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Speakers
Testit 2021

Huib Schoots - Testing in Modern times: A story about quality and value

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Secret number one: this session is less about testing as you would expect...
Software Development is a complex thing. We are dealing with customers who do not exactly know what they want. We also have to deal with complexity, confusion, changes, new insights and half answers. This requires research and experiments to create valuable software. Since my first days in IT, over 20 years ago, I have heard discussions about whether or not we need testers. Testing is boring! It is not creative and it doesn't add real value. Testing is always slow and expensive; testers are cynical people who deliver bad news and most of all they do their utmost to slow delivery. Also, there are stories on how test automation can replace the expensive testers in our projects. To CTO’s it sounds comforting that all these expensive resources can be replaced by automation, doesn’t it?
In agile and especially DevOps approaches the motto is: automated everything! Companies like Facebook claimed they do not have testers at all. Microsoft only has SDET (software development engineers in Test), other companies are T-shaping developers to do the testing. New kid on the block is AI and machine learning, that will definitely replace testing I hear people claim. What is really happening globally? Do we no longer need testers? Can we actually automate everything? How can we make valuable software for our clients?
In this interactive session we will look at quality software, risks and value. We'll dive into biases and misunderstanding surrounding testing. Testing makes developers look good! And developers make testing easier. And that is why developers (read: everybody in IT) should understand what modern testing can look like and how it can be very valuable, fast and fun. Our clients expect us to speed up and go faster. So how can we fine tune our work to make this expectation real? How can we deliver quality software fast? As a team we can do this, but only if we collaborate...
In this talk I will share my experience in collaborating with developers as a tester and working with development teams as an agile and quality coach. We'll explore and discuss testing. In my stories I will give examples of great collaboration in teams. I will explain the difference in mind sets and shine a light on topics such as: quality culture, unit testing, pairing, automation, test strategy and testability. Stories that inspired others to up their game and experiment with new ways of working. Working together to create valuable software for our clients!

In this presentation I will address questions like

- How can we create quality software fast?
-  Do we need testing? And if so: why is testing important?
- What is the business case of testing?
- Can developers also test? And if so: do we still need testers?

Key takeways

1. How can we create quality software fast?
2. How can your team manage risks and value?
3. Learn if we need testing? And if so: why is testing important?
4. Learn about great collaboration in teams, new ways of working to create valuable software for our clients!

Huib Schoots - Once upon a time - Stories that make you awesome

Storytelling is one of the oldest communication methods. Through stories, we transmit experience, culture, morals and lessons. We are not always aware of it, but we are constantly telling each other stories and playing the starring role in our own story. As humans, we are pre-programmed to react positively to stories, which makes them powerful and effective ways to transfer our visions, strategies or ideas. Their power reaches through our work as an agile professional and our projects, but also through our own organization and life outside of work. In this talk, Huib will share stories. We’ll look at how stories are designed, how they help people and how to take them apart to understand them better. Storytelling is also inherently communicative – we’ll look at how storytelling isn’t just about the person telling, but also about the people listening.

 
About the speaker

Hi, I’m Huib Schoots, nice to meet you. My personal mission is shaping better people and software quality by connecting, innovating, facilitating, coaching, enabling and teaching. I’m fascinated by mindset, thinking, behaviour and collaboration. I’m active in many communities. Some keywords about me: humanist, open, direct, creative, idea generator, result driven, humor, problem solver, curious, confronting, critical thinker, passionate and energetic, lifelong learner, entrepreneurial, analytic and continuous (world) improver. I like hanging out with friends, play trombone in a brass band, board & computer game, LEGO, photography, running, beer brewing, magic tricks, travelling and reading. I work as an operational director & quality coach at qualityaccelerators.nl and an agile test expert, trainer and consultant at deagiletesters.nl

Anna Gamalielsson- Building a Test Center from scratch at Region Skåne

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Anna Gamalielsson has been working with test for 17 years, previously building up the Test Center at IKEA. Listen to her story about how she is now building up a Test Center from scratch at Region Skåne! How is testing different within the public sector compared to the private? What challenges lies ahead now that we are expanding digitalization withing health care in Skåne? Also, listen to her describe how they have implemented agile methods for building, developing and maturing the Test Center itself!

About the speaker

With a Bachelor of Science in Multimedia Engineering, Anna has spent the last 17 years working in different roles connected to test. With experience from Ericsson, IKEA and Region Skåne, she has developed a passion for both test and leadership. She now works as a Unit Manager at Region Skåne for their Test Competence Center. An opportunity she could not afford to miss out on!

In 2019 she started her own company (https://vattnadardetgror.com/) where she works as a coach, mentor and leadership developer. She now has this as a side business along side with her job at Region Skåne.

Jimmy Dahlqvist - CI/CD Pipeline as first and last line of defense

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Teams deploy new application versions more frequent than ever; some teams even deploy several times per day. How do we ensure the quality of each deploy is good? How can we build confidence that we don’t introduce any problems or changed behaviors? 
In this session we talk about how we use our CI/CD pipeline as our first and last line of defense. How we can use it to run different test, work with temporary environments, deployment techniques and smoke testing. We will look deeper into some CI/CD tools and certain public cloud providers for cloud-based applications. 

About the speaker

Jimmy is a Cloud Architect and Developer specialising in AWS Cloud. With a broad interest in serverless and IoT. 
Highly passionate about Automation, DevOps, GitOps, ChatOps, and all new ways of working.  
Experience from large organisations such Sony, Infor, IKEA, and AssaAbloy.
He loves to share his knowledge and experience. Holds several AWS and is always aiming for the next one.  
He is total into coffee and BBQ. Building his own connected BBQ thermometer using Rasperry PI and AWS. 

The most important skills to develop as a tester 

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There are a myriad of different types of pure testing topics and an almost infinite array of IT subjects to help us testers understand our place and context in the digital now. One look at LinkedIn or Udemy and you will be bombarded with articles, classes and certifications “for your next step” in the testing world. It's too much for one human to learn over a lifetime! So, what should we be focusing on with our precious time? 
What technical skills should we be adding to our toolbox, what do our developers expect from us, and what secures that coveted and rare spot in the forefront of the hiring process?  
And once we have figured out all the things we should be learning, what is the best method to learn them and just how does one keep motivated to continue learning throughout an entire career?  
These questions and many more will be answered by our eminent panellists, all bringing unique experiences and perspectives on the topic; Test coach Huib Schoots, test manager Anna Gamalielsson, developer Jimmy Dahlqvist and test consultancy CEO Håkan Ramberg moderated by test lead and specialist Sasan Fallahi.  
Join us in this important discussion and enter the fall with a new sense of direction! 

Maria Kedemo - Failure is inevitable

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Session type: Workshop

How we develop software has changed for most of us over the last twenty years. We often find ourselves in a fast-paced environment working with volatile and very complex distributed systems. Failure is inevitable, you just don’t know when and where it will happen. Despite all the testing you have done and all the environments you have tested in you have probably experienced loads of problems in production, some more critical than others. There seems to be a belief that we can prevent failures from happening by predicting how the system might fail. To some extent we can, but there will always be events occurring which we could never predict. We might tell ourselves that we could have predicted the event if only we had done “this or that”, but that’s just the hindsight bias affecting you. What we need to do is embrace the idea of failure as something inevitable. 

We must add or even replace some of the activities we do today to create an environment that enables us to quickly find the problems. This is where feedback and observability are very important aspects. A slow or non-existing feedback loop limits the creativity and the ability to explore the system, which is needed in order to discover the unknown unknowns. The ability to see and understand what happens in our system is the kind of feedback we need, to quickly detect important problems or opportunities no matter whether the system runs in production or is under development. 

This workshop focuses on why feedback and observability throughout development is valuable to not only testers but everyone involved in software development.  *Warning - it might require a shift in perspective and mindset. It is also a workshop that is highly interactive. 

Takeaways 

- Why feedback from the system is important. 
- How system feedback impacts exploration.
- What is observability?
- Why we need to “test” in production. 

About the speaker

Maria is a generalist with a deep knowledge in software testing and agile development. She has been working in software development for over twenty years in many different roles and industries. Since 2018 she has her own company Black Koi Consulting. What she appreciates the most in each and every assignment she’s had is the learning opportunities. Maria loves sharing her experiences and helping others to improve. She has spoken and organized workshops at many national and international conferences. Occasionally she shares her thoughts on mkedemo.wordpress.com 

BENAZIR BANOU & JAN RIIS SØRENSEN - THE JOURNEY TOWARDS AUTOMATION: PITFALLS AND POSSIBILITIES FOR TEAMS AND TESTERS

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The journey towards automation: Pitfalls and possibilities for teams and testers. We talk to them every day: Organisations and businesses on the verge of committing to automation. Behind them are countless hours, considerations, and discussions leading up to the decision to automate. Coincidentally, it’s not just one single decision – but several. The problem is most decision-makers aren’t aware of this. Very often, the focus is on the tool rather than the method. Consequently, automation gets off to a rough start. In this presentation, we want to share our experiences on obtaining successful QA automation – from day 1. These experiences cover learning from initial experiences – and the negative impact on quality we experienced. How we ended up organizing and governing our test automation, and naturally also the results and achievements.

The most important topics are:

- The value and contribution of a tester: Beyond executing the test script.
- What are the key enablers for long-term sustainable automation?
- Automation: NOT business as usual
- Where does the automation effort begin

 

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The purpose of this presentation is to empower, engage and educate the functional tester towards the automation journey. Because automation is mistakenly perceived as an agenda specifically for the engineers. Truly successful and sustainable automation has to be a cross functional operation.

About the speakers

Benazir Banou: I am working with DSB IT as Advanced Technical tester. I am part of COE and support & work closely with teams in SAFe. In 12 years of 

experience in software testing, Worked with automation tools like QTP, Leapwork and test management tools like QC, JIRA etc. Started my career as Trainer of functional and automated software testing and later joined as a full-time tester in multinational company. My Hobby is Art & crafting (make something with waste-material). I Have great believed in reusing the materials. My quality of observing the things deeply and nature of reusing the things, makes me very good in testing and making test automation framework stable and reusable.

Jan Riis Sørensen: I am working as a Test Manager at DSB, the Danish Railway. Currently part of a Test COE, support the SAFe organization in their various testing challenges. I got my first taste of test automation more that 10 years ago, when the need for test data creation on 3270 host sessions required alternative thinking and test automation was the solution. Learned the hard way, that the selection of a tool should never be the first task when taking on test automation, eg. “We got a hammer, lets drill a hole”. I am a true believer that, remembering the good old virtues in testing, will ensure a more reliable framework for test automation. Over the years, my hobbies have changed and I have been scuba diving, playing golf and brewing beer. Currrently I am exploring the world with my drone and my newest passion hobby photography.

Fredrik Scheja - Digital Healthcare - Experience the true power of the digital twin

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Who should take the end-2-end responsibility? Why is our integrated test environment down all the time? Why can’t we just get nice test data when we need it? These are the three usual suspects in many large development organizations of today. But what happens inside a development organization when we twist the mindset of development towards seeing it as medical surgery performed on the digital twin of our own business? A digital twin that is in fact just as complex as our digital reality really is? How can we implement digital sensors to monitor our ‘patient’, gather indicators and understand the power of simulations to mathematically calculate confidence in our treatments? 

Listen in on my experience on how I started to guide a really cool fintech development organization into a modern way of using systems thinking and what we all could benefit from accepting the fact that our digital surroundings are far too complex for us to comprehend or even imagine. And then, when we understand this, how to start acting according to this in a professional manner. 

 

About the speaker

Fredrik Scheja works as a QA/Test advisor at Sogeti. He is described by others as incredibly positive, creative and humble with a very deep knowledge of testing and agile ways of working. Fredrik likes to pick up pieces of different practices to create new ways of thinking. Some say that he once was invited to hold a speech on test automation for a Swedish government agency but avoided talking about test automation the entire session. And - seems to have gotten away with it. He aims to turn complex matters into something tangible through his storytelling ability. His is on a mission to enable humans to constantly make better and more intelligent decisions throughout the entire spectra of software development.

Knowit Syd Recruitment Team - Genuinity in an IT recruiters automated world...or Knowing Me, Knowing You - There is nothing a lot we can do

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Although one great recruitment trend is automated and non-biased competence matching, the essence of a true and lasting job fit is highly dependent of genuinity - to yourself, to your future employer and in return your employer's genuinity to you. That's when the magic is given a real chance to happen.
In our daily work, building mutual trust and long term investment in new employees, we have made some interesting findings to share and reflect upon both from an employee and a recruiting manager perspective. After listening to this session we do hope you carry some new tips with you home on a personal level as well as on a structural company level.

About the speakers

With a broad demographic background and experience, the recruitment team at Knowit Syd are both traditionally proven in what methods that works, as well as agile fitted to face and embrace the fast pace in today's talent attraction race within the IT sector.

 

Henrik Ladström - Virtual meetings: more emojis and less conflicts

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Session type: Workshop

As human beings we have different styles of communication and ways of handling conflicts. Meeting through the screen is today the default mode, but as human beings we are since thousands of years wired to meet in person. How does meeting online affect the quality of our meetings and work-related relationships in long term? And what are the skills we need as employees in the future to really succeed in a digital workplace?

In this interactive session we’re going to take a closer look at:

- Digital non-verbal language and the importance of emojis
- Conflict management in a digital context
- Engaging the audience when facilitating video meetings

About the speaker

Henrik Ladström, Digital HR & People Facilitator at Knowit Insight, is an experienced educator and facilitator focusing on digital employee interactions.

Bharti Ahuja - Performance testing with Jmeter: Let's learn it from my experience

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When I started my career, I was a learner and now after 8 years in the industry, I will say I am an experienced learner. Learning is a continuous process and that is how it should be. I started my career as a manual tester and that followed automation testing as well. But my interest to try something different than what I was doing led me to explore the Performance testing field. I started exploring this field three years back and during this learning phase, I explored many options and got captivated with the JMeter tool. The most important reason being it is free as compared to other leading performance testing tool. But being an open-source tool, it is not limited in any capability and that is what my session will unfold. I will cover my learning experience of JMeter tool and how I implement my learned skill into an actual assignment.

Upshots

1. The basic concepts around the Performance testing
2. JMeter tool basic and advance features.
3. JMeter usage as a performance testing tool for an ecommerce application.

It is for those for whom Performance testing field is completely new but want to explore it. I will be precise about JMeter tool and its usage as a Performance testing tool.

About the speaker

My name is Bharti Ahuja, I work as a Test specialist at Knowit Quality. I have around 8 years of testing experience and worked with a different client under the e-commerce domain. I am positive person who believes learning is a continuous process and I always thrive to be best with what I do. I am mom to a toddler who is a fussy eater and that has inspired me to explore the other side of me as experimenting with different food combinations and to make it more nutritious. I love being organized. I belong to India and living here in Malmo is fun of course excluding the dark winter days.

Fredrik Seiness - A smoke testing tale

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The frequency of deliveries seems to be ever increasing in our line of work. Our ability to deliver value faster without jeopardizing quality becomes imperative, and building a reliable deployment pipeline, with the right kind of test coverage, is essential for achieving this. Yet, in our hectic day-to-day work there is always a risk of neglecting the basics, such as good smoke test coverage, in favour of chasing whatever new functionality the clients need to be done right now. You may tell yourself you’ll get around to dealing with the technical debt of your test suite, only to realize that as the project rolls along it becomes increasingly difficult to catch up with all the things you “should have done.”

This is a personal story, from a tester’s perspective, of how my team and I worked to reel ourselves in. It is meant to serve as a useful reminder to experienced testers, an encouragement to testers who are new to their profession, and hopefully an inspiration to all. Why smoke testing is important and useful - especially in CI/CD lifecycles - and why it is important to implement it early. It is my hope that you will leave this talk thinking about in what ways smoke tests can bring value to your own team or project. What challenges are you facing that smoke testing might be part of the answer to? This talk will give some insight into how we have worked on this in my current project; what we have done, why we did it, and what our “lessons learned” have been.

 

About the speaker

I have been working as a tester for seven years now. Coming from a seemingly unrelated background in the arts and humanities, I have come to love this profession and discipline. I try to balance the technical with a sincere interest in the fluffy things, like people and culture, both in the work we do and the workplace. Nothing is better than learning and growing together! I work as a test consultant for Knowit Quality in Oslo, where I live with my fiancée and our glorious cat.

Carin Cedergren - Avoiding Skynet - Ways to apply ethics in software development

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Do you feel safe knowing that dystopian fantasies about our social media-controlled surveilled society where capitalistic sociopaths are exploiting our easily manipulated brains never could become reality? Or do you already fear that we are on a highway to technology hell? Either way, the reality of today is that technology has entered almost all areas of our lives, if not all, and if we do not start incorporating an ethical mindset in our software development we might very well plant the seed of a future we do not wish for. Let’s make a difference and let me show you my keys in accomplishing this. In this talk you will learn how to start looking at technology from an ethical perspective and understand why this is important. I'll share some tips & tricks on how to succeed in making a change. Because even without extrapolating towards an Orwellian future, I think a world where our daily life is increasingly controlled and monitored by software & hardware, we who build that technology need to start to consider how that technology affects others. Almost everyone in the world comes into contact with software in one form or another on a daily basis, but far from everyone understands how it works, or sometimes that it is even there at all.
This means that we have a responsibility towards the user and in fact society at large. This holds true for everyone who works within software development and it needs to permeate the entire organization. But what does it mean to take this responsibility? How do we change ourselves and succeed in convincing the stakeholders that ethical consideration is important?
I want to share my view of why it is important to ask the relevant ethical questions and to inspire you to act when something doesn't feel right. I will include how to deal with the doubt if one person really can make a change. The future's not set. There's no fate but what we make for ourselves.

About the speaker

My name is Carin Cedergren, I am often happy, sometimes angry and preferably at the same time. I am a positive person who thrives on irritation, I hate doing things the same way just because it has always been like that. What happens when we dare to make that change? How can that improve us as a company, a team and as individuals? That’s what I want to find out! I have more than 10 years of experience in software testing and I love what I do, and I love getting better at it. I almost never wear anything other than black since lighter colours seem to hurt my soul. I also love kittens.