Belgium Testing Days 2012

CPGT served to speakers at BTD 2012!

Last month (March 12-14) I was in Brussels for a speaking session at Belgium Testing Days (BTD) 2012! BTD is a confluence of international speakers and audience. BTD 2012 was not an exception. We had not only a great speaker lineup but also a striking list of topics. Overall it was a well-knit program! Thanks to the organizers!

Let me share some of the takeaways from BTD 2012 in this blog post based on the sessions I attended.

1) The testing community can no longer afford to do more and more of manual testing or functional test automation. Focus on specialized test such as performance testing, security testing, etc. are critical. Context-driven testing is the need of the hour.

2) Decision on release dates, product quality, release criteria are business decisions. Testers can do their job of providing right inputs to business. Testers are not the decision makers.

3) Partnership with development team is critical to success. Testing teams cannot afford to function in silos.

4) Consider multi-dimensional metrics to make sense. Standalone metrics don’t make sense for decision making.

5) Introducing ‘Test Assurance’ role in organization is valuable. This role requires ‘Testers’ to transform by means of acquiring additional skills.

6) Quality does not come from testing. Quality needs to be built into all life cycle activities. When we fail to do this, we start depending on ‘testing’ to provide us quality – this is a wrong notion.

7) Test engineers must understand regulatory compliance requirements and do adequate compliance testing and assurance. This can avoid business risks.

8) Software testing professionals need to plan their career. It is a self-initiated activity. No one external to you can tell you what you should do next or move you to the next level.

9) Testers can leverage open source tools to build great test frameworks and solutions.

10) Quality is critical. End users expect a certain level of quality in products. We cannot afford to ignore this fact.

The venue, refreshments and food in the conference were sumptuous. The dinner hosted by conference organizers for all speakers on 12th March was fabulous! The dessert, -  CPGT,  was impressive and delicious. Wondering what CPGT is?  It is Chocolate Parfait and Ginger Tiramisu. Yes. That is in the first picture!

Do you want to read more blogs on BTD 2012? Here you go!

1) Johanna Rothman's Blog
2) Lisa Crispin's Blog
3) Karen Johnson's Blog
4) Sigge Birgisson's Blog


If you post a blog on BTD 2012 or come across any new blogs on BTD 2012, pl let me know. I will add the link here.