5th & 6th june, 2021
CElebrating failures!
Hundreds of Precious Lessons You can learn from the Bests in the business.
Free benefits from our Lead Sponsor HeadSpin with each FailQonf Ticket
You want to learn from others’ failures and avoid those, or you want to fail yourself, lose time and opportunities on something you could have learned from others?
We got 23 Best in the business speaking from across the World. The average Experience being 12+ Years. How great is that?
18 amazing and curated Talks your way from the best in class Speakers. All around real failures they experienced with Lessons.
Get your questions answered by the Speakers live, after each session. You don't get such opportunities often. We are right or we are right?
An Expert Panel hosting James Bach, Aprajita Mathur, Michael Bolton, and Anna Royzman. How amazing? Let's learn from Failures.
Fireside Chat with one of the most passionate Testing Leader around. Pradeep Soundararajan in Fireside Chat with Lalit Bhamare.
From Testing to Automation to Performance Engineering to Career Guidance to Infrastructure to Coaching, we got it all covered.
Your Network is your Net Worth. Heard of this saying? FailQonf is your chance to network with hundreds of global Testers and grow.
Experience The Test Tribe Community vibe while you join our Tribe of thousands. Passion, Energy, Growth, and Good vibes.
Free benefits from our Lead Sponsor HeadSpin with each FailQonf Ticket
Haven’t we already heard enough glamorized success stories at conferences? FailQonf is a conference dedicated to normalizing and celebrating our failures in our industry.
Let’s look back at our own Career and Life, we all would remember failures teaching us the strongest lessons.
Hear failure stories around software testing and quality from experienced to rising leaders, from non-testers to top executives.
Imagine the learning that would unfold when these stories come to life at FailQonf, a virtual Software Testing Conference like none other.
If you have ever failed, FailQonf is the conference to attend in 2021.
See you there.
When is it happening?
Abstract
You’ve heard of a con artist, right? Someone is is an expert at conning people. Well, I’m here to introduce you to a new concept, failure artist. A failure artist is someone who has become an expert in handling failure. I’ve had so many failures I feel I’ve earned the title of failure artist.
Today, I’m going to share with you a story on how I became a motorcycle rider. Riding a motorbike around Australia has always been a secret dream of mine. The only problem was, I didn’t own a motor bike, and I didn’t know how to ride one either! In this talk, I’ll take you through some of the epic failures and the parallels between that and my life as a software tester. I’ll then share my lessons learned and how perception is often half the battle when dealing with failure.
Start up those engines and let a great day of learning begin!
Bio
Anne-Marie excels at creating spaces where quality thrives. As co-founder of Testing Times and its principal quality engineer, Anne-Marie is the lead advocate on quality engineering and how to navigate change and keep quality in the minds of all. Standing her in good stead is her years of experience as Head of Engineering at Tyro Payment, Quality Engineering Consultant and Test Automation Engineer. Anne-Marie’s technical background as an Electronic Engineer has enabled her to speak to both technical and product expertise. Anne-Marie is an international keynoter having spoken at multiple international conferences. You can read more about her ideas on her blog https://mavericktester.com and/or catch some of her thoughts on Twitter at @charrett.
In chess, the word blunder means a very bad move by someone who should know better. Even though system-level functional test automation has been around for a long time, people still make some very bad moves and serious blunders. The most common misconception in automation is thinking that human testing is the same as automated testing. And this thinking accounts for most of the blunders in system level test automation. Dorothy Graham takes us on a tour of the top four of these blunders, including: Do Testing Tools actually Test? Where are you going with your automation?, Is it all about the Tool(s)? (Silver Bullet Syndrome), and Automating the Wrong Things. Different skills, approaches, and objectives are needed or you’ll end up with inefficient automation, high maintenance costs, and wasted effort. Join Dot to discover how you can avoid these common blunders and achieve valuable system-level test automation.
Dorothy Graham has worked as an independent consultant and trainer in software testing and test automation for 50 years, and is co-author of 5 books: Software Inspection, Software Test Automation, Foundations of Software Testing, Experiences of Test Automation and A Journey Through Test Automation Patterns (see TestAutomationPatterns.org). She has been a popular and entertaining speaker at hundreds of conferences and events over the years. Dot has been on the boards of conferences and publications in software testing, including programme chair for EuroStar (twice). She was a founder member of the ISEB Software Testing Board and helped develop the first ISTQB Foundation Syllabus. She was awarded the European Excellence Award in Software Testing in 1999 and the first ISTQB Excellence Award in 2012. Now retired, she enjoys singing in choirs and small groups.
Abstract
Having a learning disability is more common than you think, but at the same time, it changes the way dyslexic people approach different aspects of life. It initially gave me a tough time in my academics and later in my professional life. Still, once I learned to manage and navigate it, it gave me excellent tools and lessons for thriving in other things in life, especially when it comes to failure.
This is my story of dealing with failure and understanding my learning patterns to do better in life. I learned how to tinker around and became comfortable with being back to square one. Embracing and leveraging your quirks can be an asset, and that’s what we will talk about!
Bio
Faiza Yousuf is a technologist with over a decade of experience in building products and teams. She is an award-winning community leader and the force behind WomenInTechPK. She co-founded CodeGirls, a community-funded coding boot camp for girls, and runs the online education program for Blockchain and AI from CryptoChicksPakistan.
She leads the product development wing at Genetech Solutions and runs a consulting practice as a Product Management Expert. She is a top-rated freelancer on Upwork with the honor to be part of Upwork’s first-ever social impact report. She is also working with P@SHA’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee to improve gender parity in Pakistan’s tech ecosystem.
Abstract
Abstract
Karen will share a past project experience that came with several challenges – lack of clear objectives, shared understanding of the technical aspects of the work and SMART goals. She will highlight observations and actions she took in an effort to prevent project failure. The presentation will offer some context of the project but will not identify the client. The failure points will focus on lessons learned and how Project Doom changed the way she now approaches work.
Bio
Karen has been a longtime contributor in software testing. She is a frequent speaker at conferences. She is a contributing author to the book, Beautiful Testing by O’Reilly publishers. She has published numerous articles and blogs about her experiences with software testing. For more on her speaking and writing, see her website: http://www.karennicolejohnson.com. She is currently employed at Grainger as the Director of Engineering Effectiveness.
Abstract
Stories of #epicfails are pretty common in the performance world during busy times like Thanksgiving shopping when websites go down under load. And it is not limited to just the retail world, we have seen everyone from the likes of streaming companies apologizing on Twitter when their service couldn’t keep up with the demand on the launch of a new season of a popular series to even travel companies that cannot keep up with holiday demands at times. Join Kaushal Dalvi who has spent 10+ years in the performance world as he describes some of the failures he has seen that eventually lead to some of these public meltdowns to make sure you don’t see some of these tell-tale signs in your organization.
Bio
Since he got his first computer at age thirteen, Kaushal Dalvi has been interested in systems and software performance. He spent days researching performance characteristics of different motherboards, CPUs, GPUs, RAM, and disks to configure and overclock them in order to squeeze the maximum frames per second out of the games he played. Kaushal built and maintained websites for local businesses, where he started learning about performance and reliability. He developed a taste for it, and now ten years later he continues working in the same field leading teams that deal with workload modeling, test scripting and execution, bottleneck analysis, debugging, and much more.
Abstract
I’m a fixer. If something is broken or ineffective, I dig in to figure out why and solve the problem. However, not all projects want solutions. They thrive on the dysfunction that rules them.
Through a mix of personal stories & lessons learned, this session will discuss how to deal with being a fixer on projects that don’t want fixing.
You’ll learn to:
Bio
A passionate Exploratory Test Manager with 19 years of diverse IT experience, Nancy enjoys working with teams that are implementing or enhancing their testing practices and provides adaptive testing approaches to exploratory, context driven, and traditional testing teams. She has coached test teams in various environments and facilitated numerous local and international workshops and presentations. From small scale to multi-million dollar projects; Nancy has played many roles within testing including Project Test Manager, Test Manager, Test Lead and Tester. Her most recent work has been exclusively with Exploratory Testing implementations at large scale companies.
Abstract
Raise your hand if you initially failed to prioritize your automated E2E tests. From having Jira issues with ill-fitting workflows to making well-intentioned assumptions, there are almost infinite ways that we can fail as managers. In this talk, I will share my journey across the testing galaxy with you and discuss concrete examples of failure where I grew as a test automation leader. Why fail alone when there is so much more to be gained by learning from each other? And remember to never give up and never surrender!
Abstract
Rob Sabourin has been managing software engineering professionals since 1982. Fresh from school, as a
recent graduate, with tons of technical programming experience, Rob was charged with managing a
development team. As an Engineer, Rob had some knowledge and extensive training. As a manager
Rob had no training, no experience, no mentors, no books, and no idea what he was in for! Rob hit his
head against many walls as he learned about leadership, through the school of hard knocks, and by the
way he continues to do so even today.
In this dynamic, high energy, presentation Rob shares five major, and very formative, mistakes he made
and the lessons learned from them.
Leadership is not a popularity contest.
Delegate the problem not the solution.
Technical competence is not enough.
Identify the right stakeholders.
Organizations change around you and despite you.
Bio
Rob Sabourin has more than thirty-nine years of management experience leading teams of software
development professionals. A highly respected member of the software engineering community, Rob
has managed, trained, mentored, and coached thousands of top professionals in the field. He frequently
speaks at conferences and writes on software engineering, SQA, testing, management, and
internationalization. Rob authored “I am a Bug!”, the popular software testing children’s book; works as
an adjunct professor of software engineering at McGill University; and serves as the principal consultant
(and president/janitor) of AmiBug.Com, Inc. Contact Rob at robsab@gmail.com.
Abstract
Have you ever wanted to try a quality coach role? Sam tried one and was let go after 6 months. This talk goes into what went wrong in that process, managing expectations and the hiring process.
This company was trying to scale a quality mindset in its 60+ engineering team with 2 testers.
Bio
Sam is a Test Engineer based in Sydney. She has worked in tech for over 10 years and specialises in mobile app testing. She is the director of BugHunterSam, a company that helps software engineering teams improve their own quality engineering practices. Sam is active in the tech community, she led the Sydney Testers meet-up group for 4 years and runs live exploratory pair testing with people all over the world every Sunday.
To err is human, the true measure of success is how you bounce back from the failures. Come to this session to understand the common errors/failures at each stage of the career, traits that cause these outcomes, the denials that follow and how we can avoid some of these failures, better so how we can turn around these failures into success stories.
Srinivas Kantipudi is an experienced Software Engineering & Quality Assurance enthusiast with diverse experience driving quality of products in the application development space. He has held a wide variety of roles ranging from Developer, Test engineer, head of QA CoE, Engineering head to Scrum Master and Product Owner. He is passionate about testing, designed and implemented several tools/frameworks, always ready to try out new things, and constantly looks at ways to improve the process.
Abstract
We all fail at some point but, the more important part is how to tackle that failure. I see failure as an opportunity for improvement. It is ok to fail but what matters is how you bounce back! You can learn just as much from your mistakes as your successes. Throughout, my career I have seen loads of failures; gaps in automation framework, failure due to lack of resources, or even scrapping the project which the team worked on for 18 months! I always try my best not to repeat the same mistake, instead learn from it and open, so others don’t go through the same. We succeeded and failed as a team. In this talk, I’ll share how one failure opened our eyes to look deeper into the infrastructure, and we worked as a team to improve our estate.
Bio
Suman Bala is an award-winning QA advocate with a passion for improvement in quality processes and is a strong believer in Test Automation. She feels proud of how people’s perspective has changed regarding testing throughout her career. She is striving to instill the idea that quality is everyone’s responsibility as opposed to merely laying it at the feet of QA. She is a co-organizer for the Ministry of Testing Leeds meet-up. She is a mentor and coach at work and within the wider testing community. She is co-designing and delivering the “Software Testing Bootcamp” sponsored by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority.
Abstract
He considers ‘having a beginners mindset’ as his biggest strength.
A good part of who he is comes from my interests and hobbies. He is a self-trained marathon runner. Have done 18 full marathons+ distances (42.195 km) (did 100 km couple of times, also a 75 km). Is an avid Sketchnote artist, which is about representing complex concepts in simple sketches. My portfolio: https://www.
Abstract
In December of 1914, the laboratory and workshop run by Thomas Edison was destroyed by fire. Looking at the ruins, he said “There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start a new.”
Getting fired, made redundant, sacked. It does not matter what you call it, losing your position can be a devastating experience. It does not matter what the reason is. Getting sacked is usually seen as a massive failure. How you respond will determine if this is a permanent state or if you can recover, if not soar higher than before. Pete talks about the first time (there has been more than one!) he was fired, and how he answered the challenge.
Bio
Peter Walen is a strategist, technologist, and philosophical thinker who has spent the past 25 years focused on solving quality problems in complex organizations. His formal education included history, philosophy, music, and education. Using dialogical methodologies honed from years of teaching and technology experience, Pete works to help organizations, teams, and individuals enact positive change by changing the social relations in the organization.
Pete’s dialogical methodology has proven effective in large, enterprise organizations as well as small startups. Pete has employed his methodology in full-time, contract, and consultative capacities. He understands the nuanced challenges that testers face in an ever-changing landscape and uses the depth of his knowledge and breadth of his experience to make changes in the organizations where he works, and to help other software professionals do the same.
Pete enjoys making and teaching Irish and Scottish traditional and folk music. He also writes to share his experiences about the software industry. You can learn more about Pete’s philosophies of software testing and quality on his blog.
He is a member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), the Scrum Alliance, the Agile Alliance, and a former Member of the Board of Directors of The Association for Software Testing (AST).
Panel Topic
Inadequate and inefficient software testing practices can contribute to poor quality products released to customers. In this session, we’ll discuss different failures in software testing. We’ll aim to highlight and share experiences from the panel covering failures in both testing process/approach and individual tester level in the following areas,
1. Defining and implementing Test strategy
2. Setting up and obtaining ROI from test automation
3. Building & Retaining test teams
4. Common mistakes by testers in different roles they play
5. Dealing with Testing failures (optional)
Panelists
Anna Royzman:
Anna is a renowned international speaker and recognized expert in Software Test Leadership. In 2015, she founded Test Masters Academy which runs major international events: Test Leadership Congress, Test Masters Online, and ConTEST NYC, which made the list of the best global Software Testing conferences in 2018-2019. Anna held various test management roles for 14+ years, served as the Executive At Large on Association for Software Testing’s Board of Directors (2016-2017), as the President of AST Quality Leader SIG (2012-2014), and as the Software Test Professionals Community Advisory Board Member (2014 2015). Anna is the founder of several Test/QA meetups in New York.
Linkedin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-royzman/
Twitter- https://twitter.com/qa_nna
Aprajita Mathur:
Aprajita Mathur is a mom, inventor, mentor, and international speaker with an engineering background in Bioinformatics. She has more than 10+ years of software testing experience. She has worked on a wide range of products like instrument software, LIMS, integrated solutions, and data analysis pipelines which are used in the fields of agriculture, transplant genomics, forensics, and oncology. Currently, she leads the Bioinformatics Software Test team at Guardant Health, which builds the world’s leading comprehensive liquid biopsy. She also leads the chapter for “Women Who Test” in the bay area and hopes to grow this community. In her spare time, she loves to catch up on sleep and write new songs for her son.
Linkedin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprajitamathur/
Twitter- https://twitter.com/mathuraprajita
James Bach:
James is a founder of the Context-Driven school of testing. He created and teaches the Rapid Software Testing methodology, and has written two books: Lessons Learned in Software Testing (with Cem Kaner and Bret Pettichord) and a book about succeeding without going to a school, called Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar.
Linkedin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-bach-6188a811/
Twitter- https://twitter.com/jamesmarcusbach
Michael Bolton:
Michael’s Twitter Bio says- “I help people to solve testing problems that they don’t know how to solve, and help them learn how to do that for themselves.”
Michael is a consultant and trainer specializing in Rapid Software Testing (see http://www.developsense.com), a skill set and a mindset focused on high-value testing that is fast, inexpensive, credible, and accountable. He also writes extensively about testing and software development on his blog (see http://www.developsense.com/blog).
– He helps organizations, software development groups, and testers to defend the value of projects and products in any development context: Agile, Lean, DevOps, Scrum, or more traditional development models.
– He provides consulting to executives and managers who want the fastest, least expensive testing that still completely fulfills the testing mission.
– He teaches Rapid Software Testing—one of the world’s most highly regarded classes on software testing.
– He helps people responsible for testing to focus on a fundamental management question: are there problems that threaten the on-time, successful completion of development work?
– He teaches other classes including Rapid Software Testing for Managers, Rapid Software Testing for Programmers, Rapid Software Testing Strategy, Critical Thinking for Testers, and more.
Linkedin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-bolton-08847/
Twitter- https://twitter.com/michaelbolton
Guest: Pradeep Soundararajan
Pradeep Soundararajan is the Chief Servant to Employees and Customers of Moolya Testing, a company he founded. He has been a Tester, Independent Consultant, Test Tool Developer (using Perl), Test Coach, Test Management Consultant, and Product Owner of Testing Tools such as Bugasura.io and whilst wearing a hat as a businessman. Pradeep is the author of the book Buddha in Testing. Too much about him. He is who he is because of the people. He is living a life that can be represented in one word – Ubuntu. Many good people make him.
Linkedin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/testertested/
Twitter- https://twitter.com/testertested
Host: Lalit Bhamare
Lalit is working with XING SE, Germany as Senior Test Engineer. He is the Chief Editor and Co-founder of “Tea-time with Testers” magazine. He is a testing coach and consultant with a specialization in Rapid Software Testing methodology and BBST foundations by AST, USA.
Lalit is also the co-creator of the “State of Testing Survey” project, which is the largest testing survey in the world. He likes helping organizations for onboarding them with Context Driven Testing and provides on-demand consultation around implementing the same at work.
Linkedin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/lalitkumarbhamare/
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Lalitbhamare
Abstract
Many years ago, Stephen Covey said, “Nothing Fails Like Success”. While many have been given credit for the quote, Covey offered his explanation. He explained how people and organizations will find success, and then believe that they will continue to be successful doing the same thing into the future.
Tell this theory to Blockbuster Video, Circuit City, and Radio Shack, to name a few. These were companies that were extremely successful but chose not to grow with the rapidly changing world. They are now just a memory to many of us. They could not sustain greatness.
Jerry Weinberg said, “No matter how it looks at first, it’s always a people problem”. Great organizations do not fail alone. These failures result in people that develop a sense of complacency that allows solutions, which once gave positive results, to no longer be enough for success in the future. Each of us has the opportunity to help drive our lives, our careers, and our organizations to stay ahead of the success curve.
In my presentation, I want to share many situations within my career and experiences where I learned that I needed to grow to keep up, to stay relevant, and ultimately, succeed.
We will discuss the following:
Bio
Mike Lyles is a Director of QA and Project Management with over 25 years of IT experience in multiple organizations, including Fortune 50 companies. He has exposure in various IT leadership roles: software development, program management office, and software testing. He has led various teams within testing organizations: functional testing, test environments, software configuration management, test data management, performance testing, test automation, and service virtualization.
Mike has been successful in career development, team building, coaching, and mentoring of IT & QA professionals. Mike has been an international keynote speaker at multiple conferences and events and is regularly published in testing publications and magazines. His first published motivational book, “The Drive-Thru Is Not Always Faster”, was released in 2019. His book site is www.TheDriveThruBook.com
Abstract
Admitting failure is hard. Admitting failure as a manager feels impossible. Yet, that vulnerability is exactly what managers need in order to build trust and encourage learning and experimentation, which are keys to innovation, in software and in life. Jess will talk about her failures and lessons learned, as a teacher and a manager, and share key takeaways with the audience so they can fail forward, gracefully.
Bio
Dr. Jess Ingrassellino is an engineering manager at Influx Data. She is a frequent speaker at international conferences and focuses on community, collaboration, and improvisational practices for enriching professional life. Jess is also the Founder of TeachCode, where she focuses on writing curricula and teaching computer programming and software testing. In her spare time, Jess engages in creative pursuits, including playing the violin, writing poetry, and sewing.
Abstract
Bio
Ajay Balamurugadas, goes by the handle ‘ajay184f’ in the testing community and is continuously re-inventing his testing methodology. He co-founded Weekend Testing – a worldwide movement for skilled testing authored six small books under the theme “What If” downloadable at his blog. His latest book is available at www.leanpub.com/50mistakes. His friends associate the terms – ‘Change Agent, Idea Man, Motivational’ to him. He tweets under @ajay184f and loves to have long conversations on software testing and life in general. He is currently leading the delivery at Qapitol QA – Provider of Continuous Testing Solutions to DevOps Teams.
Abstract
As test professionals, our motivation is to make software/systems fail. Not a vicarious thrill, but a deep motivation to deliver clean code.
This talk takes an interesting look at our fascination for failures as:
“The alluring” – to observe, analyze and understand
“The luring” – to seek out issues
“The inuring” – to strengthen code outlining interesting thoughts on learning, perturbation, and prevention respectively.
Bio
Ashok is the Founder & CEO of STAG Software, a pure play test boutique. Passionate about solving problems, he is currently focused on SmartQA enabled by Immersive Session Testing. An avid long-distance cyclist, ultra-marathoner, and now a wordsmith, he sees poetry in everything. Proud alumni of College of Engg Guindy and Illinois Tech.
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Q: FailQonf will have live talks or recorded?
A: FailQonf will have the Speakers addressing through live sessions.
Q: What is the duration of the event?
A: The duration of the event would be around 7-8 hours on both the days, covering multiple time zones.
Q: Will session recording be shared with participants?
A: No. This would be a live event and we highly encourage attendees to enjoy and learn from it live, while they add life to the event.
Q: Will I be awarded a Participation Certification if I attend?
A: Yes, a Participation Certificate will be awarded to every attendee.
Q: How can I support this event?
A: -You can bring in your testing peers to register for the event and join The Test Tribe community.
– You can spread the word on social media using the hashtag #FailQonf and tag us.
– You can support FailQonf by making donations using the ‘Addons’ section at the bottom end of the Attendee Registration form.
Q: When do I get event joining instructions?
A: Event link and instructions will be shared with registered participants 2 days prior to the event
Q: I want my entire team to attend, is there a way to do bulk registrations?
A: You can share the list of participants with First Name, Last name, Email address, Country, Organisation, Designation with us at contact@thetesttribe.com and we will bulk register your teams.
Q: Is there any group discount?
A: Yes. Same will get auto applied on checkout when you buy 5 or more tickets in one transaction.
