Thursday 19th November, 2009, 19:00
Talk Postscript
James Lyndsay: Anticipating Surprises (or How to Find Problems and Persuade People You've Avoided Them)
We are pleased to announce the November 2009 ACCU London Meeting.
| Cost: | Free. Open to non-members. |
| Where: |
7 City 4 Chiswell Street London EC1Y 4UP |
| Map: | Google maps |
| Register: | Please register using Eventbrite for this event. If you require more details please e-mail Allan Kelly |
About the Talk
The unexpected lurks in every creative process – software development has never been exempt. Great software testers are masters of the unexpected; digging out surprises and emergent behaviours from growing, changing systems. Now, with plodding checks in the untiring hands of machines, testers are fully able to engage in the most knotty problems, but to what end? Learning – the enabler of adaptation and agility – is driven by discovery. Unreliable or slow information harms our ability to learn. Testers have an array of tricks to swiftly trigger and reliably observe surprise behaviours. Disciplined testers will focus on problems that frustrate your customers and comfort your enemies, allowing you to avoid those problems before you release software into their hands. Find out what makes a tester tick, and how best to integrate exploration into your development. Warning: You will be doing some testing - bring a laptop.
About the Speaker
James is a software test strategist. He started testing since 1986, set up Workroom Productions in 1994, and has worked independently ever since. As a consultant, he's worked in a variety of businesses and project styles; from retail to telecommunications, from rapidly-evolving internet start-ups to more traditional large-scale enterprise. He's worked to technical requirements for companies that make and sell software, to commercial requirements for companies that buy and use software, and to unexpected requirements everywhere. He's been in and out of agile (and Agile) teams since 2002. James is a regular speaker and occasional teacher, runs LEWT (the London Exploratory Workshop in Testing) and has won prizes for his papers.