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Agile Testing

Tutorials

MD Specification by Example: Mastering Agile Testing
Nate Oster, CodeSquads, LLC
Mon, 06/08/2015 - 8:30am

On agile teams, testers can struggle to keep up with the pace of development if they continue employing a waterfall verification process―finding bugs after development. Nate Oster challenges you to question waterfall assumptions and replace a “test last” mentality with “specification by example.” Practice “test first” by writing executable specifications for a new feature before development begins. Learn to switch from tests as verification to tests as specification and guide development with concrete examples written in the language of your business. Start by joining a team for a humorous simulation of real-world issues and experience. Learn how specification by example helps build quality in instead of trying to test defects out. Progress to increasingly more realistic scenarios and practice the art of specifying intent with table-based and given-when-then formats. These paper-based simulations give you meaningful practice specifying concrete examples and will change the way you think about writing tests and collaborating as a team. This is not a tools session—no laptops required.

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ME Build Product Backlogs with Test-Driven Thinking―and More SOLD OUT NEW
David Hussman, DevJam
Mon, 06/08/2015 - 8:30am

Many product backlogs of user stories are nothing more than glorified to-do lists. Teams have lost the idea of prioritizing real business value and focus instead only on finishing stories and accumulating story points. Join David Hussman as he drives a stake into the heart of lame backlogs and breathes new life into product design with pragmatic UX and test-driven thinking. Using real-world examples, David shares his experiences and teaches tools you can use to fuse centered-product thinking with end-to-end testing. These techniques include: developing test-driven user experiences, improving product discovery (backlog grooming) sessions with testing talk, adding story clarity with examples and tests, validating requirements with tests, connecting program teams by decomposing product ideas into small testable stories, and recomposing them to validate product level learning. Because we learn by doing and questioning as we go, show up ready to work. This session is for testers, developers, product owners, and anyone else interested in improving their product thinking and product backlog. Bring your failing product backlog stories for discussion, too.

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One of the latest facets of the mobile paradigm is mobile wearables―a new generation of personalized technology that knows us better than our closest friends do. How many of your friends know how far you walked or what you ate today? Although you may think mobile wearables are just for geeks, they will become commonplace very quickly. Our challenge is to develop applications that can synthesize context from the gigantic amount of data these devices and their sensors generate. Ensuring the privacy and security of device usage and its data will be of highest concern. Philip Lew systematically analyzes context―the most important element in future design and development of mobile applications while incorporating big data, privacy, and security. Using examples, Philip shows the contextual elements you need to consider now and discusses how to identify key factors for a future generation of wearable products based on discovering anticipatory services.

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TC Rapid Software Testing for Programmers NEW
James Bach, Satisfice, Inc.
Tue, 06/09/2015 - 8:30am

Perhaps you’re a programmer, trying to identify important problems in your code before they affect customers. Or a tester with skills in reading or writing code on a mission to find coding defects. James Bach presents Rapid Software Testing, a universal methodology for testing that consists of both a mindset and a skillset that can be applied whether or not you have a technical background. However, for people with coding skills, it has additional dimensions. Long before you can apply tools or write code to help solve problems, you must identify technical risk and consider the costs and benefits of various testing tactics. This is not a session about canned test tools and how to use them. It does not cover the mechanics of any specific tool or simple technique. Instead, we use practical exercises and Socratic questioning to explore the deeper skills of investigating, framing, and solving real testing problems using the skills and perspective of a programmer.

LAPTOP REQUIRED. Delegates must bring Windows-based laptops to this tutorial.

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TI Agile Project Failures: Root Causes and Corrective Actions SOLD OUT
Jeffery Payne, Coveros, Inc.
Tue, 06/09/2015 - 8:30am

Agile initiatives always begin with the best of intentions—accelerate delivery, better meet customer needs, or improve software quality. Unfortunately, some agile projects do not deliver on these expectations. If you want help to ensure the success of your agile project or get an agile project back on track, this session is for you. Jeffery Payne discusses the most common causes of agile project failure and how you can avoid these issues—or mitigate their damaging effects. Poor project management, ineffective requirements development, failed communications, software development problems, and (non)agile testing can all contribute to project failure. Learn practical tips and techniques for identifying early warning signs that your agile project might be in trouble and how you can best get your project back on track. Gain the knowledge you need to guide your organization toward agile project implementations that serve the business and the stakeholders.

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Concurrent Sessions

AT3 The Tester Role in the Agile Release Train
Malcolm Isaacs, HP
Thu, 06/11/2015 - 10:00am

In a classical agile team, testers and developers work together on feature teams to produce functioning software in each sprint. As enterprises scale up their agile adoption, the agile feature teams must work in concert with many other teams, such as component teams and system teams. They may find that they need to interact with a number of technical experts and domain experts—DBAs, architects, user experience experts, business analysts, and others—who form part of the supporting cast. Together, these teams and individuals make up the “team of teams,” often known as the release train. Testers play a key role in each of these teams along the way. Malcolm Isaacs explores each of these teams, their functions, and their interactions with the rest of the enterprise from the perspective of the tester. He discusses testing tools and techniques that testers in each of these enterprise teams can leverage to increase overall quality.

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AT9 Integrate V&V within Scrum: How Does That Work?
Kathryn Aragon, Sandia National Laboratories
Julie Bouchard, Sandia National Laboratories
Thu, 06/11/2015 - 1:30pm

Scrum is an iterative, incremental framework for delivering business value. It is not a Verification and Validation (V&V) approach. So how do we merge Scrum and V&V when a product must be subjected to formal V&V activities? How do we plan V&V work, incorporating it into a Scrum roadmap and backlog? How do we execute the V&V plan while performing development activities? Julie Bouchard and Kathy Aragon briefly describe what V&V is—and what it isn’t. They introduce V&V Navigator, a Government-developed, web-based tool to aid in identifying candidate V&V activities. Julie and Kathy demonstrate the use of Navigator to plan activities and artifacts for V&V, show how to map V&V activities into a Scrum backlog, and explore how to bake V&V into epics and stories “done” criteria. Learn ways to integrate V&V within the Scrum development process—the same as we do testing activities.

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AT12 Test Automation in Agile: A Successful Implementation
Melissa Tondi, Denver Automation and Quality Engineering
Thu, 06/11/2015 - 3:00pm

Many agile teams have experienced big problems when implementing test automation. For example, they may discover that a purchased tool is often seen as a “silver bullet” and feel forced to use it even though better options may exist. Melissa Tondi discusses who is affected by automation, where it belongs in the development lifecycle, and when it should start. In addition, Melissa thoughtfully presents common pitfalls—unattainable metrics, tooling missteps, and transitioning a manual test team—that get in the way of a successful implementation and shares recommendations on how to address each of these pitfalls. Find out ways to quickly move up the learning curve from manual testing to automation and take back guidelines on what to automate and when. Don’t throw in the towel on test automation—it’s a critical and required part of all successful agile implementations.

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