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Agile Development Practices 2009

Agile Testing Workshop

 
     
  NEW FOR 2009! Agile Testing Workshop (Two days)
Monday, November 9 – Tuesday, November 10, 2009
 
 


Although early agile development approaches did not have defined tester roles, most teams and agile consultants have come to realize testing and testers are vital to agile projects. For many agile projects, the test automation strategy and its execution play a critical part in the project’s success.

However, traditional test strategies and approaches invariably fail when attempted in the agile world. Faster release cycles, less requirements documentation, and different development deliverables require new testing methods, roles, and skills.

New for 2009, the two-day Agile Testing Workshop on Monday and Tuesday allows you to focus on the skills and methods that will make your agile testing efforts successful. Led in a highly interactive workshop-style format, the class is guided by a team of experienced agile and testing practitioners and expert consultants with many years of agile and testing experience.

In this two-day workshop you will:
Discover why so many testers love agile development environments
Determine how testers and testing can successfully transition to agile practices
Understand how testing failures can cripple an agile project
Examine how testers, product owners, users, and business analysts interact in an agile project
Discover how to integrate agile testing practices into non-agile development environments
Learn how much (if any) test documentation is needed for an agile project
Explore the future of agile development and testing within agile
   
Extend your education to include an additional six agile testing classes on Wednesday and Thursday by attending the full conference week! 

 
     
  Who Should attend:
Software development managers, test manager leads, project leaders, Scrum masters, QA managers and analysts, test
analysts, developers involved in test automation, and internal consultants.
 
     

 MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9

Agile Testing Workshop Sessions for Monday, November 9, 2009 — 8:30 a.m. — 10:00 a.m. 
WS1  
Do You Do Agile Testing?
Janet Gregory, DragonFire
 
Starting off the two-day Agile Testing Workshop, Janet Gregory leads a panel of experienced agile testing professionals to discuss specific agile development and testing concepts. Explore with them what agile testing is and how it’s practiced by great agile teams around the world. Bring questions, issues, and concerns you may have about fitting your testing experiences into today’s more agile world. Janet and the panel members compare and contrast testing within agile development with other, more traditional development processes. They’ll discuss the benefits and challenges for testers in this new world, share their introduction to agile development, and discuss why they love agile testing. Engage with the panel and other participants to explore what you need to do to grow and flourish in an agile development.  
Learn more about Janet Gregory  
Agile Testing Workshop Sessions for Monday, November 9, 2009 — 10:30 a.m. — 12:00 p.m.
WS2  
Transitioning to Agile: Tester Successes (and Horror Stories)
Dale Emery, Independent Consultant
 
In many organizations, the transition to agile development emphasizes programming and management practices—with little attention paid to how testing fits during the transition or after. This oversight is unfortunate, as test and quality professionals can contribute important skills and knowledge to help agile succeed. However, as agile development becomes more widespread, the industry is learning the benefits of involving test professionals in their transition plans right from the start. Join Dale Emery for this session that begins with Lightning Talks— five-minute presentations—from experienced test professionals who have made the transition. Then the conversation is open to all participants, with the focus of the discussion on the unique contributions made by test and quality professionals. Learn about all aspects of successful agile transitions, including key success factors, setbacks and surprises, challenges and solutions, the benefits achieved, and lessons learned along the way. Bring your experience, bring your questions, and join in the conversation.
Learn more about Dale Emery  
Lunch • 12:00
Agile Testing Workshop Sessions for Monday, November 9, 2009 — 1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.
WS3  
Key Factors for Successful Agile Test Automation
Jared Richardson, Agile Coach
 
Agile’s strong culture of testing and automation gives testers on agile teams a huge boost when it comes to implementing test automation. However, test automation has many facets, and even experienced agile teams can struggle. Too many teams lead with complete test-driven design, which sets the bar so high that automation attempts fail—sometimes resulting in the team’s abandoning test automation completely. Other strategies, such as defect-driven testing, provide a more gentle introduction and lead teams in the right direction over time rather than trying to “change the world” overnight. Blitzing a product is also a great way to get a team started with test automation when they already believe in the idea and tools of test automation. Jared Richardson examines these and other strategies and shows you how to pick the best one for your situation. Take back a checklist you can use to start your new test automation efforts or tune-up your existing work. Jared Richardson
Learn more about Jared Richardson  
Agile Testing Workshop Sessions for Monday, November 9, 2009 — 3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. 
WS4  
Test Planning - The Agile Way
Lisa Crispin, Ultimate Software and Janet Gregory, DragonFire
 
Traditional test planning is not compatible with agile software development partly because you don't know all the details about all the requirements up front. However, even for an agile software release, you still must decide what types of testing activities will be required and when you need to schedule them. And how do you fit all the different types of testing—including automated regression tests—into a two-week iteration? Learn how testers contribute during iterations and releases by developing a workable agile test strategy. Join Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory to learn how to use “agile testing quadrants”—a model for identifying the different purposes of testing—to help your team understand the testing needs as you plan for the next release. The quadrants help teams decide who does what testing—and when. Through exercises and group discussions, you’ll explore lightweight test-planning tools, agile approaches to documenting tests, reporting approaches, how to build testing infrastructure, and how to keep the team on track through each iteration and release.
Learn more about Lisa Crispin
Learn more about Janet Gregory
 
     
 

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10 

Agile Testing Workshop Sessions for Tuesday, November 10, 2009 — 8:30 a.m. — 10:00 a.m. 
WS5  
Driving Development with Business-Facing Tests: A Behavior-Driven Approach
Antony Marcano, Independent Consultant
Andy Palmer, Independent Consultant
 
Although test-driven development helps developers build the product right, how do we know that we're building the right product? Antony Marcano explores how teams create automated feature examples to illustrate the customer intent behind each user story. Drawing on behavior-driven development and acceptance test-driven development  concepts, Antony describes how business-facing examples, hardened into automated tests, can bring user needs to life. See how these automated tests, which read more like narrative specifications, automatically test that the system fulfills the customer’s expectations. Learn about technologies that enable these tests to run continuously without intervention. See how driving development with automated business-facing tests increases the speed with which teams can confidently deliver product enhancements. Take back a practical framework for successful test automation in an agile development environment. Antony Marcano  Andy Palmer
Learn more about Antony Marcano
Learn more about
Andy Palmer

 
Agile Testing Workshop Sessions for Tuesday, November 10, 2009 — 10:30 a.m. — 12:00 p.m.
WS6  
Writing Adaptable Automated Tests
Dale Emery, Independent Consultant
 
Automated tests are software. Therefore, test automation is software development. As with other software development efforts, most of the cost of test automation occurs during maintenance after the tests are first written. Automated tests can become brittle, bound to incidental details of the requirements or the software being tested. When that happens, a small change in a requirement or in the software can render scores of tests obsolete in the blink of an eye—even if the essence of the test remains relevant and even if the software still meets the real requirement. So, how can we reduce the high cost of inevitable change? Dale Emery demonstrates that the solution requires a team effort, leveraging testing skills, programming skills, and modern test automation frameworks to allow us to make tests less sensitive to such incidental changes. Learn the two key principles for writing adaptable automated tests: focus on the essence of the test and remove duplication. See demonstrations of these complementary principles using Robot Framework, a popular open source test automation tool.
Learn more about Dale Emery  
Lunch • 12:00
Agile Testing Workshop Sessions for Tuesday, November 10, 2009 — 1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.
WS7  
Keeping the Quality in Agile: Identifying and Repaying Technical Debt
Jared Richardson, Agile Coach
 
One of the principles of the Agile Manifesto is continuous attention to technical excellence—a statement about how to get and keep quality in a system. So, how do you spot problem areas—called technical debt—that need attention and then get the resources to fix them? Jared Richardson explores the issues around code and software quality and shares common techniques to make these issues visible to your team, your managers, and customers. After all, if they don’t recognize and understand your problems, they aren’t likely to support your efforts to clean up neglected areas of the software. Techniques to locate your own blind spots include “going to lunch,” “add beer,” and “the skipped practice.” (“Add beer” is the most popular.) Jared demonstrates how tools such as continuous integration and automated testing keep products in “shippable shape” every day and expose debt problems that often sneak into a product. Jared also shares ways to describe technical problems to the non-technical VIPs in your life—as he discusses mysterious terms such as ROI and feedback loops, and explains why numbers and pretty graphs do matter. Jared Richardson
Learn more about Jared Richardson  
Agile Testing Workshop Sessions for Tuesday, November 10, 2009 — 3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. 
WS8  
Agile Testing Challenges and Next Steps
Antony Marcano, Dale Emery, Janet Gregory, Lisa Crispin, Jared Richardson, and Lee Copeland
 
Over the past two days, you’ve explored many facets of agile testing. Now, as you look forward to improving testing in your organization, you still may have questions. What concrete steps can you take right now that will have the biggest impact? What unique challenges might you face as you integrate agile testing into your team? How will you know whether you're making progress? Join Antony, Dale, Janet, Lisa, and Jared as Lee Copeland facilitates a discussion of techniques for solving cultural issues and concrete implementation problems. The workshop leaders focus on an approach that great coaches use when they don’t have all the answers—they ask problem-solving questions. They describe a set of powerful questions that apply to a wide range of problems—questions to help you explore the boundaries of the problem, uncover hidden assumptions, and identify new possibilities for moving forward. Then, you’ll break into problem solving teams to practice these problem-solving techniques, address your most pressing challenges, and return to work ready to hit the ground running. Antony Marcano     Jared Richardson 
Learn more about Antony Marcano
Learn more about Dale Emery
Learn more about
Lisa Crispin
Learn more about Janet Gregory
Learn more about Jared Richardson
Learn more about Lee Copeland
 
     

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