No matter the sector, no matter somebody’s job title, no matter the aspirations of the companies people work for, collaborations between like-minded business people will often result in solutions to problems.

While the ‘wisdom of crowds’ is far from proven, when it comes to addressing specific concerns and shortfalls within a business sector, there may not be a better way to do so than through a group of strangers coming together to work towards common goals. As has proved the case with one local group, Aylesbury Testers, led by Simon Prior. Simon writes:

For a long time software testing was the ugly sibling hiding in the closet of many software development projects. It was always seen as an afterthought or something that slowed down a release. But projects in all kinds of industries have been released with minimal testing, leading to the release of expensive emergency patches as something critical has gone wrong on customers’ machines.

Over the last few years the profile and attitude towards testing has changed, with the realisation that testing products/websites/apps means that all critical bugs and issues can be found and fixed at a cheaper cost, before release, rather than after the product is with the customer. Testers are included early in project discussions and work alongside developers to ensure that the product reaches the best possible quality before being released to customers.

I attended a testing conference in Brighton this year that had a big emphasis on sharing ideas within the testing community and this is where the idea of the Aylesbury Tester Gathering came about. There are already gatherings in London, Brighton, Nottingham and other cities within the UK, but I noticed there didn’t seem to be anything in the Buckinghamshire area. I thought that given we have companies such as Intel and ESRI in Aylesbury and a host of software companies, both large corporates and small start-ups, dotted all over Wycombe, Amersham and beyond - there must be some testing professionals willing to share ideas.

We had our first meet-up in May attended by seven testing professionals and over the course of a couple of hours discussed several topics. Another meet-up took place in July with twelve attendees and we have more events scheduled for later this year.

Everyone seems to find the discussions useful and they provide a great chance to network with professionals from other companies who may be doing things differently.

The ultimate goal is to see the local testing community within Buckinghamshire grow, with more and more like-minded people coming together to improve the way products are tested.

Find more information on the Aylesbury Tester Gatherings online, or email aylesbury.testers@gmail.com