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Test Automation

Tutorials

ML Test Attacks to Break Mobile, IoT, and Embedded Software NEW
Jon Hagar, Independent Consultant
Mon, 11/09/2015 - 1:00pm

In the tradition of James Whittaker’s book series How to Break Software, Jon Hagar applies the testing “attack” concept to the domain of mobile, IoT, and embedded software systems. First, Jon defines the environments of mobile, IoT and embedded software. He then examines the issues of software product failures caused by defects found in these types of software. Next, Jon shares a set of ten attacks against mobile, IoT, and embedded software based on common modes of failure that teams can direct against their software today. Like software design patterns, attacks are test design patterns that must be customized for particular contexts. For specific attacks, Jon explains when and how to conduct the attack, who should conduct the attack, and why the attack works to find bugs. In addition to learning these testing concepts, attendees will get to practice the attack pattern on devices containing mobile, IoT and/or embedded software—so bring your smart phones.

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MN Planning, Architecting, and Implementing Test Automation within the Lifecycle
Michael Sowers, TechWell Corp.
Mon, 11/09/2015 - 1:00pm

In test automation, we must often use several tools that have been developed or acquired over time with little to no consideration of an overall plan, architecture, or the need for integration. As a result, productivity suffers and frustrations increase. Join Mike Sowers as he shares experiences from multiple organizations in creating an integrated test automation plan and developing a test automation architecture. Mike discusses both the good (engaging the technical architecture team) and bad (too much isolation between test automators and test designers) on his test automation journey in large and small enterprises. Discover approaches to ensure that the test tools you currently have and the new test tools you acquire or develop will work well with other testing and application lifecycle software. Explore approaches to drive test automation adoption across multiple project teams and departments, and communicate the real challenges and potential benefits to your stakeholders.

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TL Acceptance Test-Driven Development: Principles and Practices NEW
Ken Pugh, Net Objectives
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 1:00pm

Defining, understanding, and agreeing on the scope of work to be done is often an area of discomfort for product managers, developers, and quality assurance experts alike. The origin of many items living in our defect tracking systems can be traced to the difficulty of performing these initial activities. Ken Pugh introduces acceptance test-driven development (ATDD), explains why it works, and outlines the different roles team members play in the process. ATDD improves communication among customers, developers, and testers. ATDD has proven to dramatically increase productivity and reduce delays in development by decreasing re-work. Through interactive exercises, Ken shows how acceptance tests created during requirement analysis decrease ambiguity, increase scenario coverage, help with effort estimation, and act as a measurement of quality. Join Ken to examine issues with automating acceptance tests including how to create test doubles and when to insert them into the process. Explore the quality of tests and how they relate to the underlying code.

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TN Advanced Test Automation in Agile Development
Rob Sabourin, AmiBug.com
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 1:00pm

Agile teams are charged with delivering potentially shippable software at the end of each iteration. In fact, some high-performing agile teams with advanced automation can ship working software every day. They achieve regression confidence with extensive automated test suites and other advanced practices. Rob Sabourin shares automation techniques to improve story and feature testing, exploratory testing, and regression testing. Explore ways that test-driven development (TDD) techniques, precise test and tool selection, appropriate automation design, and team collaboration can be combined to fully integrate testing into agile delivery teams. Learn how automation supports and drives agile testing activities, and how test automation is implemented in diverse organizations. Rob illustrates many types of automation with sample test descriptions, source code, and test scripts. See examples of automated tests for TDD, acceptance test-driven development, and behavior driven-development. Leave with a new toolkit of agile automation methods and techniques.

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Concurrent Sessions

BT3 Test Data Management: A Healthcare Industry Case Study
Jatinder Singh, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
Shaheer Mohammed, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
Thu, 11/12/2015 - 10:00am

As IT systems increase in both scale and complexity, delivering quality applications becomes more challenging. In addition to creating and executing test scenarios, testers need to create and maintain the test data that enables test execution. Test data management (TDM) creates and processes data in test environments using business knowledge and technology. Test data is created based on requirements provided from consumers. With TDM in your software delivery process, teams dependent on data can focus on creating and executing test scenarios instead of having to provision the data to run these tests. Shaheer Mohammed and Jatinder Singh present a case study that recaps the successful creation of a TDM team. They review what worked well, share lessons learned along the way, touch on the challenges of managing protected data in the health-care industry, and discuss innovative tools and processes that enabled their success.

 
 

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BT9 Fostering Long-Term Test Automation Success
Carl Nagle, SAS Institute, Inc.
Thu, 11/12/2015 - 1:30pm

In today’s environment of plummeting software delivery cycle times, test automation becomes a more critical and strategic necessity. How can we possibly keep up with software delivery’s explosive pace while retaining satisfactory test coverage, keeping the reins on costs, and reducing risk? Carl Nagle maintains that the long-term solution is a greater level of “sustainable” test automation. The SAFS method separates test design from test execution with a data-driven/action-based approach that encapsulates volatile application-specific data into readily localizable “maps” for simple maintenance. Test designs (scripts) are completely independent of the ready-to-run SAFS engines that will execute them. And since the test design methodology does not change over long periods of time, testers can focus more on getting robust automation in place quickly, with little attention paid to each new technology, testing tool, or test IDE. Join Carl to learn how test automation thrives when testers and tools are not tied up in application-specific silos.

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