We all seen this picture:

… and we all know this is the truth and cruel reality. Or is it?

I’ve heard about companies that are concentrating on fixing bugs really fast when they are discovered by the end user, instead of trying to find them before production. How on earth could that save time and money?

Perhaps there are some products/system that are really easy to release. Then it might be possible. But what about the customer satisfaction? If I was the user and I found a lot of really serious bugs in my product I would be really angry, even if I got a fix just a couple of days later.

The company is relying on the end users to report the bugs and updating to a new version.

But are there any other better to test a product/system than the end users!?! They know what is really important and what is not. But still… how do you manage to keep the end users happy? I can only think of one situation where end users do the job and are still happy, and that is the game industry where there often are a lot of end users doing test on beta versions.

Is this a new trend? Will all testers be out of work? No, I don’t think so. There are a couple of products that this never will work on. For example, pacemaker. You can’t rely on the end user to report any bugs. They’ll never get the chance!

For several months we had been looking forward to visiting EuroSTAR and finally the day had come. This year the conference had a perfect theme “Sharing the passion”. That is what ALL conferences should be about. Colleagues meeting to share and inspire.

Last year I did the rookie mistake and attended as many presentations as I possibly could and my brain felt as a battered piñata. This year we chose a more relaxed approach. We spent most of the time hanging around the expo talking to other conference visitors. Test people have a tendency to be most pleasant and eager to discuss any subject. Doing this it was easy to see the passion shining in the eyes of everyone.

There were also something very soft and cozy about the conference. Several presentations felt easy and relaxed and most speakers managed to use humor to give testing examples.

All this passion and coziness aside, the presentations were educational and a good source for inspiration.

While browsing the program I got my eyes on a tutorial about passion for test and stress. As I currently experience a lot of stress at work I felt this could be interesting. But as I continued to read about the other tutorials, they all sounded exiting so perhaps I did not have the time to… oh, that is exactly why I should attend it. And so I did and I was both very pleased and a bit disappointed. The relaxation exercises were not as easy as you would think. It was hard to think about nothing but your breathing. The disappointing part was that the connection to testing was rather weak.

Though I might be biased, I must say that I was impressed by Linda Hoff’s presentation “Help! I’m stuck in a scrum project”. What made this presentation stand out was the level of conclusions. I have attended several scrum presentations that have addressed scrum on a high and abstract level. This time it addressed practical problems that many could relate to. So I was not surprised when people came up to us (her) and wanted to discuss the subject further for the rest of the conference.

So my conclusion is that there are a lot of passion driving the test industry forward and the will to share and gain knowledge is everywhere.

Oh, and testers rock!

It is official, the supertesters love the EuroSTAR audience. For the second year in row we are treated with standing ovations. What can top that?

The Supertester is currently at EuroStar 2010 in Copenhagen.

The quote of today:

“Testig is lika a buffet, if you get the chance you will try all”
– Ruud Teunissen

Though, not too good for the figure! 😉
More posts from EuroStar will come. Stay tuned!

On the 14-15th of October we had the pleasure to visit SAST 15 year anniversary in Stockholm, Sweden. It was two days of fun and interesting presentations. As always it is difficult to decide what presentations to attend as they all sound highly interesting. Out of those we managed to visit we picked up at least some new point of interest from almost all presentations.

From Ann Flismark and Michael Albrecht’s presentation I became really inspired by the idea of an in-session-lamp. Most days I feel that I get interrupted in my work and wish I had more continuous test-time. Using an in-session-lamp might not save me from interruptions but might reduce them.

Pablo Garcia’s presentation was much amusing. Anything can be proved using statistics. It was really entertaining how he twisted the numbers back and forth. Perhaps project management should hear it too, though they might not appreciate it.

Henrik Anderssons presentation was perhaps nothing new but it is always good hear it once in a while. Though I cannot help feeling that is was a bit “God bless America”. I have visited some presentations by non Swedish speakers who claim that Sweden has come a far way within testing. Then there ought to be at least some local alternative to American conferences, courses and speakers that are good enough. No?

During Torbjör Rybers entertaining presentation I found the side containing the test report most interesting. Later I have received a copy from Torbjörn and are currently using it as a test report at the end of each Scrum sprint. It has been received well among the developers. Thank you Torbjörn!

Jagannath Tammeleht’s presentation on Kanban was something I had looked forward to. Kanban seems to be a highly interesting approach. I hope I will get the opportunity to try it for real some day. This presentation was on a perfect level.

But the conference was not all presentations. We much enjoyed the people, expo and evening party. Testers know how to party!

And of course we enjoyed doing our own “presentation” The Supertester. Thanks everyone for the wonderful feedback!

Last but not least, a huge admiration for the hard working SAST-people pulling this of. Great work!

Welcome to The Supertester.com !

As a result of all the wonderful feedback we have received in connection to our presentation, The Supertester – A slightly true story, we have decided to take the next step. And what would be better than a blog/web site of our own 🙂

We hope you will enjoy

Our ambition is to post something new on regular basis but perhaps not everyday! The subjects will be diverse and hopefully interesting. We urge you to comment and hopefully we will se some constructive discussions. Maybe you can help us find answers to our many questions.