Almost LIVE! From Potsdam - Agile Testing Days 2014 Day 0

Monday, 10 November in Potsdam Germany saw a day of tutorials and the first ever Software Testing World Cup Finals!

Matt Heusser asked me to assist him with his Lean Software Testing tutorial - which he was offering as a 1/2 day format for the first time (drinking from a fire hose ain't in it.)  So, we had a small group - which probably made it possible to get through the material we had lined up - more than a handful an it would have been impossible.

 So, we ran a series of exercises and retrospectives.  We threw people in with little guidance - and they came away impressing me - I suspect Matt was equally impressed (you'd need to ask him!)  After 3 1/2 extremely intense hours, lunch break came.


I ended up grabbing an ironing board, ironing ALL my shirts, slacks, etc, (as I could not on Sunday, the day I arrived) then got downstairs to "moderate" the Software Testing World Cup (STWC) finals contest by the designated 2:00 PM time.  The contest started later than that, but an hour of prep, level checks and the like made it go very, very quickly. 

I had the chance, with my "broadcasting partner" Kira, to meet all the teams and chat with them briefly.  My intention was to wish them luck and generally be supportive - and give us an idea of the make up of the teams before we began the contest.

In short, we did a live stream of the contest with Kira and I doing commentary.  (One friend said it was a bit like listening to someone calling a football match with no actual football being played on the screen!)  It was a lot of work - and a lot of fun.  We had an excellent time.

Frankly, Kira asked some really good questions - they were pretty basic and showed she was not in software at all - but it gave me the chance to talk about what we could see the testers actually doing in the room - Mind maps, collaboration plans, time blocking - pretty basic stuff for testers used to Session Based Test Management (SBTM) or Exploratory Testing in general.  But, it gave me the chance to talk to some common misconceptions about software and testing. 

I'm not quite sure how to sum up the afternoon and evening.  When the dust settled - I tried to talk with each team for a few minutes - with the cameras off.  They all did extremely well in a fairly stressful situation and showed they were capable of far more than the 3 hours allotted for testing the software under test and reporting the results of those tests. 

I was impressed by the teams' behavior - and extremely impressed  by how the teams all mingled after the contest ended.  Loads of talking and laughing and having a drink together - Friendly competition at its best.

The winners of the African contest, OpenBox from South Africa, brought around bracelets for each of their competitors - one for each team member.  Others shared props and toys and all shared a laugh.

I've been told the livestream was recorded, I really hope it was.  I've gotten several tweets to the effect of "That was a brilliant answer!"  Except I have no idea what most of the questions were and not certain what I said - for the most part.