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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 blog post, I share details of these sessions:
Half-day workshop: Facilitation: Enabling Team Communication and Driving Change.
Workshop description:
The quality of our products is determined 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 allow for targeted deep-dives that foster better discussions and ensure all voices are 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 (mid-Corona, so no audience except online). Feel free to contact me for further information or to host it at your event/company.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Hldh0EsZIl8?si=wcgyfTF9LIzwkcSF&version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparentYoutube link to the talk: Upskill Your Soft Skills: Enabling Team Communication at QXDay 2020
After lunch, Arash Rahmani delivered his keynote on the new EU laws and Regulations. Like GDPR has had an impact on what test data available for testing and how our organisations handle data, even though most companies are not yet ready to implement them (despite having several years to prepare). I enjoyed this overview that Arash provided.
How New EU Laws and Regulations are Going to Impact Testing by Arash Rahmani
Together with Suzanne Kraaij, I presented the talk Business 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!
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
Thanks Testnet for a lovely event! And all the great conversations in the hallway track and during my talk/workshop.
