Top 10 Tips for Test Managers from STP Online Summit

I had the pleasure of hosting the another Online Summit, delivered by Software Test Professionals: Test Management: Bridging the Gap Between Tests and Stakeholders.  The online summit format consists of 3 sessions each for 3 consecutive days.  The sessions for this summit were:

• Invigorating Your Test Team – Anne-Marie Charrett
• Talking to Triangles – Dawn Haynes
• Mentoring Testers: Leading from the Inside Out – Brian Osman
• Getting Your Testing MBA – Catherine Powell
• Whiteboard Test Team Management – Paul Holland
• Test Management for COTS Applications – Virginia Reynolds
• Motivating and Managing Distributed Testers – Karen Johnson
• The “Testing Bubble”:  Motivating, Insulating, and Protecting Tester – Ben Yaroch
• Top Tips from the Summit – Scott Barber
• Speaker Panel – Scott Barber, Karen Johnson & Ben Yaroch

One of my duties as host was to try to summarize the most valuable nuggets of information from across all of the presentations into a "top tips" list.  This is what I came up with:

Scott's Top 10 Tips for Test Managers from:

Desperately Seeking "Performance Unit Testing" Examples

I've been talking about what I term "Performance Unit Testing" in classes and training courses for a long time. I've been teaching (more inspiring with hints toward implementation) client development teams about it for almost as long. Problem is, all I've got is stories that I can't attribute (NDAs and such) and that simply doesn't cut it when trying to make a point to someone who doesn't (or doesn't want to) get it.

So I'm looking for attributable samples, examples, stories, and/or case studies related to "Performance Unit Testing" that I can use (clearly, with attribution) in talks, training classes, maybe even blogs & articles. If you have something, please email me.

If you're not sure if you've got what I'm looking for, lemme share some desired attributes of what I'm looking for:

Agile Sprint Sanctity Valued at Over $13M?!?

During STPCon last week (which, BTW, was fabulous, but more on that in another post, 'cause I've got to get this off my chest) I was a panelist for The Hard Stuff: Questions About Agile. During the course of the discussion, someone asked a question that I heard as the following:

"... but what should I do about our sprints getting messed up when [executive] comes in and tells us to stop what we're doing and add [feature X] before the end of the following week so s/he can finalize the $13 Million deal with [new client Y, but only if the feature X is implemented by then]..."

Let's Test 2012

The first (as far as anyone I know is aware) Context-Driven conference in Europe is quickly approaching. On May 7-9, 2012 in Stockholm, Sweden, Let's Test "A European conference on context-driven testing - for testers, by testers" will take place.

This is a CAST inspired conference, meaning that it focuses on in-depth exploration of topics, includes facilitated discussion as part of every talk (i.e. speakers don't get to "run out of time" as soon as they hear that "hard question") and conferring only increases between and after sessions. It's a fabulous format! If you haven't experienced it, and you are passionate about testing, you really want to -- it will change your perspective on conferences forever.

I am proud to say that I will not only be attending Let's Test 2012, but that I am honored to be on the program with some first-run content that I'm very excited about:

A Full Day Tutorial: Context Appropriate Performance Testing, from Simple to Rocket Science
A Keynote: Testing Missions in Context From Checking to Assessment