I was asked to share some knowledge on test automation and load and performance testing by Polteq. The company is running a “Special Development Program” in which employees from all levels of the company, ranging from junior engineers to senior consultants, get the opportunity to follow trainings and courses in a range of things. Varying from social skills to hard technical skills. It is the latter I have been asked to help provide some training for, which I do gladly.

There is however quite a challenge, as said, the audience ranges from junior to quite senior, but also from technically strong to technically challenged (my apologies to all the colleagues I am insulting with this statement, but I know you can forgive me:) ). So how do I go about preparing two trainings, one about test automation and one about load and performance testing, for such a diverse group? The duration of these sessions is also quite limited, making it even more difficult to come up with something sane to do in these evenings.

Oh! To make my life easier, I have been telling everyone, during a bunch of company meetings and updates over the past month, I do not believe sitting back and listening to someone broadcasting the information will help in learning something to do with technical skills.

The trainings need to be interactive, but also guided and somewhat personalized. Thus far I have come up with the idea of preparing a bunch of USB sticks with a set of portable applications I use regularly to automate stuff with. When in this context I say automate, I really mean hack something together which does the job and at the end of the project (or my involvement with the project) gets thrown away. Do I indeed want to teach the habit of writing throw-away-code?

On top of that, do I want to teach some “technical” or basic programing skills based on examples with tools, which should in their own right not be used to automate these things? Actually, I believe I do! My goal for these evenings will be to get this group excited to use and abuse tools to their own advantage! The tools I already chose, now I need to figure out some interesting, useful and enjoyable targets for these people to hack their way around. Tips anyone?