On Tuesday I was lucky enough to get tickets for one of my colleagues and I to go to the Leeds Testing Atelier. I’ve never been to one of these before but wow, the guys had worked extremely hard and created an amazing day!
There were two tracks (hipsters and nerds) throughout the day and it was action packed with different talks, topics, and workshops.
Before we got going however Clem led a group of us in a Lean Coffee session. I’ve never done one before (most likely because of my intense dislike of coffee!) but it’s definitely an idea I’ll be be trying out in team meetings at work!
I attended a couple of talks in the morning. The first was on Unit Testing best practices which I enjoyed, I got the chance to as a question on custom assertions which test multiple things (something I’ve been debating in my own head for a while). The answer by the way was “it’s ok, as long as your test continues to only test one thing” – a view I agree with!
Next up we’re a couple of short talks, one one using agile techniques to plan family life and other on website performance profiling. Both interesting and certainly talking points!
After a break Alex Carter spoke to us about the roles QAs can play in building the three ways of DevOps.
The three ways (in case you’ve not come across them are)
- Systems thinking
- Amplify feedback
- Continuous experimentation and improvement
It turns out that a QA is key in making this work. They’re the quality gatekeepers, they challenge processes to build quality in at all stages and act as the team’s safety net when risky changes are made. If you’ve never run through this in your head (or even better your team) then I highly recommend you do!
Lunch was pizza, in fact huge amounts of pizza! Then we headed upstairs for some QA based fun and games (some seriously difficult interviewing and spot the differences).
My final session of the day was a panel session on continuous delivery. The guys answered questions on everything from getting started to business challenges. There was a chance to ask questions at the end.
In summary the Leeds Testing Atelier was great. It was informal, informative, and had a great atmosphere with people willing to share experiences and ask questions. I’d like to thank the sponsors and organisers for all their hard work. If you’ve not been to one of these before then I’d highly recommend going to 2018 – I know I will be!
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