May 19th, 2017 by Adam Sandman
This week we had the pleasure of holding our first ever North America East-Coast User Summit in the fair city of Boston, MA. We met lots of fantastic customers, had great conversations and got lots of valuable feedback on the development roadmaps for our products. In this article we will recap the ideas and information that came from the event, provide copies of the presentations from Inflectra and our partners, and also include some fun photos and videos that we took during the event.
Boston, MA - May 18th, 2017
Team Inflectra headed up to Boston this week in preparation for our user summit in the sumptuous Back Bay district of Boston, MA. For some of the team this was their first time in Boston, so we had a tour of the sights, including the world famous Freedom Trail, North End, Beacon Hill and other neighborhoods.
We of course sampled legendary culinary delights such as Lobster Rolls and Cannoli's from Mike's Pastry. Shout out to the Parrish Cafe for their excellent sandwiches and beverages.
User Summit @ 129 Newbury Street - Oficio
The next day preparations began for the user summit, held in the Oficio facility on Newbury Street.
The front desk was prepared to invite our guests:
The team worked to get the place ready, with the seating, Inflectra SWAG for the attendees, presentation equipment and (of course) coffee to ensure everyone was sufficiently caffeinated for the event. We recorded a time-lapse video so that you can see our crack team in action getting the place ready:
Once the place was ready, our customers, users and partners began to arrive, luckily breakfast and coffee was ready waiting:
Morning Session
Once everyone was seated, we could get down to business and discuss our plans for Inflectra, SpiraTeam and Rapise. Adam from Inflectra took the lead and outlined the company initiatives, marketing updates and what's planned in the near term:
After setting the stage for the enhancements that have just arrived in SpiraTeam v5.2 as well as our plans for data-driven testing using SpiraTeam, Simon did a deep dive on the proposed enhancements for exploratory testing that will be part of the summer SpiraTeam 5.3 release.
We then handed over to Dr. Sriram Rajagopalan from Agile Training Champions to walk us through some practical examples of using SpiraTeam to manage different kinds of projects, agile, waterfall, or a hybrid of the two.
The presentation covered the basics of understanding the framework (agile or waterfall) and how to use tools to solve the underlying business problem rather than relying solely on the tool.
We then had a break for lunch, catered exquisitely by the local branch of Pret a Manger, with creative sandwiches, bubbling beverages, and delicious cookies:
Afternoon Session
For the afternoon session, we launched straight into a discussion of the future roadmap for SpiraTest, SpiraPlan and SpiraTeam, with discussions around planned enhancements to reporting, test management, requirements baselining, time tracking, program management and enterprise resource planning.
Team Inflectra then handed over to one of our key partners - Sophelle, who presented a case study on implementing complex applications in the retail industry, with an emphasis on using SpiraTeam and processes in requirements management, change management and training to ensure that there were no surprises when the system goes live during a nationwide IT rollout:
From the challenges of retail to the complexities of the life sciences industry, our final partner presentation was from SmarteSoft who focused on the challenges in testing software applications in the healthcare industry, including the challenges of regulatory compliance, FDA oversight and increases in the number of interconnected applications:
For the final presentation of the day, Adam from Team Inflectra was able to give a sneak preview of the next version of Rapise that will be released next week, featuring the new scriptless test automation framework:
With the conclusion of the final presentation, it was time for final feedback from the group:
and time for some networking and social mingling...
All of the attendees agreed that event was valuable and were looking forward (already) to the next event in 2018. We also discussed having a longer, multi-day event in a destination location such as Orlando or Las Vegas, to which there was great excitement... so watch this space for more details of what we'll be planning in 2018.
Presentations
The following presentations were made during the event, please feel free to clip any of the slides that interest you:
Obligatory Food Pictures
A blog post wouldn't be complete without some random pictures of local Boston food, so here's our contribution to the genre:
(sandwich at the Parrish Cafe)
(lobster roll at Neptune Oyster)