My Experience at WeTest Auckland 2

by | Syndicated

So I just went to the 2nd WeTest Auckland Meetup at the Assurity office. I really enjoyed it. Let’s break it down shall we?

What is this WeTest Auckland you speak of?

The idea stemmed from the fact that there’s a similar Meetup in Wellington called WeTest. It starts off with a 15min(ish) experience report then a facilitated discussion.

Facilitated discussion you say? Please elaborate

Yes. There are 5 coloured cards we used to enable discussion to be facilitated. For example: When someone wanted to put in their 2 cents to the current thread of discussion, you hold a specific coloured card. But when you wanted to start a new thread of discussion, you hold a different coloured card.

There’s even a coloured card for you to hold up when you agree with the person who’s talking. It’s almost like the like button on Facebook, or finger snapping at Poetry slams.

 

What did you learn from the Experience Report about Exploratory Testing?

3 key things:

  1. Exploratory testing is a great way to make use of little time
  2. There are a number of useful heuristics can be utilised to do exploratory testing. The ones specifically mentioned in this Experience Report were Test Strategy Model and (something like) A/B testing. (sorry I don’t remember the exact name but I remember the example given was switching between 2 ‘nodes’ like learning about a system then actively testing it)
  3. It helps keep testing interesting

And what about the dice game?

The dice game is a fun, yet potentially frustrating game – depending on how creative the person coming up with the rule is.

Here’s a basic overview of the Dice Game

  • You play in small groups.
  • Someone comes up with a rule then rolls 5 dice
  • The others in the group come up with a guess
  • The ‘rulemaker’ says his answer.
  • Repeat.

Above are the rules. But here’s where it get interesting: you can break any rule.

Look here to see what you learn from the dice game

Any other cool things you learned?

Yes. Two.

  1. I heard someone uses a camera (like the one you have in a car), which is placed over his shoulder when he tests so he can see exactly what he did (e.g. what did he press on the keyboard, order of screens) so he can replicate a defect.
  2. Some people don’t like the term ‘exploratory testing’ as it can be viewed as ad-hoc testing and not as a testing approach in its own right. To counter this, there are (alternative) ways of referring to exploratory testing by still describing what it achieves but making it an easier pill to swallow for others.