Bonus Workshop Preparation Stage

Some thoughts:
“Are you really ready for your Agile Testing Days workshop?”
“No. Slides need to be updated. There are concept handouts. I still need to tweak.”
“So what is that bonus stage?”

Dreadful stage

The Bonus Workshop Preparation sSage starts after the dreadful stage, the stage without progress.

Progress can be measured in number of sheets or number of the exercises. I prefer the number of usable ideas for attendees. Customer centric. Sounds Agile to me.

2 weeks before my holiday I was in the dreadful stage. One of my website exercises became smaller instead of bigger. I used all tricks to get a baseline, but I failed.

I realised that I had to step back. The only solution I had was to fall back on an older version of the software. Within a few days I had a better solution.

Bonus stage

Another way to determine the bonus stage is the feedback of my reviewers.

My basic question: were they engaged?
My observation: yes.

I paid attention to words and the way they were pronounced. I looked at the body language. Most important: did they learn something?

What would I more include in my workshop?

  • an one pager
  • list of extra resources
  • a mind map
  • visual clues for exercises

“You can always change your workshop.”
My wife

Proper stage name

Last weekend I talked about my workshop with one of my kids. I told that one reviewer and I missed an obvious bug in the website. I was amused.

I told about some jokes how to illustrate my points. We had a good laugh about it.

The bonus part is also the fun part. The part which will make a workshop good or great.