TLDR
Yesterday I participated in webinar Driving While Driven: The Way of the Skilled Tester. Webinar moderator was Keith Klain, CEO of Doran Jones and Executive Vice President of Association of Software testing. Webinar author is James Bach, Creator of Rapid Software Testing . In this post I will write about webinar technical experience and my takeaways and a-ha moments.
We all have got opportunity to participate in some webinar. Some of those webinars offer great free educational content, but we fail to participate from various reasons. As Driving While Drive schedule suited me (Friday 8 PM), and I would get a chance to listen Keith and James in live session, I committed to participate in this webinar.
Technical setup was easy, by clicking on webinar link I was redirected to download GoToMeeting software, and I was ready in less than a minute.
Keith started with introduction and then James took the floor. Quality of audio was very good. We could ask questions in chat box which would be answered in the end of webinar. Listening to James was real pleasure. Excellent tester must have excellent speaking skills. My mind did not drifted away for a second, because every sentence is a brain teaser. Also important note, while James was speaking, Keith interrupted him with follow up questions. James easily passed speaking floor to Keith, and easily continued where he was interrupted.
This is very important skill when you need to deliver information to engaged audience. In my practice, other speaker usually gets mad when I interrupt them with follow up questions.
James provided four documents:
1. Build analyst
2. Exploratory testing dynamics
3. Rapid software testing vs factory school
4. Testing and checking
This webinar goal is to explain what is School of context driven testing. James is one of the authors of that school.
Here are my notes:
follow process – not, you are creating it
procedures – yes
common sense – knowledge everybody knows
cdt – question what people think is true
cdt is not common sense – against education system (sit down and shut up)
fast food – growing potato – can advise you but can not do it for you
child steering straight the road – is he driving, yes at that particular time and situation, empty road
why practices work at some time, do I need to change them – CDT
I am context aware – not cdt
I am not cdt – only one way to do something
context imperial – insertion, a little bit is ok
when I want to work only with system thinkers
cdt – respect context and problem solution
universe claims that this is best practice, for me this is best practice
Am I cdt: do you work hard to create your skills?
compare cdt with others on problem example
other: concrete procedure in document, spec, contract
cdt: what is patent? Test all definitions. Decision by judge based on those test reports.
formalization – limitation
create procedure – my question
father (client) yell at me
is there something that does not have value for anybody? (system thinker question)
cdt heuristics or how to become cdt tester:
1. learn how to design experiments
At that point webinar lost audio. There will be scheduled another session to finish qa with James.
My 5 cents:
Can we apply context driven on other crafts, e.g. cooking?
If CDT also creates procedures, what we should do with those procedures when we are done with the project?
Conclusion
I recommend you this webinar.
