So far this year, the AST Grants Committee has approved three grants. The grants so far cover a peer conference, an unconference, and a meetup, further proving AST grants are not constrained to a particular type of event.
For more information on one of these events, the Joburg Software Testers Meetup, we turn to an experience report from Louise Perold, Cindy Carless and Oz Chihwayi:
On 5th April 2016, at Multichoice City in Johannesburg South Africa, a bunch of super testers got together for a presentation by Rahul Sharma entitled – “Life in Software Testing: Before and After Agile“.
Rahul had spent 2 years programming and 3 years testing in waterfall environments and then had 4 years in an agile context. He shared his experiences around how he felt his role change by contrasting various aspects.
Rahul took us through his experiences, telling us stories to illustrate differences in
- the approach to testing
- the expectations of the team from testers
- the relationship with business
- the moment of involvement
- the communication methods
- the hierarchy
- the measurements
Rahul described an agile context where there was a very different appreciation of his value. There were continuous feedback loops, the team took responsibility instead of blaming testing when something went wrong. Titles such as Tester, Test Analyst, Senior Test Analyst, Test lead were no longer important. Measuring numbers of test cases run and numbers of bugs found were no longer a measure for team success. In his agile context, there was time given to retrospect and improve and he felt that he was an important member of the team.
We really enjoyed listening to Rahul’s experiences and through the kind sponsorship of AST we were able to provide pizzas and beer and have some good discussions and mingling both before and after the talk.
The Joburg Software Testers meetup has been going for a couple of years and our goal is to build a community for people passionate about testing. We would like to encourage exchange of ideas, networking, and passion for testing! We would like to sincerely thank the AST for their support!
Another event that benefited from an AST grant this year was the MEWT5 (Midlands Exploratory Workshop on Testing) peer conference. On April 9th, 14 attendees met to discuss a variety of topics. Multiple attendees, as well as the organizers, posted experience reports:
MEWT Blog
The Test Doctor Blog
QAHiccupps Blog
Mad Hat Tester Blog
From Checking to Testing Blog
In other news, the AST Grants Committee is excited to announced we have moved the grant request process from email to a Google Form. The form, as well as more information on the program and how it works, is available on the AST Grants Committee page.
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