With Mob testing towards productivity and fun
Session type: 120 min tutorial
Session level: Beginner
After Mob programming got popularized by Woody Zuill and his team the industry realized that other activities can be practiced with the same approach. Enter Mob testing! When a team (4-7 ppl) is “mobbing” they use only one computer, one screen, one keyboard & mouse. They are divided into three distinct roles and by rotating, everyone in the mob experiences each of them. The driver sits at the keyboard and executes what’s being told to them by the navigator who is constantly collecting and discussing ideas with the rest of the group, the mob-members.
There are two main perceived upsides to a mob-session: only reviewed and critizied ideas go into the work and since everyone is there the outcome is instantly shared across a team, no one needs to be updated the next morning.
In this workshop I would facilitate a Mob testing session where maximum 7 people could actively participate at a time. We would be working on an application where I'd act as a stakeholder for the product to provide context. My initial idea is to test through the GUI, so anyone could join - but I’m happy to discuss combining it with lower, API levels.
Key take-aways:
People who are brave enough to join will experience a real mob in action, can take it back to their company and try it out with their team, fellow testers or any stakeholder they can find - exactly what happened to me. This session will put Mob testing into their reality, they will see the setup and get a feel for the dynamics. We will run into the problems and questions of the beginner and I will attempt to solve and answer them. With a retrospective in the end we will learn where mobbing would be most and least useful in software development.
Bio
My name is Erik Hörömpöli, a software tester, I call it an investigator to have a more interesting conversations about what I do with those who don’t work day-to-day in software development. I enjoy and actively build on the variety of things one can do as a tester: I visit clients, ask for test ideas from people at support, Mob develop with my team or organize a company-wide testing mini-conference. I’m admittedly on the softer side of the skills that go into our work, I get as technical as the project needs, but that’s not the area where I’d innovate. I’d like to spend more time with looking at production logs and find problems through them.
I have a soft spot for Poland, I have great memories from my Erasmus semester there in 2009 (Wroclaw), I’ve visited Gdansk and Krakow, too. Although I’ve been to a few Meetups here in Budapest to give a talk, my first international presentation is still ahead of me (gonna happen in Poland, too), I’m still new to the world of conferences as a speaker - I’ve visited several ones as an attendee, like a TestBash or the European Testing Conference, but I especially loved the smaller and open-space formatted ones, too, like CitCon or Testival.