“Madam, if you use this [software development] tool, you won’t need to do any testing!” Twenty-five years ago this comment reflected a typical attitude! Can you imagine someone saying this today? Sharing her testing journey and what she has learned through the years, Dot Graham, who has had an illustrious career in testing, leads a discussion on how testing’s past has influenced its present and how you will ultimately shape its future. To understand our history’s influence on our present and think about our future, come to listen, share your own stories, and question the present state of testing. Look at the “hot topics” of the past, what was important then, what is important now, and what will be important in the future. Examine what isn’t really much different now—in spite of a lot of change—and what seems really important now but probably isn’t. Join Dot for a lively dive into the past, present, and future of testing.
Dorothy Graham
In software testing for over forty years, Dorothy Graham is coauthor of four books—Software Inspection, Software Test Automation, Foundations of Software Testing and Experiences of Test Automation—and is currently working with Seretta Gamba on a new book on a test automation patterns wiki. A popular and entertaining speaker at conferences and seminars worldwide, Dot has attended STAR conferences since the first one in 1992. She was a founding member of the ISEB Software Testing Board and a member of the working party that developed the ISTQB Foundation Syllabus. Dot was awarded the European Excellence Award in Software Testing in 1999 and the first ISTQB Excellence Award in 2012. Learn more about Dot at DorothyGraham.co.uk.
Many organizations never achieve the significant benefits that are promised from automated test execution. Surprisingly often, this is not due to technical factors but to management issues. Dot Graham describes the most important management issues you must address for test automation success, and helps you understand and choose the best approaches for your organization—no matter which automation tools you use or your current state of automation. Dot explains how automation affects staffing, who should be responsible for which automation tasks, how managers can best support automation efforts to promote success, and what return on investment means in automated testing—and what you can realistically expect. Dot reviews the key technical issues that can make or break the automation effort. Come away with an example set of automation objectives and measures, and a draft test automation strategy that you can use to plan or improve your own test automation.
In chess, the word blunder means a very bad move by someone who should know better. Even though functional test automation has been around for a long time, people still make some very bad moves and serious blunders. The most common misconception in automation is thinking that manual testing is the same as automated testing. And this thinking accounts for most of the blunders in system level test automation. Dorothy Graham takes us on a tour of these blunders, including: the Stable-Application Myth (you can’t start automating until the application is stable), Inside-the-Box Thinking (automating only the obvious test execution), the Project/Non-Project Dilemma (failing to treat automation like a project by not funding or resourcing it, and treating automation as only a project). Other blunders include Testing-Tools-Test, Silver Bullet, Automating the Wrong Thing, Who Needs GPS, How Hard Can It Be, and Isolationism. Different skills, approaches, and objectives are needed or you’ll end up with inefficient automation, high maintenance costs, and wasted effort. Join Dot to discover how you can avoid these common blunders and achieve valuable test automation.