TestingCup, the Polish Championship in Software Testing, this event has been taking place since 2013. This is a unique event on a global scale, which can be faced by everyone who has blood testing and would like to prove it by competing with other similar people.
This year the event was not to take place, the organizers announced that 2020 will remain without championships. They were to come back next year with doubled strength, new ideas and freshness, which after so many years of last year’s edition lacked. But the plans changed and the event took place, in a completely different form. The competition took place online and for the first time in history, we were dealing with an application created for mobile devices. Was this a good step? What impressions did this edition left?
Step by step
The first thing that heralded the challenge ahead of us was the pre-competition demo version of the application. We already knew at this point that the competition would run on similar principles as in the 3rd edition of the championship. Everyone could check the correctness of its operation on their device, which is a big plus for the organizers because it allowed cutting problems that could have occurred during the event itself. On the downside, you can consider that the application was prepared only for devices with the Android system which limited a large number of people the opportunity to take part in this event.
The prepared competition application consisted of 20 tasks of various levels of difficulty. An extra element hindering the challenge was the fact that only 3 tasks were available and only the solution of one of them made the next one unlocked. As a result, we couldn’t have more than three tasks that we could work on. The decision on this approach has not been explained or justified.
Unfortunately, I do not see any advantages of such a solution, but it seems to me that it was an unnecessary restriction of all competition. Add to this the fact that the final bugs may have been associated not only with the functionality of individual mini-applications but also with various other things, finding which also required a large dose of luck. Do you share my feelings, you can check here – you’ll find a list of defects shared by the organizers broken down by task.
The thing that caused my surprise was the final classification, in which we had 3 winners in both the team and individual categories. In the introduction, we heard that time matters in this edition. So since there were so many draws, the time to complete these tasks was likely different, and the final order could be determined based on it. There was also an element that has been an inseparable element of competition for years, i.e. a scoreboard with live results. It would seem that it will not be any problem to organize this type of time niche, but it turned out to be quite different and the only thing we could observe in live coverage during the competition were displayed slides with event partners.
Summary
Unfortunately from the perspective of the last 7 editions – because for so many years I have been taking part in TestingCup, it was the weakest one yet. The online event could have been planned much better. The introduction could have been more solemn and, above all, be more than a presentation of the rules and rules of the game.
Unfortunately, the results themselves were also made available on the website, and it would be enough to do another online event together with their announcement, at least it would provide a little more emotion and joy for the winners. It should also be added that, apart from the commemorative cups, no other awards are foreseen.
This edition will not be remembered by anyone. The potential was there but it was not used at all. There is nothing else but to wait for the next, stationary edition of the championship and let them come back in the old, good style.