Michaël Pilaeten
Software Quality Evangelist // L&D Manager @ AE
Brussels, Belgium
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Breaking the system, helping to rebuild it, and providing advice and guidance on how to avoid problems. That’s me in a nutshell. With over 20 years of experience in software consultancy in a variety of environments, I have seen the best (and worst) in software development. In my current role as Learning & Development Manager, I’m responsible for guiding our consultants, partners, and customers on their personal and professional path towards excellence. I’m chair of the ISTQB Advanced work group, author and international keynote speaker
Area of Expertise
Topics
How (not) to kill your team
Organizations and teams are trying to get more efficient and more effective. Every day, a new hype pops op. From Agile to Lean, Kanban, DevOps, Spotify, Sociocracy 3.0, Management 3.0, Flow, etc. We’re minimizing the overhead, expecting teams to be self-organizing. And sometimes, when we’re lucky, they even succeed.
Most organizations start from a great vision to start transformations, but fail to translate that into effective measures that actually deliver what they are aimed at.
This presentation explains which transformation activities are doomed to fail and why, but it will – of course – also reveal the initiatives that will result in a better, more efficient team.
Quality in Agile 2.0
For more than a decade, the agile manifesto and principles stir up organizations. Agile, SCRUM, Kanban, the Spotify model, .... they disrupt ongoing business. Companies change their methodologies and SDLC to benefit from the numerous advantages of the agile mindset.
The result is less appealing: the ride is often bumpy, there's a lot of resistance and the change takes longer than expected. Even worse, when we drill down to the numbers, we notice that projects are not managed in a better way: they're not drastically delivering better or faster.
Where's my job?
SCRUM Master, DevOps Engineer, Tribe Lead, Agile Ninja, … So many new job titles, but so few people that understand what they actually mean.
IT has changed, is changing and will continue to change. Are we prepared for that? Are our companies, recruiters and HR departments ready for that?
What does it take to be a valuable team member nowadays? Which skills and techniques are expected in your IT toolbox? What competences are recruiters and companies looking for? Should I be worried about my retention rates? And if so, which activities can I undertake to boost the retention in my organization?
The differences between the companies and their expectations, the current (IT) skill sets and the future competence model will be highlighted, including tips and guidance how to tackle these upcoming challenges.
Collaborative Test Design
Collaborative user story writing, review discussions, pair testing, crowd testing, … Testers are working more and more with others to achieve higher levels of quality for the products they help deliver, yet there is one activity in the test process that testers keep doing alone.
Whether you are determining your equivalence classes, setting up your decision tables or struggling with n-switch coverage for your state transition diagram, typically it is just you by yourself trying to uncover the required test cases for an item under test. Even if you are part of a team of testers, you still split up the work, each tester being responsible for his or her assigned part of functionality. You might review or execute your colleagues’ work, yet that is not considered real collaboration.
Everybody knows that when people work together, the sum is often greater than its parts, so why do we keep designing tests all alone? Traditional test design techniques seem to be created for solo application, so where to find the tunes to sing a different song?
In this workshop, we want to answer the question on how to design great tests together with your peers. Different techniques will be presented and more important, also applied, so you can experience yourself how well each new technique suits your needs. Since cooperation does not come out of a can from a vending machine, we will not only focus on the results, but also on setting the required context for collaborative test design. All by doing and experiencing yourselves!
What are you waiting for? Now is your chance to expand your test design tool case(s) with techniques that you can practice with the whole team. Let’s make testing even more fun!
Mythbusters: Test Automation
When you browse through job postings, it seems that testing has become a synonym for test automation.
And indeed, in Agile and DevOps teams automation is considered crucial for success.
In this talk, I’ll share some myths about test automation, and separate fact from fiction.
The Data Bias
In our profession as testers, analysts, and developers, we try to base our decisions on objectivity. On data. Unfortunately, the information or data we base our decisions on is often biased. There are many reasons behind these biases, but the most striking one is a gender bias. A gender bias that is actually confirmed by a data bias. There are numerous examples of products being designed (IT and non-IT related), where a data bias results in a gender bias – with a negative effect on the quality, and on the uptake. Where does that put us as testers? What can we undertake to avoid releasing products that are not designed for the audience we are targeting?
This talk provides examples of the presence of data and gender biases, and how they result in negative consequences. I will also show you techniques to detect the biases, plus tools and best practices to avoid them.
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