Ministry of Testing Leeds - January 2019

Ministry of Test Leeds is back for 2019 with a slightly new format.

From the feedback we've had, people would like more meetings, but slightly shorter. Therefore we'll be trialing that for this month by having one main talk and one lightening talk.

Going forward we'll be looking to see if this format works and if so, move to monthly meetings so more people can attend!

To start the new way forward, we've got an excellent speaker lined up. Louise is very prominent within the Leeds community and highly experienced.

They'll also be a lightening talk, food, drink, networking opportunities and lots of people to meet and talk to!

6.30pm - 7pm: Networking and food

7pm - 7.45pm: TALK: Test Driven Punishment - Louise Elliott (details below)

7.45pm - 8pm: Break

8pm - 8.15pm: Lightening talk - Accessibility and how it fits in the SDLC - Laura Heap (details below)

Here are the speaker and talk details:

LOUISE ELLIOTT (@IvanaTerrorBull)
Louise has worked in the software world for longer than she cares to remember as a ​developer, technical architect and manager. She is passionate about pragmatic agile, quality, delivering value, cosmology, photography, visiting Antarctica (if only), roller derby, machine learning, bridge (the card game not things that help you cross rivers), people stuff, archery, war poetry and politics and she will talk endlessly about all of these given half the chance. She believes that people are infinitely fascinating and that managing people is like the most complex multivariable multithreaded system you ever encountered.

About the Session

What is the first thing we do when a major issue occurs in a live system? Sort it out of course. Then we start the hunt for the person to blame so that they can suffer the appropriate punishment. What do we do if a person is being awkward in the team and won’t agree to our ways of doing things? Ostracise them of course, and see how long it is until they hand in their notice – problem solved.

This highly interactive talk delves into why humans have this tendency to blame and punish. It looks at real examples of punishment within the software world and the results which were achieved. These stories not only cover managers punishing team members but also punishment within teams and self-punishment. We are all guilty of some of the behaviours discussed.

LAURA HEAP:
Laura got into testing when she realised her previous career as a Fingerprint Examiner wasn't challenging enough for her. She took on a junior Test Analyst position and hasn't looked back, six years later she now works as a Senior Tester for Sky on the My Sky app.

Accessibility
Laura feels strongly about software being accessible for all, she feels it far too often isn't prioritised highly enough in a release. The lightening talk will cover the tip of the iceberg on why we should put accessibility high up on the acceptance criteria for a feature and what should be expected from Testers.

Thank you to our sponsors - Infinity Works, FDM Group and Computer Share.