What to Expect When You are ..

by | Syndicated

..at Eurostar!


I am aware that many of us are attending EuroStar. And I am also aware that many of us have either spent or will be spending a significant amount of time & money visiting Sweden for attending one of the best testing conferences in the world. Some of us are luckier than others and have got sponsorship from their employers; some are not as lucky. However, it does not matter whether one has got sponsorship or not. What matters most for attending any conference (EuroStar included) is about the two aspects which I have listed below:


1. Lot of effort, time and money is being invested
2. There should be a return on investment (learning, positive experience, networking etc.).

When I submitted my proposal for EuroStar, I seriously considered the above two points from my own perspective. I thought whether it will be worthwhile visiting Sweden in winters; then I thought whether it will add value to me personally or not; and then I thought whether my track session will be able to provide the value to people who are coming from all over the world and spending a significant amount of time and money. So I decided to write a short blog post to tell you what you can expect from my track session at EuroStar2013.

I have worked on many highly innovative projects. Some of them are or have been even mission & life critical projects. I have also met people who work on very technical projects involving cutting edge technology. I have a friend Munish who develops applications using motion sensing hardware like Microsoft Kinect and Asus Xtion which involves testing natural user interface (expect another blog post on this topic too. You can checkout www.gestureresearch.com for his work).

Another person who I met few months ago, led the testing team on a satellite program for the European Space Agency. Much of her work was with software, communication and control between the satellites/rockets and the ground. 

Personally, I am currently working on a large program which is to provide real-time connectivity to airplanes with the ground. This is a very innovative program. Earlier I used to be a Program Test Manager at my previous job where one of the applications that we tested was used by pharmacists for dispensing medicines at pharmacies in UK. Now no one would like to be prescribed wrong dose of medicine, isn’t it?

I learn from everything I interact with. I have learned a lot from my personal experiences and also from my interactions with people like the ones who I mentioned above.  Some of the interactions might not be positive, but those are still lessons. And this is what I am going to talk about during my session at EuroStar2013: learning from experience and observation!

You can expect this:

1. Learn how to develop Testing strategies for extra-large or mega projects
2. Learn how to hire right people for such projects
3. Learn about stakeholder management: why is it important and what & how information should be shared with them.
4. What Test Reporting should include
5. How to deal with multiple 3rd parties
6. Learn about biases, fallacies and paradoxes
7. I will also share what I have learned from working across multiple geographies and how culture affects testing

I am sure you will love to see an innovative presentation through which you can take away a lot of learning back home.