Testnet Autumn Event 2024

In October 2024, I attended the autumn event of Testnet. In the morning, I provided a half-day workshop entitled: Facilitation: Enabling Team Communication and Driving Change. Together with Suzanne Kraaij, I presented the talk: Business Intelligence & Data Testing in the afternoon. Additionally, I sketchnoted the afternoon keynote: How new EU laws and regulations are going to impact testing by Arash Rahmani and the talk by Fieke de Vreede: We Need to Invest in Human N00bs Instead of AI by Fieke de Vreede. In this blogpost, I share details of these sessions:

Half-day workshop: Facilitation: Enabling Team Communication and Driving Change.

Sho
Photo of the workshop by Leonie Witteveen

Workshop description:

The quality of our products is decided by the quality of our communication: learn how to improve the quality of your facilitation and tackle your quality challenges

Most issues and incidents can be traced back to assumptions, and miscommunications somewhere in the process. As scrum masters, quality coaches and testers, we are ideally placed to facilitate and promote conversations.

Yet: how do we facilitate effectively and what can we do to improve communication? In this workshop, Marianne introduces a 6-step model to facilitate conversations, team sessions and meetings. This model will enable you to create clarity on topic, encourage explicit buy-in and allows for a targeted deep-dive that creates better discussions and allows for all voices to be heard. Participants practice applying the model by facilitating a series of conversations in groups around their Quality Challenges, combining practicing their facilitation skills with participants’ current work challenges. It allows participants to experience the ease and effectiveness of the model, increase focus in conversation, understand the importance of consent and psychological safety, and highlight accountability upon conclusion.

Additionally, participants are encouraged to share and learn from each other in sharing their own challenges and solutions with regards to quality. Participants leave with an understanding of the core principles in facilitation, knowledge on how to tackle common communication problems as well as a hands-on technique they can apply immediately upon returning to their teams.

I enjoyed hosting the workshop and the various conversations with participants. If you wish to hear more about the 6 step model: I recorded a talk about it at QX Day 2020 about it (mid-Corona, so no audience except online). Feel free to contact me for further information or to host it at your event/company.

Youtube link to the talk: Upskill Your Soft Skills: Enabling Team Communication at QXDay 2020
Sketchnote summary of the 6 step model for facilitation and coaching

After lunch, Arash Rahmani delivered his keynote on the new EU laws and Regulations. Like GDPR has had an impact on what test data we can use for our tests and how our organisations handle data, the upcoming regulations will likely have a similar effect, even if most companies are not ready to implement them yet (though they’ve had quite some years to prepare). I enjoyed this overview that Arash provided.

How New EU Laws and Regulations are Going to Impact Testing by Arash Rahmani

Marianne’s sketchnote of Arash Rahmani’s keynote

Together with Suzanne Kraaij, I presented the talk BI Intelligence & Data Testing:

Our data processes and systems are becoming increasingly complex, and dynamic. A lot of companies are struggling with maintaining data quality and increasing trust in the data landscape.

Testing offers insight into risks and quality of the data, the systems, and the dataflows. It investigates for instance the performance, the data integrity and the business logic. Much more than finding issues and bugs, testing is about providing confidence and building trust for end-users in the solution that is being built. Testing should therefore be a critical component in any business intelligence and data environment.

In this talk, we addressed testing knowledge targeted to data environments using the TMAP VOICE model and addressed DAMA quality characteristics you can adopt. We explained the basics of ETL & Data to encourage you to adjust your testing specific to the challenges these environments offer. We encourage you to communicate the level of confidence you have in the quality of your systems and data. Gain insight and tips on how to test BI & Data solutions.

This was Suzanne’s first conference talk, followed directly by her second talk on Test Strategy that same evening. Well done Suzanne! It was fun to present this talk together with you!

Photo of Marianne Duijst and Suzanne Kraaij presenting – photo by Leonie Witteveen

And last but not least, I was pleased to see Fieke de Vreede take the stage. We met in our student years, as we took the same degree, a year apart. We both went into the testing field afterwards some years apart, and her talk is particularly topical in this age of AI. We need to invest in people and training and onboarding them well.

We Need to Invest in Human nOObs instead of AI by Fieke de Vreede

Marianne’s sketchnote of Fieke de Vreede’s talk

Thanks Testnet for a lovely event! And all the great conversations in the hallway track and during my talk/workshop.

Live sketchnoting by Marianne during the event. Photo by Leonie Witteveen

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *