Experiential Workshops
I conduct experiential or interactive workshops for clients and through public classes, giving participants the opportunity to learn by doing. Any of my workshops can be custom-designed to fit a client's needs, and I would be happy to design a new offering to meet your requirements. For example, if your team needs help developing a test strategy or plan, I can design a workshop where that is the deliverable.
See Speaking also, for other ready-made presentations or workshops I could conduct at your company or event.
Click on each header below for a more detailed description of the workshop.
Beyond Process - Public Classes
Project and People Skills for Testers and Test Leaders
To excel on software projects, testers and leaders need far more than the processes and techniques normally taught in testing classes. Advanced project skills are thinking skills and people skills.
This series of three affordable, interactive 1-day workshops is intended for the busy tester or test leader who wants to grow his or her effectiveness on projects, but may not be able to devote more than a day at a time for training.
Each workshop goes beyond the standard processes you can learn from a book, providing opportunities to experience, observe and discuss life-like project interactions related to testing in the safe environment of a classroom where everyone is learning.
Public Class calendar. I can also conduct one or more of these workshops at your company—as described below or custom-designed for your team.
Inspiring Testing - Test Leadership Workshop
This workshop is for testers, test managers, test leads—anyone who wants to become a leader or a more effective leader. We’ll examine the key focus areas for test leaders, and work together to identify and practice the skills and personal qualities essential for exceptional test leadership.
Determining Business Risks for Testing
In this workshop we’ll examine strategies for identifying the stakeholders who own different business risks. We’ll discuss the kinds of questions to ask and look at sample questions for different contexts. Finally, we’ll practice conducting a risk assessment workshop with stakeholders.
The Design Behind the Plan - Test Strategy
In this hands-on workshop we’re going to set aside the standard big document and focus on the important aspects of a test strategy: thinking strategically, and communicating the strategy effectively. Working together on real testing problems, we’ll explore what’s essential in a strategy and how to develop it using lightweight media.
Mind, Map and Strategy
Using a mindmap to develop and communicate your test strategy
In this workshop, we will walk through an example to illustrate how a mindmap can be used effectively for a test strategy, and then participants will have the opportunity to practice developing and presenting their own mind-mapped strategies.
Delivering Difficult Messages
A passion for the truth is essential for a tester. But the truths we uncover in the exercise of our craft can be bad news to our co-workers or to people who hold more power in the hierarchy than we do. In this workshop, we will practice delivering difficult messages and addressing the fallout, building relevant skills and knowledge along the way. We will explore the factors that can inhibit us in delivering a message, as well as those that might influence a recipient’s reactions.
Dealing with Deception and Self-Deception in Software Testing
Maintaining the truth about testing is essential to serving our stakeholders. That means dispelling myths and misconceptions about good testing and what it can and cannot do. In this half-day experiential workshop we’ll explore the testing deceptions and self-deceptions we’ve all experienced, and we’ll work together to develop and practice techniques for ensuring our stakeholders aren’t fooled.
Shaping the Future - Your Testing Career
In this workshop, we’ll explore where you want to go in your testing career and the skills and personal qualities you want to develop. We’ll examine many career options, and resources and activities that can help you grow.. Finally, you’ll build a roadmap to the future you want to make for yourself in software testing.
Modeling Test Scenarios using Data
In this workshop, I describe a conceptual framework for modeling a scenario-based test and designing structured scenarios using the data for a transactional system. Workshop participants will get hands-on practice using the conceptual framework to design their own test scenarios.
Connecting the Dots
3-day workshop on managing and conducting a large-scale systems integration test
This 3-day course is primarily experiential, with participants working in groups on exercises designed to teach the practical skills needed to conceptualize, plan, manage and conduct a systems integration test that addresses the integration risks of a fictitious large project. The exercises are supplemented with course notes, sample deliverables, and useful tips from the instructor’s extensive real-world experience. Throughout, we will discuss strategies and techniques for forestalling and dealing with issues when we have less-than-perfect conditions for our test. ( Full description...)
Connecting the Dots
1-day version of this workshop, covering the key issues in managing and conducting a large-scale systems integration test .