Virtual Conference

8:30 AM PT  •  KEYNOTE–Quality Principles for Today's "Glueware"—Testing Web Services, Libraries,

    and Frameworks

     Julie Gardiner, Redmind

In the past, developers knew every line of code in their applications. They designed it, wrote it, tested it, and controlled it. Today’s applications are far different. Rather than written, they are often assembled―from program language libraries, third-party frameworks, encapsulated web services, and even entire external systems—and glued together with small amounts of code. Before your organization committed to using these external pieces of software, were testers part of the evaluation process? Was the software thoroughly tested before betting your organization’s success on it? Or did everyone just hope for the best? Julie Gardiner explains how to make the business case for including test professionals in the software evaluation to add their unique focus on software quality. If you’re already committed to using vendor supplied software, Julie describes how to ensure quality from your vendors, on a schedule that meets your needs—not theirs.

A principal consultant and head of QA and agile for Redmind, Julie Gardiner provides consultancy and training in all aspects of testing, management, and agile, specializing in risk, agile, test management, and usability. Julie has more than twenty years of experience as developer, DBA, project manager, head of operations management, and head of R&D. She has held positions of test analyst, test team leader, test consultant, and test manager in industries including financial, broadcasting, insurance, utilities, retail, web, telecoms and the public sector using approaches from traditional to agile methodologies. Julie is a certified ScrumMaster and agile coach.

10:00 AM PT  •  KEYNOTE–Balancing the Crusty and Old with the Shiny and New

       Bob Galen, Velocity Partners

In his journeys, Bob Galen has discovered that testing takes on many forms. Some organizations have no automated tests and struggle to run massive manual regression tests within very short iterative releases. Other organizations are going “all in”―writing thousands of acceptance tests in Gherkin. The resulting imbalance in their testing approaches undermines an organization’s efficiency, effectiveness, and delivery nimbleness. Bob shares ideas to bring balance to testing. He explores the choices: manual vs. automated testing, designed and scripted test cases vs. exploratory tests, and thoroughly planned test projects vs. highly iterative reactive ones. Bob describes how to balance traditional test leadership with an iterative and whole team view to add value. And finally, he explores the balance of the gatekeeper vs. leading the collaboration with stakeholders to find the right requirements that solve their problems. Take away a strategic approach to structure your testing and a renewed understanding of how testing fits into a healthy and balanced culture.

An agile methodologist, practitioner, and coach based in Cary, NC, Bob Galen helps guide companies in their adoption of Scrum and other agile methodologies and practices. Bob is a principal agile evangelist at Velocity Partners, a leading agile nearshore development partner; president of RGCG; and frequent speaker on software development, project management, software testing, and team leadership at conferences and professional groups. He is a Certified Scrum Coach, Certified Scrum Product Owner, and an active member of the Agile and Scrum Alliances. In 2013 Bob published Scrum Product Ownership–Balancing Value from the Inside Out. Reach him at [email protected].

11:30 AM PT  •  Industry Technical Presentation • HP

      Breaking Bad (Practices)—Testing Your Mobile App

      Kelly Emo, HP

Untested mobile applications are extremely unlikely to survive beyond the walls of your lab.  Let’s spend some time together exploring the very entertaining world of mobile app testing. We’ll describe unfamiliar challenges hidden behind this richer engagement language and assess the current testing practices, trends, and tips. In this short discussion, we will review mobile app testing with a DevOps mindset.

Kelly Emo has more than 20 years experience as a product marketing, product management and business development professional in the software, systems and networking area.  In her current role, Kelly manages a team of Senior product marketing professionals across the HP Software and Solutions Applications portfolio.  Prior to this role, Kelly lead efforts around HP’s SOA software strategy and marketing, and worked at BEA Systems as the Director of integration software, and at a software startup focused on the Application Software-as-a-service-market.  Kelly has also lead strategy, product marketing and product management efforts at HP for enterprise Java, middleware, systems management and networking. Kelly has a BS in Computer Science from the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, CA, and an MBA from Santa Clara University.

12:30 PM PT  •  Industry Technical Presentation • Keynote

     Continuous Mobile Testing Using Jenkins – A How-To Guide

     Joe Lewis, Keynote

Mobile developers are moving from the traditional testing environment toward more agile testing practices with many teams adopting continuous integration to speed and streamline their development and testing processes. To meet the demands of this new, condensed, mobile development timeframe, developers and testers must be more closely aligned than ever with the help of easily deployable and configurable testing tools. Testing on real mobile devices gives you the most accurate view into how your mobile app or website will perform in the real world, all in a pre-production environment. Discover how you can test at the speed of mobile.

As a solutions consultant for Keynote, Joe Lewis provides support and product education to new Keynote users. Prior to becoming a solutions consultant, Joe provided customer support to Keynote users as an enterprise support engineer and spent time as a software integration tech integrating new mobile devices into the Keynote DeviceAnywhere system. He has more than a decade of mobile tech experience, previously working in a variety of roles for mobile companies including Atlas Games and Infospace’s mobile division.

1:45 PM PT  •  Industry Technical Presentation • Dynatrace

     Performance Engineering in 2014: Level Up Your Skills

     Andreas "Andi" Grabner, Dynatrace

Agile, continuous delivery, and DevOps have changed the way we develop, test, and deploy software. And as performance engineers and architects we need to level up our skills and change the way we do our day-to-day job. Join Andreas Grabner to walk through how applications need to be performance tested, analyzed, and architected in 2014; and how to find the top performance hotspots—and do so in an automated way along your new build pipeline. Come test out dynaTrace in its free available version! 

Andreas Grabner has more than ten years of experience as an architect and developer in the Java and .NET space. A technology strategist, Andi leads the Compuware APM Center of Excellence team where he influences the Dynatrace product strategy and works closely with customers to implement performance management solutions across the entire application lifecycle. A frequent speaker on performance- and architecture-related topics at technology conferences, he regularly publishes articles and blogs on apmblog.compuware.com.

3:00 PM PT  •  Industry Technical Presentation • Sauce Labs

     Continuous Testing and New Tools for Automation

     Michael Redman, Sauce Labs

Learn how you can create a full continuous integration solution entirely in the cloud using GitHub, Selenium, Sauce Labs, and Travis CI. Michael Redman will show you how to take advantage of these hosted development resources to improve the velocity of your releases and provide the application quality your users demand. He will demonstrate how Sauce Labs can securely execute your Selenium tests in parallel and dramatically reduce the time required to run your critical integration and acceptance tests—so you can finally realize the promise of continuous delivery.

Michael Redman started his software career 16 years ago at Keynote Systems as a Test Engineer. He immediately gravitated toward test automation. In fact, he had such a passion for test automation that he joined Mercury Interactive as a Sales Engineer so he could help others learn and adopt great test automation tools. During his time at Mercury he had the pleasure working directly with some of the world's largest and most successful test teams. Michael is a firm believer in constantly learning, evaluating and adopting new technologies, as a result making testing more effective. He currently runs the Sales Engineering team as Sauce Labs where he continues to learn, evaluate, and adopt new testing technologies.

4:30 PM PT  •  KEYNOTE–Lightning Strikes the Keynotes

     Facilitated By Lee Copeland, Software Quality Engineering

Throughout the years, Lightning Talks have been a popular part of the STAR conferences. If you’re not familiar with the concept, Lightning Talks consists of a series of five-minute talks by different speakers within one presentation period. Lightning Talks are the opportunity for speakers to deliver their single biggest bang-for-the-buck idea in a rapid-fire presentation. And now, lightning has struck the STAR keynotes.

With more than thirty years of experience as an information systems professional at commercial and nonprofit organizations, Lee Copeland has held technical and managerial positions in applications development, software testing, and software process improvement. At Software Quality Engineering, Lee has developed and taught numerous training courses on software development and testing issues, and is a sought-after speaker at software conferences in the United States and abroad. Lee presents at software conferences in the United States and abroad. He is the author of the popular reference book, A Practitioner’s Guide to Software Test Design.

8:30 AM PT  •  KEYNOTE–The Power of an Individual Tester: The HealthCare.gov Experience

      Ben Simo, eBay Inc.

Like millions of other Americans, Ben Simo visited HealthCare.gov in search of health insurance and found a frustratingly buggy website that was failing to fulfill its purpose―to educate people on the new health insurance law and help them purchase health insurance. After failing to create an account, Ben put on his tester hat and turned on his web developer tools. In addition to many functional and performance issues, Ben soon discovered a chain of security vulnerabilities that exposed users to unnecessary risk. Finding HealthCare.gov customer service unequipped to receive reports of security vulnerabilities, he blogged his discoveries, spawning a storm of public attention which hailed Ben as a “web expert,” “methodical IT guru," “folk hero”—and “not too bright.” His reports even came up in congressional hearings, where the Secretary of Health and Human Services referred to Ben as “a sort of skilled hacker.” Ben’s reports helped bring attention to problems that suggested a systematic lack of care and understanding of system design and information security. Join Ben as he shares his experience, the issues he found, and lessons testers can learn from HealthCare.gov.

With more than two decades of experience, Ben Simo, aka QualityFrog, is a skilled context-driven software tester who views software testing as a cognitively complex activity that requires critical thinking, effective communication, and rapid self-directed learning. Ben approaches software testing as a search for knowledge―both confirming existing beliefs and seeking out the unknown, gathering information to enable informed decision making. He has applied his testing skills for companies large and small in industries from defense and healthcare to finance and Internet services. A member and past president of the Association for Software Testing, Ben operates IsThereAProblemHere.com, a blog that provides software professionals an opportunity to laugh and learn from wild-caught software failures..

9:45 AM PT  •  Industry Technical Presentation • LogiGear

     Achieving Test Automation Critical Mass with Action Based Testing

     John Kane, LogiGear

Despite advances in testing, the reality is that companies often automate less than 30 percent of their functional tests. By practicing Action Based Testing (ABT) you can take your automation program to the next level, achieving test automation critical mass—the point at which test coverage continues to expand as overall effort remains unchanged. This is a crucial tipping point for automated testing that nets a positive ROI for the company. Discover a test automation solution that enables you to achieve and sustain a high level of test automation success.

With more than thirty years of software industry experience, John Kane oversees LogiGear’s product program management to develop, productize, and deliver Action Based Testing automation solutions to the marketplace. John directs strategic engagements in areas of quality enablement testing, testing in continuous integration, mobile testing, and testing in the cloud. He manages the strategic planning and execution of the LogiGear-Microsoft partnership, integrating enterprise-level test solutions into the Microsoft Visual Studio and TFS/MTM development environment.

11:15 AM PT  •  Industry Technical Presentation • TCS

      Gamification in Assurance: The Future of QA and Testing Workspace

      Kannan Subramaniam, Comcast, and Prasad MK, TCS

Quality Assurance and Testing is an interesting and challenging profession. As custodians of the business, we are responsible for assuring both the business and the end customer experience. Even though some testing activities have become mundane and repetitive, testing professionals cannot sit back and relax. We can ensure testing and assurance remain interesting with Gamification in Assurance, which helps re-imagine the process, tools, and methodologies in the QA & Testing workspace, keeping it interesting and energizing. This self-learning environment helps motivate QA & Testing professionals and keep them focused, thereby yielding productivity and testing efficiencies which benefit the overall organization.

As vice president of quality assurance at Comcast, Kannan Subramaniam is responsible for assuring the pristine quality of the organization’s IT applications. Kannan has implemented several process improvements and transformation themes—test data management, assurance on cloud, big data assurance. His experience in software verification and validation services includes establishing a Testing Center of Excellence for a Fortune 500 financial organization.

Prasad MK is the North America assurance practice manager for the assurance services unit at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). He is responsible for assurance solutions and consultancy for telecom, media, and hi-tech industry verticals. Prior to this he worked with various global organizations to strategize customer experience testing and QA & Testing approaches for large digital transformation programs.

12:15 PM PT  •  Industry Technical Presentation • Coverity

      Eliminate the Testing Swiss Cheese Syndrome

      Rich Newman, Coverity

Test plans and test coverage often resemble Swiss cheese—full of holes in high risk areas of code. And teams may be unaware because they lack sufficient visibility into what areas of the code are covered by a test, what’s been tested, and where they should focus their efforts based on risk and change. Learn how Coverity can help development and QA teams focus their test development and test execution efforts based on risk and change, gaining visibility into critical gaps in tests. We’ll discuss best practices for incorporating both white box and black box testing into your overall software development lifecycle.

With twenty-eight years of software industry experience, Rich Newman joined Coverity as a sales engineer eighteen months ago. Rich began his career in aerospace at Northrop Corporation and then served as senior software project developer at Printronix. He was a technical account manager at Wind River for eight years before joining the test management team as a product specialist.

1:30 PM PT  •  Industry Technical Presentation • IBM

     Continuous Testing: A Key Component of Continuous Delivery

     Allan (Al) Wagner, IBM

In a DevOps approach to software development, extending agile and lean practices across the delivery lifecycle is important to releasing software faster. Delivering software to market quickly is certainly important, but releasing software of low quality can hurt. Delivering higher quality software to market at the speed customers demand requires continuous testing. Involve testers earlier in the development effort, and make sure they have the environments and technologies needed to increase testing efficiency. With testing making up at least one third of the overall delivery effort and demands for higher quality software increasing, the move to “shift left” testing continuously can be the difference between success and failure.

IBM-certified IT specialist Al Wagner is a technical manager and evangelist with IBM, driving thought leadership, strategic initiatives, and tangible solutions with a focus on quality management, test automation, and service virtualization. In his fifteen years of practical IT field experience, Al has supported, mentored, and enabled teams with their IT challenges. A frequent conference speaker on software quality principles and techniques, Al has authored or coauthored numerous papers and the IBM Service Virtualization for Dummies book.

3:00 PM PT  •  Industry Technical Presentation • BeyondSoft

     Leading a QA Organization in Today's World

     Joe Byrne, Ellie Mae

Leading a QA organization is not what it once was. Software and technology are exponentially more complex. The workforce is global. There are a variety of testing techniques and areas of focus. Tons of tools are available that help in a range of ways. Expectations of delivering quality software on time and on budget are higher than ever. As a QA leader you must work cross functionally with engineering, sales, tech support, and the business to ensure you understand the role quality plays in your organization and that you are enhancing your product’s quality throughout the entire lifecycle.

Joe Byrne is vice president of quality assurance at Ellie Mae (ELLI:US), a leading provider of enterprise level, on-demand automated solutions for the residential mortgage industry. Joe has grown the team at Ellie Mae from approximately twenty people to more than seventy in just under a year. During this growth phase he implemented new QA management tools, test case automation, and other industry best practices. Joe has been in QA for more than sixteen years in a variety of management positions.

4:15 PM PT  •  KEYNOTE–Softwarts: Security Testing for Muggles

     Paco Hope, Citigal

Security testing is often shrouded in jargon and mystique. Security conjurers perform arcane rites using supposed “black hat” techniques and would have us believe that we cannot do the same. The fact is that security testing “magic” is little more than specialized application of exploratory test techniques we already understand. In this Defense against the Black Hats, Paco Hope dispels the myth that security testing is a magical art. By deconstructing security activities into techniques we already know well, we expand our testing. Security tests can be seamlessly woven into our existing test practices with just a bit of straightforward effort. Glittering gold security bugs can be tracked and managed right alongside the mundane, garden-variety functional ones. The knowledge that we need to do meaningful security testing is accessible and can be learned. If you can test functionality, you can test security. When our day-to-day tests include security too, our software does not fall prey to the hackers’ sleight-of-hand and conjurers’ tricks.

A principal consultant for Cigital, Paco Hope has deep experience in securing software and systems. Paco’s experience covers web applications, online gaming, embedded devices, lotteries, and business-to-business transaction systems. He has worked with small startups and large enterprises in architecture risk analysis, secure code review, penetration testing, and other consulting. Acting president of the London Chapter of (ISC)², Paco serves on (ISC)²'s Application Security Advisory Board, authoring questions for the CISSP and CSSLP certifications. He coauthored the Web Security Testing Cookbook, Mastering FreeBSD and OpenBSD Security, and a chapter of Building Security In.