Mixing without merging: comb shaping for developers, testers (and everyone)

Complete separation of roles and tasks between testers and developers is so 90’s. But is the swiss army knife (everyone does everything) the modern way, or is there a middle way? How much of other people’s tasks are also my responsibility in a team context? Is having a specialisation bad? What sets of skills will I need for the future?

In this keynote, Alex will explore the way that roles (specifically developer and tester roles, but also other roles in agile teams) have evolved over the past 15 years, and what we can expect of their evolution in the years to come. She will introduce the idea of comb-shaping (as an expansion of T-Shaping or Pi-Shaping) to describe our multi-faceted roles and skills, and will talk about how to actively work towards being a comb-shaped team member and how to build teams that support and benefit from comb shaping.

About the half day Tutorial

Exploratory Testing for Everyone

Exploratory testing is one of the most important tools a project member (including developers!) can have. Any time we „check whether something works”, „test the bug fix” or „perform tests for a new feature”, we can (and should) use exploratory testing techniques.

Even though the technique is so important, it is still misunderstood. It’s thought to be „clicking around” or „unstructured testing”. In this workshop, I’ll demonstrate and explain what exploratory testing is , and participants will experience exploratory testing first hand based on interactive exercises. To round off, I’ll give hints about where, how and when to use it in your process, be it agile or traditional or a mix.