Agile Testing Days 2021 – Part 3

If you haven’t you might be interested to read the previous part of this series as well.

This day impressed me most by the three key notes and discussing the effects of corona and working from home with Anne Colder.

Thursday

The first keynote of the day was Ard Kramer’s “How to nudge your way through agile testing”. Ard presented six ways to nudge people to make a decision in a certain way – probably a way that we want them to go. In a very consistent way he made the distinction between doing something (the nudging) and the ethics of doing it.

It’s so important to aware of these techniques, because then we can more consciously decide whether or not to follow the nudging.

These are the six kinds of nudging he explained:

• Default options
• Commitment through consistency
• Anchoring
• Decoy effect
• Zeigarnik effect
• Activate unconscious behaviour

The name Zeigarnik effect was new to me, although I read about the way it works somewhere on the net. Basically it states that one can remember an activity that has been interrupted (not not completed) more easily at a later point in time.

“The Tester’s Learning Toolkit” was the second keynote, presented by Vera Baum. Supported by incredibly great graphics Vera explained the various levels of experience people may have.

Wow! We are amazed by the incredible keynote of @VeraLittleTree we just had. This talk was about the difference stages of a testers careers and what kind of teaching and learning might help to gain knowledge, and how to apply that to different situation. #agileTD pic.twitter.com/K2qjvJE0mg

— Agile Testing Days (@AgileTD) November 18, 2021

1. Novice
2. Apprentice
3. Crafter
4. Expert

She explained how we can develop from level to level, and why it may not be the best approach to let experts teach novices.

The last keynote of the day – and the conference – was Vernon Richards‘ “What does the ‘Coach’ in ‘Quality Coach’ mean?”. He introduced 6 styles of leadership and how they can be applied in the context of software quality. I loved his way of giving examples his experiences in applying them.

With this highly interesting and super entertaining keynote ended the official program of the Agile Testing Days 2021.

In the evening, I discussed the effects of having to work from home with Anne Colder, leading to another contribution for the ebook “Software People … Work From Home“. Stay tuned. 🙂

This ended a truly brilliant experience of the Agile Testing Days. It was so great to finally meet real testers in real live, discuss software related topics during breakfast, lunch and dinner… as well as in between.

Thank you! Thank you to everyone I spoke to, especially the organisers who ran an incredible conference!