Announcing the Good Enough Workshops

A while back, I submitted a proposal for a talk or workshop at the EuRuKo conference.

Here is what I wrote in the abstract where I described the workshop:

When learning Ruby or Ruby on Rails, you learn about RSpec or Minitest, you get to know the DSL and how to use the library features to write model, controller, or integration tests.

But you don't learn much about testing: What does it mean to test a feature or a piece of code? How do you know that the tests you wrote will actually catch bugs? 

This talk is about test design techniques that help you write the minimum number of tests covering the widest surface of your app. You will learn about Decision Tables, Boundary Value Analysis, Equivalence Partitioning, State Transition testing and more, all with Ruby code examples. 

And as the main pitch I wrote:

There are a lot of resources out there about how to write RSpec or Minitest and about speeding up test case execution, but there is precious little knowledge shared online about how to decide what to test and how to write a good test case in Ruby. This talk plans to close this knowledge gap by showing easy-to-use and practical test design techniques applied in Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

I have worked with Ruby since 2007 and am passionate about learning and teaching. I have over 11 of experience delivering technical training/workshops for teams on learning Ruby or testing. I am also an ISTQB-certified trainer, delivering international courses about testing to a wide range of audiences.**

Along with this workshop I also submitted a talk called “The Modern Rubyist.”

A response

To my complete surprise, I got a response from EuRuKo organizers that both my proposals were accepted by the program committee.

And because both of them were subjects I was passionate about I decided to accept the challenge and deliver both of them.

Early feedback

EuRuKo happened in September 2024, so I started working on the workshop around the end of July. I somehow had a version ready 2 weeks before the conference, and I wanted to test it and get some honest feedback. That is because the workshop supposed to be 2 hours and so I wanted to make sure that I manage to deliver some practical tips about how to test.

I though the best way to see the value of this workshop is to organise an online live version thus, I created one. I opened it for 10 participants because I wanted to make sure I have time to ask for feedback:

I thought about putting a price or not on it, but I decided to price it for 20 USD as the first session. I learned that when a workshop has a price, the participants are more focused and give honest feedback. If it is not helpful, you can find out very quickly.

It sold in less than 24 hours and was the first hint that this might be useful

I also got some very good feedback. Here is a part of it (but I will add more in one of the pages of the website)

“Lucian's understanding of the whole, the experience is noticeable and the demonstrations were smooth”

“Seeing the same testing strategies in various forms: drawings, tables, test files, graphs, etc. I like when I can view something differently, it helps to find blind spots”

“The content was great! I had not seen actual definitions for some of the techniques that were presented!”

“The delivery, the way you presented it - not arrogant at all; like we are colleagues, you researched a topic and we hop on a call to help me understand it!”

I also got more practical and valuable feedback and so I was prepared for the EuRuKo workshop.

EuRuKo workshop

At EuRuKo I found out that the workshop was fully booked. We discussed over email one week before the workshop, and I agreed to a maximum of 50 participants because I wanted to make it a bit more interactive.

And all seats were booked before the conference started. That put a bit of pressure on me.

I delivered the workshop, and had a great interaction with the participants, and I will publish the video here because it was recorded.

Of course having 50 participants makes the workshop be more toward me explaining the techniques and we did not had enough time to write the actual tests in Minitest/Rspec. Anyhow as the workshop is more about the how to design test cases than how to write in Minitest or RSpec this worked out well.

More sessions

I think learning how to design better test cases is important and so I will launch a series of live workshops. I will increase the time to 3 hours per workshop and probably a maximum 15 participants per session.

The price will also be increased step by step until it reaches 100 USD per workshop. I think 100 USD is a good enough price to ensure everyone is involved, and I think this is the value that people could get out of my workshop.

If you, as a participant, are able to save 2-3 hours while writing tests at your job next week after my workshop, or if writing better tests improves the quality of your code, I think this would make paying for the workshop a no-brainer.

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