Day One and Two of my time at Agile + DevOps East 2018 were spent taking the Agile Test Automation course from ICAgile. This course leads to the ICAGile Certified Professional in Agile Test Automation (ICP-ATA) certification. Given my current roles and responsibilities as a Test Engineer split across a pair of Agile Scrum teams, I felt that the ICP-ATA would be a valuable addition to both my toolbox and my résumé.
The two-day course, as led by Robert Sabourin (RobSab), provided a solid overview of good test automation practices within an Agile team framework. One important thing to consider is that this not an introduction to Agile level class. Students unfamiliar with core Agile concepts should definitely take one of the foundational Agile classes before considering this certification.
The primary value in the course comes from the examples and class work. The basic testing principles that underly good tests, are also the same ones which most often need automation: Story testing, Non-Functional testing, Experience & Exploratory testing, Static & Dynamic Analysis, and
Structural testing. These should be familiar concepts to people who’ve gone through other testing courses, and/or been in the software testing field for five years or more. The emphasis in this class was on how those testing components could be automated, and how that automation would fit into the framework of an Agile team.
Another highlight on the social side has been talking to some of my fellow Agile Test Automation classmates. We were a remarkably diverse group, including project managers from General Dynamics, an engineer from ExxonMobil, and a Test Engineer from Kaspersky, who was part of a group that flew here all the way from Moscow!
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| I know the F-16 is officially a LockMart product now, but when I think General Dynamics, I think F-16s. Which just makes this a flimsy excuse to post a cool picture of the Thunderbirds. |
A speed-networking course at the end of Day 2 (Monday), made for a bit of fun. In the span of an hour, this introvert managed to have solid conversations with three people (Tina, Christina, and Eric), find a few things in common with each of them, and swap business cards. So far, that’s been one of the highlights of the conference: I’ve been forcing myself to get out of my quiet, introverted comfort zone and talk to some different people each day.