STARCANADA 2013 Keynote: Testing Lessons from Hockey (The World’s Greatest Sport)

Over the years, Rob Sabourin has drawn important testing lessons from diverse sources including the great detectives, the Simpsons, Hollywood movies, comic book superheroes, and the hospital delivery room. Now Rob scores big with breakaway testing ideas from hockey, Canada’s national sport. Like star hockey players, testers develop skills and continuously adapt and perfect them. Like team “stats,” test metrics show how performance impacts business. Like the penalty box, a smoke test keeps flaky builds out of play. Like Zambonis, testers must reset environments to a known state. Hockey play-by-play commentary makes the game come alive. Likewise, test play-by-play commentary highlights critical skills and tactics for quickly finding bugs that matter. Hockey leagues foster contrasting styles of play. Context factors foster contrasting styles of testing. Rob shows how hockey camps can be a model for tester training regimes. Great hockey requires the right equipment—skates, sticks, helmets, and pads. Great testers leverage the right tools—scripts, simulators, analyzers, probes, and viewers—to find a wide range of problems quickly. Rob’s lessons from hockey can help you test better and faster and score by finding great bugs.