I was speaking on Hustef back in 2016 and I really enjoyed it so I was glad for the possibility to be back this year.
It was again in Budapest, a nice city, but I had only a few hours for some sightseeing.
The theme of this year was “Inspire, Invest, Innovate”. However, from my point of view, more than half of the topics were about AI and that was a bit too much.
There were more than 700 attendees this year and for such a big crowd new venue was needed. The venue of the Hungarian Railway Museum was very impressive. But it was also quite loudly because it is one big open space that was split into three areas just by some thin curtains. A nice surprise was the speaker’s room in a historical train wagon.
TUTORIALS
Monday tutorials took place in HubHub building and its architecture is very nice and interesting with big atrium full of flowers. Unfortunately, I had no time to fully attend any tutorial because I was finishing slides for my talk, but I was at least listening and I made a few notes
- What pain do I have when AI can help? Is it really helping? Does it bring some new kind of pain?
- We are in the time when “today” in technology does not matter because change is so quick and it will be even quicker
- Do not wait until AI is perfect and do not be so strict with the definition of “good enough”
- Think and then do. The impact is in doing, not thinking.
Day 1
I was still preparing for my talk so I visited only some speeches.
Keynote: Tariq King – AI for Software Testing: The Ultimate Journey
- If you want to inspire others, you have to inspire yourself
Talk: Roy Osherove – QA in a Pipeline Based Organization
- This was very good speech
- If we could get rid of people it would work much better because computers actually behave as they should, it means as they have been programmed. People are problematic.
- People in automated pipelines are bottlenecks
- The pipeline is either green or red. But how to trust the color?
- The old world with lipstick is still the old world.
- There should not be any orange color. Red color removes the stress from guessing if we can release or not.
- Simple, or at least one, variation should be tested on the highest level, but all the others have to go lower.
Talk: Prashant Hedge – Revolutionize your testing strategy with MindMap driven testing
- It was a nice introduction to Mind Mapping and some basic ideas how can we use them in testing, but there was nothing that could do a revolution in my testing strategy
Talk: Aleksandra Kornecka – Cognitive approach to software quality
- I wrote done only one idea: “People are purely sequential – we need clear queues”
Talk: Branka Rakic – Define your test strategy because Agile does not mean unstructured
- Very general talk about basic principles. It would be good for beginners but it was marked for intermediates.
- Habits are not randoms, they are long term and repeatable
Talk: Geoff Meyer – What is our job when machines do testing
- Nice introduction talk about AI
- Think about every task you do and how it would look like if AI is involved or doing that instead of you.
Talk: Gábor Kapros – a job for introverts or extroverts?
- Very interesting talk, nice comparison and different points of view. I enjoyed this one
Keynote: Philip Lew – The 8th habit of effective testers
- Perfect keynote
- Just a few years ago we started using the word “humans”
- Monitoring has to be long term and continuous
- Be – Do – Have
- You can be needed but not wanted at the same time
- We can understand and believe in abstract concepts and therefore we can unite at scale to collaborate
- Practice does not make perfect. Practice with feedback does.
- It does not matter how good your ideas are if you do not know how to communicate them
After-Party
- After-party was fun. Specially big table football.
Day 2
Mine Talk – Customer Testing and Acceptance
- I had my talk right after the keynote and I enjoyed it.
- It was my first time doing a presentation just 20min long. It was challenging and to be honest, I did not like it. It is somewhere between lighting talk and normal and that is tricky. I was not alone, most of the other speakers I spoke with agreed it is not a best one.
- However, I found the way how to say everything I wanted and I got some interesting questions and follow-ups.
I attended some other talks on the second day, but in general, they were just average or very basic. Maybe I was too tired.
I am sad I missed the closing keynote because I had to catch the train. I heard that one was excellent.
Conclusion
I was pleased to be part of the Hustef again, a lot of fun, learning and I met some new friends there. I would definitely recommend to visit it.
All talks were recorder and you can find them here – Hustef 2019
