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STARWEST 2008 Concurrent Sessions
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You can have the best tools and processes in the world,
but if your staff is not motivated and productive, your testing effort
will be, at best, inefficient. Good test managers must also be good leaders.
Retired Marine Colonel Rick Craig describes how using the Marine Corps Principles
of Leadership can help you become a better leader and, as a result, a better test
manager. Learn the difference between leadership and management and why they
complement each other. Join in the discussion and share ideas that have helped
you motivate your testers (and those that didn�t). Also, share your thoughts on
what characteristics are associated with leaders and whether you believe that
�leaders are made� or �leaders are born�. Rick discusses motivation, morale,
training, span of control, immersion time, and promoting the testing discipline
within your organization. He also address the importance of influence leaders
and how they can be used as agents of change.
Learn more about Rick Craig
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Keith Stobie, Microsoft |
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To apply model-based testing (MBT) to many different applications,
simply learning the high-level principles is not enough. You need extra guidance
and practice to help orient testers and developers to begin using models for testing.
Many people attempting MBT, confused about programming around observation and control,
try to duplicate the underlying system functionality in models. Keith Stobie shows
you real-world MBT case studies to illustrate MBT ideas you can incorporate into
your own practices. Learn to apply MBT patterns and practices to both traditional
and model-based test design. See abstracting examples and how these abstractions
can help testers with any test suite—model-based or not. Learn to create adapters
that act as a specialized programming language—similar to keyword-based testing—for
the abstractions of your domain under test. Detect under-testing and over-testing
by creating a logging framework using assertions to trace tests back to requirements.
With MBT patterns and practices, you can do MBT—More Better Testing!
Learn more about Keith
Stobie |
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Thomas Thunell, Ericsson AB |
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As a world-leading provider of telecommunications equipment,
Ericsson knows that test automation is a key factor for driving a successful test
organization. Thomas Thunell describes their automation solution—a test system
for complex, end-to-end environments. Ericsson’s networks typically consist
of mobile terminals, base stations, radio network controllers, switching systems,
protocol analyzers, and possibly other components. Thomas discusses the lessons
Ericsson has learned—obtain management commitment up front, use dedicated
automation teams, and take the long-term view in automation work. When it came to
planning, establishing guidelines, and getting the right people on board, Ericsson
treated test automation exactly the same as any other software development project.
In so doing, they built—and depend on—a rock-solid, easy-to-use, reliable
test automation framework. Future plans include automated post-processing of test
logs and delivering test automation metrics directly from the system. Find out how
Ericsson is doing test automation to see how you can follow their path.
Learn more about Thomas
Thunell |
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Frank Cohen, PushToTest |
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AJAX testers and developers have serious challenges developing
unit tests, functional tests, and load/performance tests in a time when AJAX and
other Web development technologies continue to expand. Frank Cohen explains a proven
methodology to identify—and solve—scalability, performance, and reliability
issues in AJAX applications. Frank explains how to apply this methodology using
open source testing tools, including Selenium, soapUI, TestGen4Web, PushToTest,
and others. He demonstrates hands-on testing examples created with the Appcelerator
and Google Widget Toolkit (GWT) frameworks. You’ll also see how to construct
a functional unit test for a business flow, identify ways to create operational
test data at run time, validate test responses, and automate the entire test. Learn
to use Firebug and Firefox to identify and instrument AJAX user interface elements.
Add these new tools and methods to your toolkit for a better AJAX testing experience.
Learn more about Frank
Cohen |
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Jonathan Kohl, Kohl Concepts, Inc. |
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When you think of automated testing, you usually think of computer
software executing unattended tests. When you think of manual testing, you think
of a human being executing tests without the aid of software. Instead of thinking
of tests as either automated or manual, Jonathan Kohl explores ways you can blend
the two. He helps you answer the questions, “How can automation improve my
exploratory and scripted testing work?” and “What do we lose if we run
these tests without any human supervision?” With numerous examples, Jonathan
demonstrates the different mindset he uses to implement test automation as he highlights
techniques from a hybrid testing approach. He demonstrates examples from his personal
testing experiences and from other disciplines to change your mind on man and machine
testing.
Learn more about Jonathan
Kohl |
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It seems that senior management is always complaining that testing
costs too much. And their opinion is accurate if they consider only the costs—and
not the benefits—of testing. What if you could show management how much you
have saved the organization by finding defects during testing? The most expensive
defects are ones not found during testing—defects that ultimately get delivered
to the user. Their consequential damages and repair costs can far exceed the cost
of finding them before deploying a system. Instead of focusing only on the cost
of testing, Leo van der Aalst shows you how to determine the real value that testing
adds to the project. He shares a model that he has used to calculate the losses
testing prevents—losses that did not occur because testing found the error
before the application was put into production. Leo explains the new testing math:
Loss Prevented – Cost of Testing = Added Value of Testing.
Learn more about Leo
van der Aalst |
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Erik Petersen, emprove |
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Did you know that you can get many free—or nearly free—tools
to supercharge your Web testing efforts? Amazingly, at the click of a button, you
can download some very advanced capabilities to make you seem like a testing genius.
With a focus on Web application tools, Erik Petersen looks at tools that can help
all testers. Erik examines mind mapping and how you can use mind maps for schedules,
strategies, even tests themselves. He demonstrates several tools for managing tests
and others to help you look “under the hood” and manipulate Web applications.
Join Erik to learn some innovative ways to test your Web applications; build test
data to include dummy people with realistic addresses; capture what you've done;
and view, tweak, and break the software. You’ll also see “portable applications”,
versions of tools that run off a memory stick on any PC without being installed.
Learn more about Erik
Petersen |
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The benefits of a virtualized test lab environment are compelling
and quantifiable—rapid provisioning and tear down of environments, faster
test cycles, and powerful new capabilities to resolve defects. Although many test
teams have experimented with virtual machines and have experienced some of the benefits,
they’ve also discovered issues with virtual machine “sprawl,”
difficulties administering the lab, and lack of virtual private networking. Ian
Knox provides solutions to these problems and offers ways to simplify both using
and managing virtualization in your test environment. Ian describes the basics of
virtualization and how you can use virtual labs to solve some of the most pressing
and expensive challenges in testing. He guides you through the important implementation
choices for building a virtual lab and explores the common pitfalls with real-life
case studies. Take back an understanding of a virtual lab’s capabilities and
limitations and learn how to automate your lab with tools and build integration.
Learn more about Ian Knox |
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Rajeev Gupta, iTKO LISA |
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Before we can realize the promises of technical agility and
reuse from a distributed, service-oriented architecture (SOA), we must first establish
trust among stakeholders that SOA will meet business requirements. Rajeev Gupta
believes that the best way to instill this sense of trust and make SOA adoption
possible is through a shared center of excellence focused on SOA quality. Both service
providers and businesses consuming services must be confident that services and
the underlying implementation and data layers behind them reliably meet business
goals, even as they change and evolve over time. An SOA Quality Center of Excellence
demonstrates that quality is everyone’s duty—not just the testing team’s
responsibility. Learn the four key activities that the SOA Quality Center of Excellence
must manage: structural certification, behavioral validation, performance testing,
and service virtualization of test environments. If all stakeholders work together
to ensure quality with a continuing focus, SOA can and will succeed in your organization.
Learn more about Rajeev
Gupta |
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Derk-Jan De Grood, Collis |
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Although less well known than security and usability testing,
conformance and interoperability testing are just as important. Even though conformance
and interoperability testing—all about standards and thick technical specifications
documents—may seem dull, Derk-Jan De Grood believes that these testing objectives
can be interesting and rewarding if you approach them the right way. SOA is one
example in which numerous services must interact correctly with one another—conform
to specs—to implement a system. Conformance and interoperability testing ensures
that vendors’ scanners can read your badge in the EXPO and that your bank
card works in a foreign ATM. Derk-Jan explains important concepts of interface standards
and specifications and discusses the varied test environments you need for this
type of testing. Get insight into the problems you must overcome when you perform
conformance and interoperability testing.
Learn more about Derk-Jan
De Grood |
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Randall Rice, Rice Consulting Services,
Inc. |
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In a recent survey of 130 U.S. software testers and test managers,
Randall Rice learned that 83 percent of the respondents have experienced burnout,
53 percent have experienced depression of some type, and 97 percent have experienced
high levels of stress at some time during their software testing careers. Randall
details the sources of these problems and the most common ways to deal with them—some
healthy, some not. There are positive things testers and managers can do to reduce
and relieve their stress without compromising team effectiveness. By understanding
the proper role of testing inside your organization and building a personal support
system, you can manage stress and avoid its destructive consequences. Randall identifies
the stress factors you can personally alleviate and helps you deal with those stressors
you can't change. Avoid burnout and don’t be taken down by unreasonable management
expectations, negative attitudes of other people, unexpected changes, and other
stressors in your work.
Learn more about Randall
Rice |
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Tanya Dumaresq, Macadamian Technologies, Inc. |
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Do you need to execute and then quickly re-execute manual test
cases under tight timelines? Do bugs marked as “Cannot Reproduce” bouncing
back and forth between developers and testers frustrate your team? Would you like
to have more realistic, production-like test data? Join Tanya Dumaresq as she explains
the hows and whys of developing and using pre-created, reloadable test data for
manual testing. By planning ahead when designing test cases, you can cut test execution
time in half and virtually eliminate those “works on my machine” bugs.
Learn how to create and load test data in different formats and choose the one that
is best for your application under test. Sometimes, you can even use the application
itself to create the data! You’ll end up with test data and an environment
far more representative of your users’ world than if you create data on the
fly during test execution.
Learn more about Tanya
Dumaresq |
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Elisabeth Hendrickson, Quality Tree Software,
Inc. |
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A perennial wish of testers is to participate early in the projects
we test—as early as when the requirements are being developed. We also often
wish for developers to do a better job unit testing their programs. Now with agile
development practices, both of these wishes can come true. Development teams practicing
acceptance test-driven development (ATDD) define system-level tests during requirements
elicitation. These tests clarify requirements, uncover hidden assumptions, and confirm
that everyone has the same understanding of what “done” means. ATDD
tests become executable requirements that provide ongoing feedback about how well
the emerging system meets expectations. Agile developers who also are practicing
test-driven development (TDD) design methods create automated unit tests before
writing component code. The result of ATDD + TDD is an automated set of system-
and unit-level regression tests that execute every time the software changes. In
this session, Elisabeth explains how ATDD and TDD work and demonstrates them by
completely implementing a new feature in a sample application.
Learn more about
Elisabeth Hendrickson |
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Rex Black, QA Software Consultant/Trainer |
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Performance testing that is done once or a few times as part
of the system test is not the right approach for many systems that must change and
grow for years. Rex Black discusses a different approach—performance engineering—that
is far more than performing load testing during the system test. Performance engineering
takes a broad look at the environment, platforms, and development processes and
how they affect a system’s ability to perform at different load levels on
different hardware and networks. While load testers run a test before product launch
to alleviate performance concerns, performance engineers have a plan for conducting
a series of performance tests throughout the development lifecycle and after deployment.
A comprehensive performance methodology includes performance modeling, unit performance
tests, infrastructure tuning, benchmark testing, code profiling, system validation
testing, and production support. Find out the what, when, who, and how to conduct
each of these performance engineering activities. As a performance engineer, you’ll
learn the questions you need to ask—early in the project—to identify
risks for load, stress, capacity, and reliability.
Learn more about Rex
Black |
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Graham Thomas, Independent Consultant |
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In large organizations with multiple, simultaneous, and related
projects, how do you coordinate testing efforts for better utilization and higher
quality? Some organizations have opened Program Test Management offices to oversee
the multiple streams of testing projects and activities, each with its own test
manager. Should the Program Test Manager be an über-manager in control of everything,
or is this office more of an aggregation and reporting function? Graham Thomas examines
the spectrum of possible duties and powers of this position. He also shares the
critical factors for successful program test management, including oversight of
the testing products and deliverables; matrix management of test managers; stakeholder,
milestone, resource, and dependency management; and the softer but vital skills
of influence and negotiation with very senior managers. Relating experience gained
on several large testing programs, Graham shares a practical model—covering
the key test management areas of organization, people, process, tools, and metrics—that
your organization can adapt for its needs.
Learn more about Graham
Thomas |
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Stephen Michaud, Luxoft Canada |
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Many of the misunderstandings within software development organizations
can trace their roots to different interpretations of the role of testers. The terms
quality control (QC), quality assurance (QA), and quality analysis are often used
interchangeably. However, they are quite different and require different approaches
and very different skill sets. Quality control is a measurement of the product at
delivery compared to a benchmark standard, at which point the decision is made to
ship or reject the product. Quality assurance is the systematic lifecycle effort
to assure that a product meets expectations in all aspects of its development. It
includes processes, procedures, guidelines, and tools that lead to quality in each
phase. Quality analysis evaluates historical trends and assesses the future customer
needs as well as trends in technology to provide guidance for future system development.
Stephen Michaud describes how to set yourself up in all three roles and covers the
skills you need to be successful in each role.
Learn more about Stephen
Michaud |
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Grigori Melnik, Microsoft Corporation
Jon Bach, Quardev, Inc. |
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This is the tale of a team of software professionals at Microsoft
patterns & practices group who wrote a book on software acceptance testing.
Grigori Melnik was the content owner, writer, and project manager. Jon Bach was
the writer, material producer, and the acceptance testing reality checker, ensuring
that the project team used its own methods so the book would be acceptable to you,
the reader. To develop the book, Grigori and Jon employed key ideas of agile projects—creating
a backlog using story cards, working in short iterations, exploring requirements
and expectations, building customer trust through iterative acceptance, and staying
connected to the customer community through frequent preview releases, surveys,
and interviews. They created a heuristic acceptance testing model for knowing when
they had reached enough "acceptability" to stop "developing"
the book and publish it. Join Grigori and Jon to discover how you can apply an innovative
acceptance testing methodology to your software testing. You'll learn how to implement
an iterative and incremental acceptance testing approach on your next testing project.
Learn more about Grigori
Melnik
Learn more about Jon Bach |
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Lisa Crispin, ePlan Services, Inc. |
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On an agile team everyone tests, blurring the lines between
the roles of professional developers and testers. What’s so special about
becoming an agile test professional? Do you need different skills than testers on
traditional projects? What guides you in your daily activities? Lisa Crispin presents
her “Top Ten” list of principles that define an agile tester. She explains
that when it comes to agile testers, skills are important but attitude is everything.
Learn how agile testers acquire the results-oriented, customer-focused, collaborative,
and creative mindset that makes them successful in an agile development environment.
Agile testers apply different values and principles—feedback, communication,
simplicity, continuous improvement, and responsiveness—to add value in a unique
way. If you’re a tester looking for your place in the agile world or a manager
looking for agile testers, Lisa can help.
Learn more about Lisa
Crispin |
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Scott Barber and Dawn Haynes, PerfTestPlus, Inc. |
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At the core of most performance testing challenges and failed
performance testing projects are serious misunderstandings and miscommunications
within the project team. Scott Barber and Dawn Haynes share approaches to overcoming
some of the most common frustrations facing performance testers today. Rather than
simply telling you how to improve understanding and communicate performance testing
concepts, Scott and Dawn demonstrate their approaches through an amusing role play
of interactions between a lead performance tester and a non-technical executive.
Based on real-life experiences (with names and places changed to protect the innocent,
of course), they demonstrate ways for you to address questions such as, “Should
we be doing performance, load, stress, or capacity testing?”, “How relevant
and realistic (or not) is this load test?”, “How will we know if we
are done?”, and “What is a concurrent user, anyway?” As you enjoy
the interplay, you’ll learn valuable lessons that are sure to make your performance
testing better and personally more rewarding.
Learn more about Scott
Barber
Learn more about Dawn
Haynes |
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Riley Rice, Booz Allen Hamilton |
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Conceptually, most testers and developers agree that reviews
and inspections of software designs and code can improve software and reduce development
costs. However, most are unaware that measuring reviews and inspections greatly
magnifies these improvements and savings. Riley Rice presents data from more than
4,000 real-world software projects in different domains—defense, commercial,
and government. He compares the results of three scenarios: doing few or no reviews,
doing unmeasured reviews, and doing measured reviews. For each scenario, Riley compares
resulting metrics: defects delivered to customers, total project pre-release costs,
total project post-release costs, total project lifecycle costs, project duration,
mean time between failures, and productivity. The results are surprising—measured
reviews are substantially more effective—and go far beyond what most people
would expect. Learn how the effectiveness of inspections and reviews is significantly
improved by the simple act of measuring them.
Learn more about Riley
Rice |
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Top of Page
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Software Quality Engineering • 330
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Phone: 904.278.0524 • Toll-free: 888.268.8770 • Fax:
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[email protected]
© 2008 Software Quality Engineering, All rights reserved.
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