Reading time approx. 3 minutes
The hard facts about "Europe's greaTEST Agile software testing event!" don't read too bad: a great hotel near Sanssoucci Palace, around 100 international speakers, up to nine tracks at the same time, at least three keynotes per day, an "Anything Build Party & TestLab" and an "Escape the Room" game as well as professional visualization of the event. And if you're still not tired in the evening, you can have fun with like-minded people at the social events. What could possibly go wrong? At the end of the conference, I can say "nothing" with a clear conscience.
Approaches to testing and agile topics were represented
As already mentioned, #AgileTD is a conference aimed primarily at testers. For this reason, most of the talks are less technical, apart from the Dojo track. Instead, there were many interesting ideas on approaches to testing (shortening test runtime through parallelization, database in-memory, simulation of external dependencies in front-end tests or testing in Docker containers) or general agile topics such as Scrum or self-realization and participation within the company ("Step outside the team", Living Documentation, "Learn fundamentals", "Learn your team's tune", "invest in impact").
Personally, I was particularly enthusiastic about all the keynotes I attended. These included, for example, "Music and Testing", in which around 600 visitors sang in four-part canon. Alex Schladebeck and Huib Schoots also vividly illustrated the parallels between working and communicating in an agile team and music. Or "Be more useful: Test Beyond Quality, Beyond Software" by Mike Sutton with a call to be more than just a worker who tests software. My favorite keynote, however, was "Agile Leadership Lessons" by Selena Delesie. Each slide a thought-provoking question or briefly summarized point to ponder or agree with; plus interaction with the audience to answer the questions themselves - overall an incredibly enjoyable, challenging and exciting keynote.
With so many tracks and talks running in parallel, I often found it difficult to make up my mind. The dojo on "Embedded Testing" was particularly memorable, as I was able to examine software for errors and inconsistencies together with a "live" tester and see how a tester works, not just in theory but in practice. Conclusion: We may not have dedicated testers at punkt.debut we think and work as if we were testers ourselves. From other talks such as "Need for Speed" or "Quality Continuously Delivered", I can also say with a clear conscience that we are already implementing most of the suggestions (BDD with Behat, performance testing with Gatling, use of dedicated test fixtures).
In addition to the many approaches and ideas for better testing, I also heard about the Speaking Easy initiative. On their website, any software tester who would like to give a talk at a conference can get a mentor to help with everything from formulating the abstract to preparing the talk. Anyone who would like to be a mentor can also register on the site and will then be matched with someone who is looking for a mentor. I think this is a particularly great idea. Maybe there will be something similar for developers at some point.
A great event, not just for testers
Overall, I found the organization of the ATD to be outstanding. All the rooms were labeled with the talks of the day taking place in them, there were rarely delays (and when there were, they didn't last long) and the breaks were also very well organized and distributed. I really enjoyed having breakfast and lunch at the hotel with various attendees or speakers, or sometimes just listening. And although the conference was not as technical as I expected, I would recommend it not only to testers, but also to project managers, POs or scrum masters as well as developers who want to gain insight into the testing process. I'm already looking forward to watching videos and slides of some of the talks and keynotes so that I can think about some of the questions again and punkt.de be able to imagine.
And for those who couldn't be at #AgileTD, I have a few sketchnotes to give you an idea of how diverse the topics were.
