Organizing a Testday

Please remember that the following is only a rough guideline. The more effort you put into preparing your testday, the more likely it is to be successful. Give yourself, and the community, ample time to prepare for the event. Above all else, experiment and have fun with your test day.

Planning Your Event

1. Once you have a topic in mind, pick a day to schedule your event — check the calendar on QMO for availaility
2. Create a test plan to define success criteria, declare a designated spot for signups for mentors, set a schedule (e.g, past event test-plan)
3. Publicize and post the event on QMO (if need be, ask QA staff in IRC for assistance) — a valuable post must contain a request for mentorship sign-up and links to available documentation (e.g, see past event notice)
4. Broadcast your event — Follow our suggested communication list below to help broadcast and publicize the event
5. Enlist mentors to help facilitate and educate throughout the event — gather contact information to ensure that they're able to attend  during the event

The Day Of

1. Make sure the IRC channel topic is updated to point people to your test plan
2. Be proactive in greeting people and removing barriers for them to contribute - ask questions and engage with people who join the channel
3. Recommend sign-up to dev-quality and mozillians to attendees for future event notice
4. Provide a feedback survey to participants, clone or copy this example document

After the Event

1. Provide a followup post in your communication channels thanking those who attended
2. Plan a future event

Tips for Success

• Make sure you have enough mentors committed to your event, otherwise it might come off as disorganized
• Make sure your project is ready for testers; remember that most testers are just Firefox users
• The more you advertise the greater your audience
• Give yourself enough time to prepare the material
• Give your audience enough time to familiarize themselves with any material needed as a prerequisite before the event
• Have a peer review your event material and attempt an activity to test the ease of your ramp-up path
• Don’t be afraid to reach out to external communities (especially true for development related testdays)

Communication Channels

The following is a list of the various communication channels we should use to advertise. Choose as many or as few as you see fit.

Mailing Lists

• dev-quality: the primary public mailing for Mozilla QA
• events: use if your event incorporates physical meetup

Social Networks

• Twitter: @MozillaQA is our Twitter account
• Facebook: MozillaQA is our Facebook account. Note that QMO Event posts are automatically syndincated to Facebook
• Yammer
• Google Plus

Forums

• Reddit: http://reddit.com/r/firefox — active Firefox community
• Discourse: https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/c/quality-assurance

Meeting Pages

• Mozilla Project Weekly Update, meeting details here
• QA Team: public QA meeting, meeting details here

Other Websites

• XDA Forums
• Software Testing Club

Moderators

The following are some tips for moderators to make the testday a success.

• Greet people as soon as they join the channel
• Ask them to sign up for Mozillians.org
• Ask them to download the test build
• Ask them about their interest and give them a specific task to perform
• Offer to answer questions
• Touch base with your testers if you haven't heard from them in the last 20 minutes or so
• Thank and encourage your testers when they are completing tasks
• Thank and encourage your testers before when they indicate they are leaving
• Tell people in other channels about your testday (#qa, #firefox, etc)

Contributors

The following are some tips for contributors to make the testday a success.

• Ask questions, any and all questions you have are valid
• Don't be afraid to stumble, hopefully you will learn something new
• Read over the testplan and provided documentation
• Get a build and start testing; just dive right in
• Offer to help other testers and answer questions once you've learned the ropes
• Sign up for Mozillians.org so we can keep in touch
• Missed the testday? Reach out to the organizer and see how you can help out after the fact

QMO Event Page

The week before a testday we need to create a QMO event page.

• Once you are logged in (yes you need to be authenticated) simply click on the left to add a new post
• Your title should indicate the topic and date (ie. Firefox Aurora Bugday May 6th)
• Start out by giving a small summary of the topic, goals, and when the event takes place.
• Give some context as to why this event/activity is necessary and valuable.
• Give some encouragement for people who have absolutely no experience to attend.
• Frame the language of your post with "making Firefox better", show them what benefit their contributions provide (no matter how big or small).
• Provide a link to your testplan etherpad and a mibbit URL so people without IRC clients can join easily.
• Be sure to thank them in advance for attending.

This is an example of an excellent QMO Event page. Before posting make sure you:

• "Is this post an event?" is set to "Yes" below
• "All day event?" is unchecked and the date/times are properly set (all times in PDT)
• All other event details can be left blank
• On the right under "Categories", check "Events", "QMO News" and any appropriate "Teams"
• Make sure you SAVE DRAFT and PREVIEW before publishing (if you have to, get someone else to review)

QMO Blog Post

The day before the testday, simply create a post which reminds people that a testday is happening tomorrow.

• The title should be similar to "REMINDER: Firefox Aurora Testday Tomorrow!"
• The message should summarize the activity, time, a mibbit URL to the channel, and a link to the QMO Event page for more information
• Be sure to thank them ahead of time for attending
• Be sure the "Categories" on the right are set to "QMO News"
• Make sure you SAVE DRAFT and PREVIEW before publishing

This is a good example of a QMO Event Reminder. Your post should be syndicated to Planet within 30 minutes to an hour.

QMO Results Post

The day after a testday, create another post which highlights the results.

• The title should be similar to "Results of the Firefox Aurora Testday"
• The message should summarize the activity and the value it provided
• Highlight some of the results (number of bugs filed, number of bugs confirmed/verified, number of testers, etc)
• Identify and thank the top tester
• Identify and thank some of the people who were runners up for the top-tester
• Give general thanks to everyone who helped
• Provide a link to the next testday (should it be available) and ask people to come back to help
• Be sure the "Categories" on the right are set to "QMO News"
• Make sure you SAVE DRAFT and PREVIEW before publishing

This is a good example of a QMO Results Post. Your post should be syndicated to Planet within 30 minutes to an hour.