TestCamp − leveling up our QA skills

The key to providing the highest quality of products is the constant growth of testing expertise. That’s why the whole QA team at iteo decided to attend this year’s TestCamp conference and workshops. It’s one of the biggest software testing events and this year’s agenda focused on good testing practices, testing automation, non-functional tests, testing tools and QA specializations.

The event took place on September 13 and 14 2019, at Hotel Ibis Style Wrocław Centrum, Poland. It consisted of two parts – workshops and conference. TestCamp 2019 invited 20 excellent speakers from the industry to do their presentations. 500 attendees took part! If you couldn’t be there, we invite you to read our highlights.

Day One – Workshops

On the first day of the event, 12 workshops were held at the same time. Because they touched upon different subjects, each team member could grow their skills in the area they were most interested in. They could choose from: mobile applications testing automation including API testing with Gherkin notation, SQL, C#, Java or Python, safety testing or even artificial intelligence! 

One of the security workshops was dedicated to Quick Sprint Security. Using Kali Linux and OWASP Broken Web Apps, the participants could learn how to detect vulnerabilities, Cross Site Scripting, SQL Injection and Cross Site Request Forgery, all under the guidance of a practitioner.

During network security and socio-technical attack dangers workshop, attendees could find out:

• What are the functionalities of different operating systems
• How to encrypt data
• What kinds of firewalls and anti-malware systems are there 

And many other technological solutions that can raise data safety.

“Data mining for testers” was another insightful workshop that allowed its participants to gain practical skills in Machine Learning with the usage of KNIME tool. It helps to predict which areas of tested software are most likely to have bugs.

The organizers also prepared an interesting workshop on automation. The theme was the usage of Appium and Oxygen tools to create automated mobile app tests based on the best practices. Another workshop included an automated API test using Rest Assured that allowed the attendees to gain practical skills on creating understandable scenarios in Gherkin notation.

Thanks to workshop formula, all participants could receive not only theoretical knowledge but also a chance to use it in practice doing their tasks. Specialist mentors were watching over and helping when necessary.

Day Two – The Conference

As always, the event was happening at Hotel Ibis Style Wrocław Centrum which is conveniently located close to Wroclaw’s main train station. It is also a very comfortable facility for any conference with that many attendees. TestCamp 2019 was divided between 3 themes: Skills, Trends & Tools and Automation. The topic of first speech for all participants was titled “Project like The Tower of Babel – effective communication from the perspective of a tester” and was presented by Alicja Polska. She underlined how essential good communication is for testers and gave useful tips on how to make it more efficient. She also talked about the difference between good and bad communication practices.

Further prelections were happening three at a time, accordingly to mentioned themes. This way each attendee could pick the one that was closest to their professional interest.

As part of Skills theme, the topics touched upon a wide range of competencies that are needed at the position of software testers:

• Effective conclusion drawing based on detected bugs
• Seeing own mistakes as chances to learn and grow one’s skills 
• Test Manager’s areas of responsibility
• A talk through one lecturer’s career path, complemented with profession information and desired characteristics of a pentester

Lectures from this theme have also brought up the growing popularity of IoT and its challenges among testers. We could also find out what kinds of problems testers can encounter when doing performance testing, based on the example of Allegro’s team that was responsible for customer support services. 

Meanwhile, Trends & Tools theme included:

• Basics of IoT hacking with the usage of pentesting in tests
• Automation for business and trends in this area
• Implementation of Continuous Testing and ways to create a stable testing environment for mobile apps

Speakers also presented the most popular tools for app tests and how to effectively use them in our everyday work.

Many interesting lectures were conducted through the Automation theme for all automating testers out there. Advantages and drawbacks of the automatic navigation desktops were discussed. Good practices for automatic test using tools like API, Selenium and Docker were presented, including information on how to add them to the tester’s everyday work. It also touched the subject of automatic tests implementation into projects with the engagement and support of software developers. BackStopJS tool was introduced. It helps to avoid visual regression of www apps. We could also learn what are headless browsers and how to test web applications using them.

At the end of the conference, Jakub Rosiński did a standup titled “Testing is like having sex. If they’re both good, they have a lot in common”. It was a great way to energize the audience after an intense day.

Festive wrap-up of the conference included acknowledgments of the presenters and attendees but also prize handovers for the winners of the “best testing dry joke” competition. All the jokes could be proposed by participants during the event.

Diversity of topics was the reason why everyone could attend this conference – including beginners but also experienced testing specialists. TestCamp was extremely interesting and it allowed everyone to level up their competences. It also inspired us to keep growing within the field of software testing.

To sum it up

For each of our teammates, it is very important to constantly grow our knowledge and learn new software testing skills. We want to achieve the highest quality of our work.

Being a part of workshops and TestCamp 2019 conference was a very valuable experience. Its complex and interesting agenda allowed us to pick the most interesting topics for us. All the issues that were discussed during presentations and while networking with other participants were a proof that our work model at iteo and our expansion plans are according to the newest technological trends of mobile and web app testing. At the same time, going there together was a great opportunity to integrate the QA team and it was awesome to spend time together in the city after the event.

If you want to develop excellent, bug-free software – don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re here to help!