Last November 2017, Monstar QAs had unique experience attending the TestConPH 2017 event. This annual conference aims to boost the local software testing industry. The event was organized by the local community group Sofware Testing Philippines. The focus is on helping software testing professionals learn the latest approach to different facets of testing. All for the benefit of the software industry in the Philippines.
The event started with a keynote from PSIA President Jonathan Defensor De Luzuriaga (known as JDL). We’re moved by JDL’s talk as he discussed the impact of QA to the software industry, the positive trend outlook for the global software testing industry and what can we do to make this global trend actualize here in the Philippines.
After JDL’s empowering speech, a 15-minute presentation was done by the speakers to quickly pitch their talk so we can have the synopsis of the topics they will be talking about.
After the lightning-quick pitches, the event proceeded to the most anticipated part of the event – the Breakout Sessions!
Since there were a lot of topics and time is quite limited, the topics were scattered into different breakout rooms. Then it got scheduled into three waves with different topics per wave running simultaneously. Even with this kind of set-up, we still managed to attend all topics because we were able to deploy each one of us into different topics every wave. The topics discussed in the TestConPH2017 were the following:
1st wave of breakout sessions:
2nd wave of breakout sessions:
3rd wave of breakout sessions:
4th wave of breakout sessions:
And to close things out in an entertaining talk, here’s Derick Mag-Isa’s “The Tester’s Skill Tree and Career Progression”
We got a lot of takeaways from the event, and we look forward to experimenting the ideas we gained to positively influence our teams. And after the event, here we are, all smiles. Brains and tummies well fed!!
Some of our key takeaways:
- Try to test web without using a keyboard to see all functions are reachable without using a keyboard
- If the user is deaf, always check if there’s another way to test or at least use subtitles for videos.
- Try to test web without HTML/CSS. Check if functions are still working as expected.
- Learned the small difference between BAs and QAs and how the two interestingly should coexist in a company
- Discovered that in order to provide the best quality products and services, companies may tend to create teams with specific function directives (e.g. user experience, database, quality, etc.)
- And lastly, it was mentioned in his talk the great potential of having knowledge on some of the concepts and industry standards with regards to product development.
- Realized the importance of data in getting a definitive conclusion and how this data, when processed and transformed, becomes highly beneficial to a company and in a team.
- Learned also the importance of Risk-based Testing which I believe is a great method to apply before the development of every requirement and/or client requests.
- Learned that the developers of products and services should always strive to incorporate security measures in all aspect of development.
- Learned the law concerning Data Privacy and some of its provision that if left unknown and unpracticed in development may lead to lawsuits.
- And lastly, we learned that any pieces of data asked/given/provided for should serve a purpose which the end-users of products and services are aware of.
It was really a unique experience for all of us who attended this event. Looking forward to attending the next conference this year!
Bonus:
Kahoot! games! This activity was one of the fun things we did during the event!
P.S.
I am grateful to be part of this event as one of its organizers and would like to thank Monstar Lab PH management for sending as many QAs as possible to attend this awesome event. Also, kudos to all of my co-organizers who engineered this successful event and endless thanks to the people who supported this conference.
You can join us on our facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/softwaretestingphilippines/
Long live, Filipino Super Testers!!!
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