Manawatu Software QA Professionals Meetup

One good sign of an active community is when they step up and take control of the meetup, and that happened at our second of the revamped Manawatu Software Quality Assurance Professionals meetup on 7th March 2023. And not just step up with entry level presentations – the community really ramped it up in style with the low-down on one test team’s journey to test maturity and a solid debrief on implementing test automation – tooling and process change.

As a major player in the local community, people take note when FMG talks to their experience. In the meetup, the test team talked to their journey to their current state – what they had, what they change, what they learned, where they are now and what they forecast for the future. This was a very open presentation that thoroughly covered the stages that a test team goes through in seeking and gaining maturity as well as the lessons learned along the way. Confidently presented by Helen their Test Manager, this was a presentation that generated both a lot of knowing nods and lightbulb moments. Helen’s presentation can be seen here <Link to Presentation PDF>.

Coincidentally closely linked to the FMG presentation, Jarod from Massey University covered his organisation's journey with test automation. Another major player in the local region, Massey University has a sizeable test team and a significant number of applications to cover. Add to that scenario the frequency of releases and the range of functionality, you get a pretty significant regression testing load – one that you wouldn’t want to take on manually. Massey detailed their current state well, the drive for automation, the associated benefits and their journey – across both open-source and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) test automation tooling. With many in the audience on the cusp of adopting test automation, the presentation was both informative and timely with lots of questions being asked. Jarod’s presentation can be seen here <Link to Presentation PDF>.

With two very informative presentations, the after-function networking over drinks and nibbles was always going to be a hard one to contain. The presentations generated a lot of conversation, together with contact sharing and the promise of follow up conversations to be had. The event finished well past our scheduled end time – a sign of a good meetup – and we already have offers for presentations at our next event around June / July 2023.