Weekend Testing Americas: Developing Effective Charters with James Bach

This Saturday, Weekend Testing Americas is having a special guest. During last week's session, I had James Bach and Michael Bolton both attend and participate with the group (talk about feeling like a T.A. and then having the professors walk in (LOL!).

Actually, I'm glad they did, because they helped me realize something I've been struggling with for some time. It'[s one thing to make a test charter or a test mission, but how can we make them more effective? More to the point, how can we craft them so that they are appropriate for the testing session at that time?

To help explain this, imagine you have a group of people you are going to send out to test something. They have one hour. they have to maximize that time, and therefore they need to be able to hit the ground running as fast as humanly possible. Can you adequately describe what needs to be done so that everyone in the group can do that? What if we had a whole group of testers specifically trained to be able to do that, not just for Weekend Testing sessions, but all the time?

This is the skill that James Bach will be working with us to develop and improve this Saturday. Normally, I would be cautious to not over-hype or over-promote these sessions because we might be overrun, but in this case, I think it will prove worth it, so I'm breaking my "limited distribution" promotion (Twitter and direct email) to talk about and announce this session.

So do you want in? If so here's what you need to know and what you've gotta' do:

Date: Saturday, August 27, 2011
Time: 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. PDT (2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. EDT)

To join the session:


1. Please send an email message to wtamericas@gmail.com with the subject line "WTA18" and a confirmation that you would like to attend the session.


2. Please add "weekendtestersamericas" to your Skype ID list if you have not already done so. Please ask us to add you to our contact list.

3. On Saturday, August 27th, approx. 20 minutes before the start of the session, I will set up the group. If you ping me on Skype at that time, I will add you to the session. If you have replied via email and stated that you will be attending the session, if you are online at that time, I will automatically add you.

Remember, these sessions are "chat" only, no call in is necessary, but you have to be on Skype to participate.

Look forward to seeing you there :).