Hamilton Test Professionals Meetup

Tuesday 4th April 2023 saw our first ever Hamilton Test Professionals meetup, hosted by the team at Pacific Technology Solutions who are themselves a local and New Zealand global success story. The idea for the meetup came from a member of the Pacific Technology Solutions team who had recently become a regular attendee at the Tauranga Test Professionals meetup, and in recognition of the significant technology-based organisations that have made Hamilton their home.

Setting up the first ever of these events is always a bit of an experiment. While the size of the technology community can be researched, the size of the testing team within the community is always a bit of a guess, as is the willingness of the community to come together to meet and share ideas. The end result was pretty mind blowing. Not only was there a good level of attendees for the first meetup, but using the Lean Coffee meeting format, we quickly shifted into topic listing and, together, began a pretty robust sharing of ideas!

Due to the technical maturity of the local testing community, the conversations escalated very quickly into an exchange of views on test automation tooling used. There was a wide range, from commercial off the shelf tools like Tricentis Tosca to the more open-end of the spectrum with tools like Selenium and Postman. Emerging technologies such as Playwrite and Cypress were also discussed. Open-source and custom frameworks were debated with the general consensus being that maintenance was the key consideration. For many, how this is being managed is also a consideration – not a solution.

Interestingly, just when there was a sense that all testing had to be automated, the conversation pivoted to the ongoing need for good manual testing, the skillsets needed to be a good manual tester, and the importance of recognising that 100% test automation is never a good or achievable outcome. Good manual testing and exploratory testing (with screen capture support) was a key function in test teams and one that tended to yield the greater value when compared to the primary function of test automation which was to check and validate.

Interesting stuff, especially when AI was thrown into the discussion.

The topic list <Link to attached PDF> generated from the Lean Coffee format was extensive and wide-ranging. Not only did it feed well into the discussion at the event, it has supplied a list of candidate topics for presentations from the local community. This was a great start to the Hamilton Test Professionals meetup, and definitely birthed a demand for a repeat session. Thanks to the comprehensive topic list attendees created, there are already a couple of candidate speakers for the next one. Planning is underway for the 2nd Edition of the Hamilton Test Professionals meetup! We look forward to the event announcement in the coming weeks.