Dragons Out

Are you wondering how you can transform your organization into DevOps culture and practices? Or are you just transforming your organization to a cloud-native, AI-enabled, fast, feedback-seeking organization promoting autonomous teams? (That is DevOps too : ). And what is the role of testing in all of that?  To the last question, you'll get some answers and you'll be able to contribute with your own experience by joining my workshop (co-facilitated by Rik Marselis).  We planned a great workshop where we explain first a little bit about how testing and quality fit in Agile, then, as an extension, how they fit in DevOps. After the introduction, we go into a facilitated workshop, where we together brainstorm and discuss different ways of quality and testing to be present in the DevOps loop as early as possible to have the best effect on great quality and better business for the companies and smoother experience for the users. And to the rest of the questions - many other great fre...

In recent times, it seems like the whole world has gone crazy trying to use Generative AI (Artificial Intelligence). These LLMs (large language models) can create content based on user prompts.  Now I tried the LLM Brave Leo (Mixtral) to create a Dragons Out -like story for me. Although it was just experimental, the results are quite impressive. I used just three prompts. Finally, I tried to get a picture of all this - a fourth prompt. It didn't work, but I got a description, which I used in a prompt of a picture generation AI, Deep AI.  Did you learn something from the below? I think an LLM can help with quality like this. But the picture was quite disappointing to me. Anyway, I think I'll write my own stuff also in the future and ask Adri for more fantastic illustrations. Me: What is RPG? Brave Leo: RPG stands for "Role-Playing Game." It is a type of game where players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting and engage in activities to develop their ch...

The year 2023 flew past. I spent plenty of time on the software testing leadership handbook ACT 2 LEAD , which I completed and published with my fantastic FiSTB colleague Marko Rytkönen. With that, we hope to raise awareness of software testing in the non-testing parts of any organization, as their decisions greatly affect software testing. However, I haven't forgotten the Dragons Out books and the need for children's learning. The free PowerPoint presentation, Dragon Lesson in Software Testing, available under a Creative Commons (i.e. free) license, keeps getting more languages. At the time of writing this, it is available in 22 languages. The latest addition is the Arabic language. For that, numerous thanks to Mohammad Khlouf and Taha Othman/YouNovel. I also mention recent translations of Portuguese, Korean, Japanese and Czech. And then several translations are underway - thumbs up for the volunteers doing them. The translation projects include Hindi, Hebrew, Slovakian, Dani...

Many things happening. I keep promoting the Dragons Out book and software testing to schools and people in general, but I've also been very involved in a new book for leaders in organizations, ACT 2 LEAD. First, what's new with Dragons Out. I recently had a chance to exhibit at a teacher trade fair Päijät-Hämeen mentoripäivä 2023. (see the pic at the end). It was great to be invited there again and have my book and free teacher materials exhibited to many teachers! There, and also generally, I have offered to come to speak for free at schools. I can manage such visits a few times per year, even though I have a busy schedule. Any takers? Classes 4-9 are the most suitable audience. Sign up here . Over the past few years, I've also exhibited at the US Book Show, the Frankfurt International Book Fair, the American Association of School Librarians Book Fair, the Finnish Book Fair and ITK-fair Finland, to mention a few. There's the biggest book fair in Finland coming up on 26...

Time flies. I've been busy with another book project, a test leadership handbook with my FiSTB colleague Marko Rytkönen. More news about it later, but I can leak some news that the cover is by my Dragons Out illustrator, the fabulous Adrienn Széll. Also, the translation efforts of the Dragons Out book and the free Creative Commons licensed Dragon Lesson in Software Testing presentation proceed. And I did some summer reading campaigning - fun and useful reads are always good, but especially in summer, right? The Portuguese version of the Dragon Lesson in Software Testing has now been published. Teresa Fernandes took the challenge and translated it. Filipe Nuno Carlos did the review. I'll let everyone here learn a bit of testing in Portuguese: Testar = Experimentar, verificar e testar com diferentes valores, ordens e formas para compreender se alguma coisa funciona ou quão bem funciona.  I'm more than happy that we have one more language in the set of 20+ translations of the ...

On my visit to the ISTQB General Assembly in Wroclaw, Poland, a chance to talk to Polish students came up. The organizing party SJSI (Polish Testing Board) was kind enough to organize a few classes from local Wroclaw schools to attend my Dragon Lesson in Software Testing. I presented my Polish slides in English while my ISTQB colleague Lucjan Stapp translated my talk into Polish. Students were very motivated and enthusiastically answered questions, even in English. The group consisted of two school classes, 7th and 8th grade, brought to PTB office by two lovely teachers. So, the students were 14-15 year-olds, which fits nicely with the ideal reader profile of the book, as has been proven many times earlier. I was glad to get a confirmation once again. Children (or rather teenagers) of this age are quite familiar and fluent with different software, of course mostly games on their mobile phones. In the testing exercise, most of them tested their favourite game, but I also saw picture edi...