Measurement and Metrics for Test Managers
Rick Craig, Software Quality Engineering

To be most effective, test managers must develop and use metrics to help direct the testing effort and make informed recommendations about the software’s release readiness and associated risks. Because one important testing activity is to “measure” the quality of the software, test managers must measure the results of both the development and testing processes. Collecting, analyzing, and using metrics is complicated because many developers and testers feel that the metrics will be used “against them.” Rick Craig addresses common metrics: measures of product quality, defect removal efficiency, defect density, defect arrival rate, and testing status. Learn the benefits and pitfalls of each metric and how you can use these measurements to determine when to stop testing. Rick offers guidelines for developing a test measurement program, rules of thumb for collecting data, and ways to avoid “metrics dysfunction.” Various metrics paradigms, including Goal-Question-Metric, are addressed with a discussion of the pros and cons of each. Attendees are urged to bring their metrics problems and issues to use as discussion points. 
 

Risk-Based Security Testing 
Paco Hope, Cigital

Software security testing is a key element in your quality assurance strategy for protecting your applications and critical data. Organizations need applications that not only work correctly under normal use but also continue to work acceptably in the face of a malicious attack. Software security testing, which extends beyond basic functional requirements, is a critical part of a secure software development lifecycle. By teaching you how to use security risk information to improve your test strategy and planning, Paco Hope helps you build confidence that attackers cannot turn security risks into security failures. The goal is to teach you to think like an attacker and add test cases for non-functional—and sometimes implied—security requirements. Explore a white-box approach that looks inside your code to help you design your tests. By employing risk-based security testing, you can achieve the most benefits with less effort and avoid downstream security problems and mitigation costs. Paco offers an eye-opening experience for all QA professionals responsible for test strategies, plans, and designs. It will change the way you think about test development.

Introduction to Systematic Testing
Dale Perry, Software Quality Engineering

Testers are all too often thrown into the quality assurance/testing process without the knowledge and skills essential to perform the required tasks. To be truly effective, you first must understand what testing is supposed to accomplish and then see how it relates to the bigger project management and application development picture. After that, you can ask the right questions: What should be tested? How much testing is enough? How do I know when I’m finished? How much documentation do I need? Dale Perry details a testing lifecycle that parallels software development and focuses on defect prevention and early detection. As Dale shares the basics for implementing a systematic, integrated approach to testing software, learn when, what, and how to test—plus ways to improve the testability of your system.

Managing Test Outsourcing
Martin Pol, POLTEQ IT Services BV

When outsourcing all or part of your testing efforts to a third-party vendor, you need a special approach to make testing effective and controlled. Martin Pol explains the roadmap to successful outsourcing, how to define the objectives and strategy, and what tasks should be outsourced. He describes how to select your supplier and how to migrate, implement, and cope with people issues. Martin discusses contracts, service level agreements, compensation issues, and monitoring and controlling the outsourced test work. To help you gain a practical perspective of all the steps in the outsourcing process, Martin shares a real-life case study, including a spreadsheet-based monitoring tool. The good news for testers is that outsourcing requires more testing—not less—and that new testing jobs are coming into existence. Testing the outsourcing is becoming a very popular control mechanism for outsourcing in general.

Becoming an Influential Test Team Leader  
Randall Rice, Rice Consulting Services, Inc.

Have you been thrust into the role of test team leader or are you in a test team leadership role and want to hone your leadership skills? Test team leadership has many unique challenges, and many test team leaders—especially new ones—find themselves ill-equipped to deal with the problems they face daily. The test team leader must be able to motivate and influence people while keeping the testing on track with time and budget constraints. Randall Rice focuses on how to grow as a leader, how to influence your team and those around you, and how to influence those outside your team. Learn how to become a person of influence, how to deal with interpersonal issues, and how to influence your team in building their skills and value. Discover how to communicate your value to management, how to stand firm when asked to compromise principles, and how to learn from your successes and failures. Develop your own action plan to implement the things you plan to do to grow as a leader.

Exploratory Software Testing Explained 
Jonathan Kohl, Kohl Concepts Inc.


Exploratory testing is an approach to testing that emphasizes the freedom and responsibility of the tester to continually optimize the value of his work. It is the process of three mutually supportive activities done in parallel: learning, test design, and test execution. With skill and practice, exploratory testers typically uncover an order of magnitude more problems than the same amount of effort spent on procedurally scripted testing. All testers conduct exploratory testing in one way or another, but few know how to do it systematically to obtain the greatest benefits. Even fewer testers can articulate the process. Jonathan Kohl looks at specific heuristics and techniques of exploratory testing to help you get the most from this highly productive approach. Jonathan focuses on the skills and dynamics of exploratory testing itself, and how it can be combined with scripted approaches. (For insight into how to manage and measure ET, see Jon Bach's tutorial Session-Based Exploratory Testing.)

Key Test Design Techniques
Lee Copeland, Software Quality Engineering

Go beyond basic test methodology and discover ways to develop the skills needed to create the most effective test cases for your systems. All testers know we can create more test cases than we will ever have time to run. The problem is choosing a small, “smart” subset from the almost infinite number of possibilities. Join Lee Copeland to discover how to design test cases using formal techniques including equivalence class and boundary value testing, decision tables, state-transition diagrams, and all-pairs testing. Learn to use more informal approaches, such as random testing and exploratory testing, to enhance your testing efforts. Choose the right test case documentation format for your organization. Use the test execution results to continually improve your test designs.

How to Build, Support, and Add Value to Your Test Team 
Lloyd Roden and Julie Gardiner, Grove Consultants

As a new or current test manager, you may have many questions—How do I create a new team? How can I make my current team more efficient and effective? How can I build my organization’s confidence in our work? How can I find needed resources? Based on a people-oriented—rather than task-oriented—approach to software testing, Lloyd Roden and Julie Gardiner describe how to build and retain successful test teams. Discover the characteristics of successful testers and test managers. Identify the qualities you should look for to recruit the right people. Learn what you must do for your team and what they should do for themselves. Discuss how to promote the value of testing within the organization while building good working relationships with developers and other organizations. Learn the secrets of becoming a "trusted advisor" to your senior management. Discuss these relevant issues with others facing the same challenges. Lloyd and Julie provide utilities, spreadsheets, and templates to help you become a successful test manager.

Establishing a Fully-Integrated Test Automation Architecture
Edward Kit, Software Development Technologies

The third generation of test automation—a keyword driven approach—has proven to be the best answer to the current software quality crisis—a shortage of test resources to validate increasingly complex applications with extremely tight deadlines. Edward Kit describes the steps to design, manage, and maintain an overall testing framework using a roles-based team approach and a state-of-the-practice process. Learn how to integrate test automation into the key phases of testing—planning, design, development, execution, and reporting. As he demonstrates commercial examples of first-, second-, and third-generation test automation tools, Edward Kit provides tips for creating a unified automation architecture to address a wide variety of test environment challenges, including Web, client/server, mainframe, API, telecom, and embedded architectures.

Unit Testing Workshop      
Robert Sabourin, AmiBug.com, Inc.

With the increasing popularity of agile development methods, testing is starting earlier in the software development cycle. Testers and developers are challenged to develop software at lightning speed, often using new and unstable technologies. Join Robert Sabourin to learn how developers and testers can work together as a team to promote and implement better unit tests as part of the development process. Save your company money and yourself time by finding and fixing bugs long before system testing ever starts. Get the ammunition you need to convince management and the development team of the economic and business benefits of comprehensive unit testing. Robert addresses unit testing issues within the context of different development lifecycle models—including new agile approaches—and the tools and techniques you need to organize for and implement task oriented unit testing.

LIMITED SEATING—Register early!

Scripting for Testers  
Dion Johnson, DiJohn Innovative Consulting, Inc.

Are you a tester who is interested in developing or improving your programming skills? Automated testing means programming, but programming doesn't have to be difficult. Using the Ruby scripting language in this hands-on workshop, learn how to script tests for Web-based software applications. Practice using an open source Ruby tool kit to explore techniques for automating browser-based testing. Learn how to write automated functional tests for Web applications, understand how to define a base state for your functional tests, and discover the pros and cons of different approaches for automating Web application testing. By the end of the day, you will have written automated tests for a sample application. Participants should have some programming skills in at least one language and understand basic programming concepts such as variables and if-then statements.

Working in pairs is strongly encouraged—bring a friend and a laptop.

LIMITED SEATING—Register early!