "Be prepared to share your approach to testing what may appear to be a very simple application. Simple does not mean little needs to be done. Single testers, pairs and teams can present their charters, what areas they decided to test, and what they saw along the way. If you are interested in participating, please contact "weekendtestersamericas" on Skype and tell me you would like to join us tomorrow.

My thanks to  Matt Barcomb, Kevin Baribeau, Alex Bepple, Jaime Camphorst, Elisabeth Hendrickson, Dave Liebreich, Rickard Lindberg, and Zee Spencer for participating in this great event. I'm hoping the Weekend Testing session will prove fruitful and successful, and  I look forward to having more opportunities to participate in events like this.