Certifications
The Day 2 of the ASTQB Conference started with an introduction about the upcoming certifications and a wonderful discussion with board of ASTQB directors Andrew Pollner, CTFL, Rex Black, CTFL-AT, CTAL Full, CTEL-TM Full, Patricia McQuaid, Ph.D., CTFL.
ASTQB is the 3rd largest technology independent certification in IT industry after PMI and ITIL. The upcoming new certifications are for Business Analysts, Mobile Application Testing, and Security Testing.
Sessions – Takeaways
The next session was on “Leadership and the Test Manager” by Tom Adams.
The key learning objectives were:
- The difference between management and leadership.
- What makes a great leader?
- What do teams expect from a great leader?
- How do you know if you’re an effective leader?
- What can you do, each day, to become a better leader?
The next breakout session was about “Always a learner, that includes in Testing” by Tom Wissink. The session included stories about the whole software development lifecycle and how testing can and should contribute throughout the lifecycle. This session gave an insight into the importance of continuous learning and importance of testing. The takeaway from this session was – to be successful in career, the most important quality needed was passion.
Next is the keynote session was “The Business value of Testing: How to measure it and obtain senior management support” by Carl Cecil. The tester’s job is not only limited to testing but it should create business value for the customer and enable the business user to perform their job function. Lessons learnt were :
- Trust with a business focus
- Test from an end user focus
- Align metrics with the business
The next breakout session is about the “Agile Quality Professional – How to behave in a changing world” by Stephan Frein. The session was informative and insightful, it enlightened about the quality professional’s role in agile development. A couple of points stressed were
- The importance of converting business scenarios into test cases
- Automation should be implemented to reduce the test regression cycle time.
The final event was “The ASTQB Awful Bug Contest”:
The awful bugs/stories entries were handed over to ASTQB Team. The selected bugs were presented to the ASTQB conference audience. The contestants explained their stories to them. The winners were selected by voting of the audience. From DCKAP, Bhavani participated in this contest and won the 3rd prize.
It was a great opportunity to attend the ASTQB conference.Got to interact with the QA managers, Dev app managers,Business analysts from health care,finance, insurance and telecommunication areas.
The keynotes about the solutions for existing problems in testing practices was a wonderful learning experience.
Looking forward to the ASTQB’s 2016 conference.