Congratulations to Dave Haeffner for having his Agile 2012 submission “Selenium Users Anonymous” accepted!  Dave will be leading a “counseling” session for Selenium users at Agile 2012 in Dallas.  The conference is from August 13 – 17 2012 and you can get more information at agile2012.agilealliance.org.

Dave Haeffner speaking at Agile2012

Dave Haeffner is the Chief Quality Officer at AgilityFeat, and is responsible for our quality assurance related efforts such as the ATDD Kickstart course that we offer.  Dave was previously Senior Quality Assurance Analyst at the Motley Fool and has spoken on quality assurance at many user groups and previous conferences including Agile 2010.

Details on the session are below.  AgilityFeat will likely also schedule an ATDD class or two in the same area in August, so stay tuned to our ATDD Kickstart page!

Selenium Users Anonymous

Hi, my name is Dave, and I’m a recovering Selenium user.

I was like you once — new to Selenium, using the IDE for a quick fix. Oh sure, “Just this once. I’ll have plenty of time to change it later.” is what you’d say. But before you knew it — BAM! — you’re in so deep you don’t know how to get out. Trying to debug a large suite of brittle tests that constantly break only to find false positives after slow run times along with a nice helping of poor cross-browser coverage.

I’ve seen it a thousand times, and I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Here at Selenium Users Anonymous, we offer practical advice from those that have gone before you — showing you how to evolve your current Selenium nightmare into a bright automated testing future with our universal 12 step program.

Process/Mechanics
  • 00:00 – 00:02 – Hilarious intro
  • 00:02 – 00:10 – Gauge the room on level of Selenium experience & usage — Teasing out & capturing the pain points felt by the audience
  • 00:10 – 00:30 – Overview of Selenium evolutionary paths with examples of success and failure
  • 00:30 – 00:35 – Review of the pain points captured earlier and showing correlation and patterns based on the material just covered
  • 00:35 – 00:40 – Dramatic pause and hitting on the point that everyone goes through these same problems — encouraging the audience to turn to their neighbors and hug (this is a support group after all)
  • 00:40 – 00:50 – Overview of a process to follow (broken out into steps) that will help the audience realize where they are in their Selenium evolution, where they can go, and how they can get to greener pastures
  • 00:50 – 00:52 – Brief recap and closing remarks
  • 00:53 – 00:60 – Questions, Applause, and high-fiving (lots of high-fiving)

All of this done with a Presentation Zen style of slides to help illustrate key points.

Learning outcomes
  • The evolutionary paths that Selenium Automated Test Suites take
  • The Pros & Cons of each path
  • Learning how to tell which path you’re on
  • Steps to take today, tomorrow, and beyond that will help you get the most out of your Selenium usage, and, position you well for the future