5 Whys Challenge: Gil Zilberfeld

My turn, my turn!

But yeah, go ahead, take your time. I’ll wait here, while you register. And bring some friends.

Now we can continue.

Let me tell you a story. It begins in a conference a few years ago. I came prepared to do my “TDD a spaceship” workshop, expecting developers who want to learn about TDD. Imagine my surprise when a few testers walked in, and those who had some technology on them, held an iPad.

The whole workshop had to be redone on the spot.

We spent the rest of the workshop talking about test-first and Star Wars, and some pseudo code. So it got me thinking about how to explain test-first ideas to non-developers. The answer is of course, Star Wars. And no code. Which leads us to our conference

I’m not saying anymore about my workshop “The empire tests first” (except you’ll need a laptop, check out the workshop requirements). You really gonna need to wait for so much fun. But let me turn now to me, and ask me the challenge questions. Let’s see how I fare.

Why should people come to the conference?

There’s no other conference in the area that allows the community to engage with each other, expose new ideas and experience them. Like agile itself, we bring ideas from all areas of product development and mash them together so everyone can learn how to improve their work and others. Plus the speakers, we got quality international and local speakers. It’s special.

Why should people come to my session?

The workshop is intended for many roles in agile. It is for product people who want to see how their requirements are perceived and processed. For developers who want to be creative but are forced by constraints of legacy, and for testers who want to be better at providing feedback on products.

And of course, no other session talks about Star Wars.

Why did I choose this topic?

As my story above tells, my impression of how non-developers perceive development changed, but I found out the ideas behind test-first, code later, are beneficial for everyone. So this workshop explains them in a fun way. And did I mention you’ll create your own Star Wars movie?

Why am I looking forward to no one’s session?

After working so hard to get all those awesome speakers in? I find that I get value from conferences these days more by conversing in an open space, than going to the actual sessions. If you get tired a bit from all these hands-on workshop, I invite you to try it. It makes the pain of choosing between tracks and sessions less noticeable.