Book Study Group: „Agile Testing“

Two weeks ago, at work we had the kick-off-session for a „Book Study Group“.
In a former „book swashing session“ facilitated by Deborah Preuss and Sebastian Lang, it came out that we want to start with „Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams“ by Lisa Crispin & Janet Gregory or with „Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship“ by Robert C. Martin.

Finally we decided to start with „Agile Testing“. Following way-of-working has been agreed on: We will meet weekly, and everybody reads the same chapter of the book as preperation for the next session. We will then discussed what we’ve read in the group. By this everybody will get differents insights & interpretations on the content, and you might see things, that you didn’t get from just reading on your on.
So for last week’s session (which I unfortunately couldn’t join cause I was at #agileTD) it was „homework“ to read chapter 1.

I will try to note down about this (it’s the first time for me to pariticipate in a book study group) what I think is interesting or remarkable, and what I think what is good/ not so good, what I learn from it (especially the things I wouldn’t have by reading the book on my own). I think it will be very interesting to here other people’s opinions, especially not only „other people“, but also „people from other departments“ and „people with different roles“. So I might not only learn more about the book’s content, but also about how my colleagues are working and that (hopefully) might help to improve collaboration.

How about you? Any experience on book study groups, from reading books together with your colleagues you want to share? What did you learn most about? What are the „A-ha“-experiences? Got to know something you didn’t expect?