thoughts from the test eye

EuroSTAR 2010 took place during the coldest Copenhagen November in 140 years.
Being a program committee member it was a bit different, but not a lot; I met a lot of interesting people, spent too little time in the test lab, and listened to thought-worthy presentations (+ 11 Danish Alliance Lightning Talks.)

The theme was “Sharing the Passion”, and during the presentations there was also a lot of mentioning of collaboration, trust, that testing is difficult, and that people are most important.
I was at an excellent full day tutorial with energetic Rob Sabourin, that is so right in his notions of multiple information sources and diverse test ideas that are generated all the time, but specified in more detail ALAP – as late as possible.
I saw parts of Michael Bolton’s Test Framing tutorial, that had a lot of audience involvement and resulted in a lot of notes put on the walls – beautiful.

I will not do any summary of sessions, but I have some quotes you might like:
“when you make a mistake, think: that was exactly what I needed to know” (Bolton)
“I’m teaching them to write the requirements in Latin, to remove all ambiguity” (Sabourin)
“I wouldn’t put my child in the respirator unless it has been tested exploratory” (Rydberg)
How do you follow up “Right from Me”? -“We don’t. We trust people. We need leaders that trust people” (Nordström)
“MTBS – Managing Testing Based-on Sessions” (Feilberg, opposite-method in order to make it easy to sell SBTM to managers)
Weekend Testing: “freedom for the testers!” (Ajay)
“don’t assume your view is the only view” (Thomas)
How can testers help developers go faster? (inferred from Harty)
“I have nothing against CMM. It just doesn’t work.” (Gerrard)
“Use examples, metaphors and visualizations to improve effectiveness and efficiency in testing” (Zimmerer)
“the industry is broken” (Patti)
“always have two 30-seconds ‘commercials’ in your back pocket” (Galen)
“choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life” (Confucius)