Talks

Conference, Meetup Talks & Bio

Conferences Talks

My Story of Kanban and Its Positive Impact on Testing(TestBash Manchester 2019)

Title: My Story of Kanban and Its Positive Impact on Testing

Abstract: 18 months ago I joined a new company as a tester and was part of a new team that was forming. The decision to use Kanban had an enormous influence on how we tested as a team.

My personal story of testing with Kanban includes No split between development and testing – nothing was considered done until it was tested. Everyone became a tester. Supported a quality culture and test coaching “Quality gate” became kanban stages Production issues were prioritised over feature work. How we solved a serious bottleneck in our testing and how it improved overall quality.

Takeaways

Kanban is more than a visual workflow management tool
Kanban can support improved quality
Makes everyone a tester
Improves collaboration and communication

Presented: TestBash Manchester 2019

Slides: PDF of the Prezi Slides

Video: Testbash-manchester-2019 Video

The Surprising Benefits of Exploring Other Disciplines and Industries(SoftTest 2018,TestBash Brighton 2019)

Title: The Surprising Benefits of Exploring Other Disciplines and Industries

Abstract: Could exploring diverse disciplines and industries lead to dramatic improvements in your effectiveness as a tester?

The craft of testing has its origins in the social sciences. The characteristics that we seek to develop as testers include communication, creativity, critical thinking and curiosity.

Typically we focus on metaphors from engineering and manufacturing and learn about the disciplines of these industries.

There is so much to gain by learning about other industries such as Aviation and Health Care, and studying other disciplines, for instance, heuristics originated from behavioural economics and mind mapping was developed over centuries by philosophers and psychologists.

In this talk, I will share my journey of being transformed from a regimented confirmation tester to a context-based exploratory tester.

These changes occurred by the challenges faced by testing software in different industries and more importantly studying non-engineering disciplines.

Presented: Soft Test Dublin 2018, TestBash Brighton 2019

Slides: Slide Deck

Video: Testbash-brighton-2019 Video

The Surprising Benefits of Exploring the Aviation Industry(RebelCon 2019, Scheduled for AgileLeanIreland2020)

Title: The Surprising Benefits of Exploring the Aviation Industry

Abstract: Typically we focus on metaphors from engineering and manufacturing and learn about the disciplines of these industries. There is so much to gain by learning about other industries such as Aviation and Health Care.

Having previously delivered this talk at SoftTest Dublin 2018 and TestBash Brighton 2019, an updated version of this talk will focus on the similarities between Tech and Healthcare, and what we can learn from the Aviation Industry.

Takeaways:

The relationship between Culture and Quality

5 keys learnings from the Aviation Industry

The majority of Innovations in Testing Approaches and Techniques have come from other Disciplines and Industries

The importance of Exploring in Software Testing

Presented: RebelCon 2019

Slides: RebelCon 2019 Slides

Experimenting our way to Team-based Testing (SoftTest 2019: Joint Presentation with Rob Meaney)

Title: Experimenting our way to Team-based Testing (Joint Presentation with Rob Meaney)

Abstract: Are you overwhelmed with the burden of testing? Do you feel that the responsibility of testing rests solely on your shoulders? Do you feel like you’re the bottleneck to your team’s productivity? Between Conor and Rob, they have accumulated 30 years of testing experience. They have both worked through a variety of painful testing experiences and wanted to break the cycle of the “lone tester”.

Poppulo provided an opportunity for them both to work together for a second time and they decided it was time to explore a different path. Three years and dozens of experiments later, Conor and Rob will openly share their successes, failures, and plans for the future. In this talk, they will describe how to get people from different disciplines involved in testing, how to adopt a whole team responsibility for quality, how to use visualisation to manage the testing burden and how to build testing skills across different disciplines.

Presented: SoftTest 2019

Slides: SoftTest 2019 Slides

Ministry of Testing Cork Meetup Talks

Testing Techniques and heuristics – May 2017

Presented a talk Testing Techniques and heuristics at the 2017 May Meetup Ministry of Testing Cork.

Blog written after this talk

An Overview of Exploratory Testing and Tools -June 2017 (Joint Presentation with Rob Meaney)

An Overview of Exploratory Testing and Tools, 2017 June Meetup Ministry of Testing.
Exploratory Testing Slides

Shifting Left, Right and everything in between – September 2017

A talk on how testing “shifted left” and then began to shift right

Blog written after this talk: How the Role of Software Testing has changed

Introduction to Test Automation (aka Automated Checking) – December 2017
An Introduction to Test Automation (aka Automated Checking)”, December 2017 Meetup Ministry of Testing.

“Monolith to Microservices – A testers perspective” – Feb 2018 (Joint Presentation with Rob Meaney)

“Monolith to Microservices – A testers perspective”, Feb 2018 Meetup Ministry of Testing.
Blog written after this talk

Bio

Conor Fitzgerald is a Quality Advocate with 15 years of experience. He is passionate about whole team testing and working with teams on quality improvements. Currently, he is working as Head of Testing for Poppulo in Cork, Ireland. He has spoken at a number of conferences in recent years, including SoftTestDublin, TestBash, and RebelCon.

Conor is an active member of the test community and is a Co-Founder of the Ministry of Testing Cork.

Previous positions included Test Consultant, Test Lead/Manager and SDET. These positions were held in a wide variety of industries from embedded systems to financial systems with companies ranging from startups to large multinationals such as Intel.

Occasionally blogs at conorfi.com and tweets at @conorfi.