Oredev Conference 2025 Day 3
This is the third blog post in a 3 post series of my experience at the 2025 Öredev Conference.
Check out my blog post on Day 1 at Öredev Conference here.
Check out my blog post on Day 2 at Öredev Conference here.
Live Exploratory Testing by Elizabeth Zagroba
Zagroba performed exploratory testing live on stage where she explained her thought-process as she did it.
I didn’t take too many notes in this session but mainly just enjoyed listening to her explain what she did and why.
Recommend you watch this session when its uploaded to the Öredev Youtube channel and share this with your colleagues who want to actually see how exploratory testing is done.
Useful Resources Mentioned
- http status codes
- REST API Test Heuristic POISED
- Explore It! book by Elizabeth Hendrickson
- Contemporary Exploratory Testing book by Maaret Pyhäjärvi
- Exploratory Testing Index by Maaret Pyhäjärvi
- My Most Test Heuristics with Examples
- FEW HICCUPS by Michael Bolton
- Workflowy
- Microheuristics
TestOps: A Journey to Story-Based Releases by Mazin Inaad
Inaad did an experience report where they started in a place of a constantly broken main branch and no development process to a more stable structure with story-based releases.
His experience report was set up in different themed chapters. Each chapter had a different fantasy theme coming from various popular Fantasy movies/series/books such as The Hobbit, Harry Potter and The Hunger Games.
Inaad was asked to set up Test Automation for a project. The client wanted flexibility so they could release often.
At the start, every backend service had their own Github repo and they didn’t have a proper development process.
Fortunately, the project was very open to experimenting. He needed to come up with a process that worked for all 4 teams.
He utilised Test Strategy Storming (based on event storming) to get everyone together and gain a common understanding of what is important for testing. In these sessions, they were mainly concerned with being on the same page of what certain terms stand for. Same thing with the test environment - had to be on the same page on what they are used for.
They used Value Stream Mapping to figure out the development proess and to calculate the efficiency of the process.
The goal was to have a main branch that aws always deployable to prod.
They also had to tackle the problem of having stories where changes (for these stories) needed to be done in multiple repos - this can be hard to keep track of mentally. They then had an idea to use monorepos and make changes for stories in a single PR.
They then later used Hem Charts to help keep track of build versions of different components.
Wanted each branch to have its own dev environment - create up to 30 short-lived namespaces.
Inaad learned that people needs to experience certain things and be taken on a journey. He realised he couldn’t always just tell someone what to do, but give them what they ask for, let them feel the pain and then they can later be convinced.
For example: There was initially pushback against namespaces as others thought it would be harder to maintain.
Useful Resources Mentioned
Access Points for Testing: From Human Opportunities to Digital Techniques by Emma Armstrong
[Armstrong] shared techniques and strategies on how to help testers gain access to testing and make testing easier.
What are access points?
access - the means or opportunity to approach or enter a place.
point - a particular spot, place, or position in an area or on a map, object, or surface.
It can be easy to forget to invite people if you don’t see them.
If you can’t see conversations happening, you can’t join in (no water cooler moments). This is now harder as many companies have moved into a hybrid/remote setup.
Good to think about what can be done in the technical process to get feedback?
You need the right data set up in th test environment.
How can we design the application for testability? (so we can access it at the right point at the right time)
Useful Resources Mentioned
- Software Testing with Generative AI by Mark Winteringham
- Perfect Software and Other illusions about Testing by Gerry Weinberg
- Agile Testing by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory
- Explore It! by Elizabeth Hendrickson
- Clean Architecture by Robert Martin
- The Person You Mean to Be by Dolly Chugh
- Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson et al
- Humble Inquiry by Edgar Schein
- The Catalyst by Jonah Berger
- The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier
