Event Recap: Test Professionals Meetup in Tauranga

Well – as it happens – quite a lot. That is what 30+ attendees at the recent Test Meetup held at Trustpower discovered recently. The meetup – held on Wednesday 11th August 2021 featured no less than three local speakers covering topics from the use of Azure DevOps in Testing Management and Defect Tracking through to an overview of recently completed Penetration Testing with a good session on test automation for web forms in between. The fifth meetup in a series that started back in 2019 (one being virtual during our 2020 Covid-19 lockdown) this was the second to feature local speakers, and the second to be hosted by Trustpower.

Starting with the traditional pre-presentation networking over drinks and nibbles, the Meetup started at 5pm with Rodney Colvin from Tauranga City Council presenting on their use of DevOps for Test Management and Defect Tracking. So embedded is the use of Azure DevOps within the Council, Rodney opted out of the safety of screen shots and a PowerPoint presentation and instead connected (securely) to their DevOps instance and provided a real-world overview of their use of the system – right from requirements management to test case capture, test execution and management, and reporting via real time dashboards <Link>. It was a riveting session on real-time test management at work with Rodney even triggering test execution in his presentation and showing how results were both collated and distributed.

Following Rodney, Liz from Craigs Investment Partners presented on Test Automation on Web Based Forms using Tricentis Tosca. Liz’s session <Link> focused on the use of effective Test Case Design for complex web form testing. Liz showed how multiple test cases could be represented via effective data management in good Test Case Design and how the maintenance and upgrade of automated test cases is made easier. Many of the online forms used in the Finance and Investment industry are complex and do change. Minimising maintenance effort for the associated automated test scripts as well as quick and efficient execution (regression testing is less than an hour) realizes significant gains for Craigs Investment Partners.

Rounding out the event, Sri Bellidiga took the attendees on his work within Trustpower on Penetration Testing. A trending topic within New Zealand at the moment, Sri’s presentation generated a lot of after presentation conversation with the thinking towards the establishment of a sub-group within the local Test Meetup community. Penetration testing is a specialised area and local collaboration, and communication would provide benefits. Once done, the attendees regrouped around the nibbles and drink to discuss what they had heard and to talk with the presenters directly. Contact details were shared and arrangements made for follow up meetings. Our next Tauranga Test Meetup event is TBC. Timeframe is looking around the February 2022 timeframe. A huge thanks to Trustpower for hosting the event and to TTC for the event drinks and nibbles.