|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
STARWEST 2008 Concurrent Sessions
|
|
|
|
Pete McBreen, Software Craftsmanship, Inc. |
 |
|
Although test managers are tasked with helping manage project
risks, risk management practices used on most software projects produce only an
illusion of safety. Many software development risks cannot be managed because they
are unknown, unquantifiable, uncontrollable, or unmentionable. Rather than planning
only for risks that have previously occurred, project and test managers must begin
with the assumption that something new will impact their project. The secret to
effective risk management is to create mechanisms that provide for the early detection
and quick response to such events—not simply to create checklists of problems
you’ve previously seen. Pete McBreen presents risk “insurance”
as a better alternative to classic risk management. He offers a risk insurance model,
which helps insure projects against incomplete information, minor slippages that
add up to major delays, late breaking bad news, and failure to learn from the past.
Join Pete to learn how your testing projects can be flexible, responsive, and better
able to deal with your project’s risks—both known and unknown.
Learn more about Pete
McBreen |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Dawn Haynes, PerfTestPlus, Inc. |
 |
|
When a tester uncovers a defect, it usually gets fixed. The
tester validates the fix and may add the test to a regression test suite. Often,
both the test and defect are then forgotten. Not so fast—defects hold clues
about where other defects may be hiding and often can help the team learn to not
make the same mistake again. Dawn Haynes explores methods you can use to generate
new test ideas and improve software reliability at the same time. Learn to use powerful
analysis tools, including FMEA—failure modes and effects analysis—and
cause/effect graphing. Go further with these techniques by employing fault injections
and forensically analyzing bugs that customers find. Discover ways to correct the
cause of a problem rather than submitting a “single instance defect”
that will result in a “single instance patch” that fixes one problem
and does nothing to prevent new ones. Learn how to power up your testing to reveal
defect patterns and root causes for recurring defects.
Learn more about Dawn
Haynes |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
John Fodeh, Hewlett-Packard |
 |
|
Most test automation focuses on regression testing—repeating
the same sequence of tests to reveal unexpected behavior. Despite its many advantages,
this traditional test automation approach has limitations and often misses serious
defects in the software. John Fodeh describes “test monkeys,” automated
testing that employs random inputs to exercise the software under test. Unlike regression
test suites, test monkeys explore the software in a new way each time a test case
executes and offers the promise of finding new and different types of defects. The
good news is that test monkey automation is easy to develop and maintain and can
be used early in development before the software is stable. Join John to discover
different approaches you can take to implement test monkeys, depending on the desired
“intelligence” level. Learn to use weighted probability tables to direct
your test monkeys into specific areas of interest, and find out how monkeys can
work with model-based testing to make your testing even more powerful.
Learn more about John
Fodeh |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Julie Gardiner, Grove Consultants |
 |
|
Are you a frustrated tester or test manager? Are you questioning
whether or not a career in testing is for you? Do you wonder why others in your
organization seem unenthusiastic about quality? If the answer is yes to any of these
questions, this session is for you. Julie Gardiner explores five directives to help
testers make a positive impact within their organization and increase professionalism
in testing. Remember quality—it’s not just time, it’s time and
quality; it’s date and quality; it’s functionality and quality. Learn
to enjoy testing and have fun—the closest job to yours is blowing up things
for the movies. Relish the testing challenge—it’s you against the software
and sometimes, it seems, the world. Choose your battles—take a stand on issues
that are vital and let the small things go. And most importantly, remember that
the only real power we have springs from our integrity—don’t sell that
at any price. Join Julie for this important and inspirational session. You’ll
be glad you did.
Learn more about Julie
Gardiner |
 |
|
|
|
|
John McConda, Moser Consulting |
 |
|
Does your test process need to pass regulatory audits (FDA,
SOX, ISO, etc.)? Do you find that an endless queue of documentation and maintenance
is choking your ability to do actual testing? Is your team losing good testers due
to boredom? With the right methods and attitude, you can do interesting and valuable
testing while passing a process audit with flying colors. It may be easier than
you think to incorporate exploratory techniques, test automation, test management
tools, and iterative test design into your regulated process. You’ll be able
to find better bugs more quickly and keep those pesky auditors happy at the same
time. John McConda shares how he uses exploratory testing with screen recording
tools to produce the objective evidence auditors crave. He explains how to optimize
your test management tools to preserve and confidently present accountability and
traceability data. Learn to negotiate which test activities are auditable and create
tests with an iterative test design approach that quickly adapts to change and makes
auditors smile.
Learn more about John
McConda |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Test teams are just groups of people who work on projects together.
But how do great test teams become great? More importantly, how can you lead your
team to greatness? Jane Fraser describes the changes she made after several people
on her testing staff asked to move out of testing and into other groups—production
and engineering—and how helping them has improved the whole team and made
Jane a much better leader. Join Jane as she shares her team’s journey toward
greatness. She started by getting to really know the people on the team—what
makes them tick, how they react to situations, what excites them, what makes them
feel good and bad. She discovered the questions to ask and the behaviors to observe
that will give you the insight you need to lead. Join Jane to learn how to empower
your team members with the responsibility, authority, and accountability to get
the job done while you concentrate on removing roadblocks to their success. And
most importantly, remember it’s all about them—it’s not about
you.
Learn more about Jane
Fraser |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Michael Bolton, DevelopSense |
|
|
Test coverage of application functionality is often poorly understood
and always hard to measure. If they do it at all, many testers express coverage
in terms of numbers, as a percentage or proportion—but a percentage of what?
When we test, we develop two parallel stories. The “product story” is
what we know and can infer about the software product—important information
about how it works and how it might fail. The “testing story” is how
we modeled the testing space, the oracles that we used, and the extent to which
we configured, operated, observed, and evaluated the product. To understand test
coverage, we must know what we did not test and that what we did test was good enough.
Michael Bolton proposes alternatives for obtaining and describing test coverage—diagrams,
strategy models, checklists, spreadsheets and matrices, and dashboards—and
suggests how we can use these tools to build a clearer understanding of coverage
to illuminate both the product story and the testing story.
Learn more about Michael
Bolton |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Although a myriad of testing tools have emerged over the years,
only a few focus on the area of API testing for Windows-based applications. Nikhil
Bhandari describes how to automate these types of software tests with Windows PowerShell,
the free command line shell and scripting language. Unlike other scripting shells,
PowerShell works with WMI, XML, ADO, COM, and .NET objects as well as data stores,
such as the file system, registry, and certificates. With PowerShell, you can easily
develop frameworks for testing—unit, functional, regression, performance,
deployment, etc.—and integrate them into a single, consistent overall automation
environment. With PowerShell, you can develop scripts to check logs, events, process
status, registry check, file system management, and more. Use it to parse XML statements
and other test files. Reduce your testing cycle times to better support iterative
development and, at the same time, have more fun testing your Windows applications.
Learn more about Nikhil
Bhandari |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Fiona Charles, Quality Intelligence, Inc. |
|
|
As testers and test managers, our job is to tell the truth about
the current state of the software on our projects. Unfortunately, in the high-stakes
business of software development, often there is pressure—subtle or overt—to
distort our messages. When projects are late or product reliability is poor, managers’
and developers’ reputations—and perhaps even their jobs—may be
on the line. Fiona Charles discusses the importance to testers of refusing to compromise
the truth, recognizing a potential cover-up before it occurs, knowing the legal
position around securing project information, and developing a strategy to maintain
integrity and still get out alive. She examines the early warning signs and discusses
the practical tactics available to testers, including signaling your unwillingness
to lie, getting accurate and detailed reports of project progress and status on
the record, keeping notes of disturbing conversations and events, and choosing whether
to “blow the whistle” (and if so, to whom), leave the organization—or
both.
Learn more about Fiona
Charles |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
James Bach, Satisfice, Inc. |
|
|
A test case is a kind of container. You already know that counting
the containers in a supermarket would tell you little about the value of the food
they contain. So, why do we count test cases executed as a measure of testing’s
value? The impact and value a test case actually has varies greatly from one to
the next. In many cases, the percentage of test cases passing or failing reveals
nothing about the reliability or quality of the software under test. Managers and
other non-testers love test cases because they provide the illusion of both control
and value for money spent. However, that doesn’t mean testers have to go along
with the deceit. James Bach stopped managing testing using test cases long ago and
switched to test activities, test sessions, risk areas, and coverage areas to measure
the value of his testing. Join James as he explains how you can make the switch—and
why you should.
Learn more about James
Bach |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Lloyd Roden, Grove Consultants |
|
|
As an experienced test manager, Lloyd Roden believes that test
estimation is one of the most difficult aspects of test management. You must deal
with many unknowns, including dependencies on development activities and the variable
quality of the software you test. Lloyd presents seven proven ways he has used to
estimate test effort. Some are easy and quick but prone to abuse; others are more
detailed and complex but may be more accurate. Lloyd discusses FIA (finger in the
air), formula/percentage, historical reference, Parkinson’s Law vs. pricing,
work breakdown structures, estimation models, and assessment estimation. He shares
spreadsheet templates and utilities that you can use and take back to help you improve
your estimations. By the end of this session, you might just be thinking that the
once painful experience of test estimation can, in fact, be painless. Useful utilities
will be given out during the session to help with estimation.
Learn more about Lloyd
Roden |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
David Gorena Elizondo, Microsoft |
|
|
Exploratory testing is sometimes associated with “ad hoc”
testing, randomly navigating through an application. However, emerging exploratory
techniques are anything but ad hoc. David Gorena Elizondo describes new approaches
to exploratory testing that are highly effective, very efficient, and supported
by automation. David describes the information testers need for exploration, explains
how to gather that information, and shows you how to use it to find more bugs and
find them faster. He demonstrates a faster and directed (not accidental) exploratory
bug finding methodology and compares it to more commonly used approaches. Learn
how test history and prior test cases guide exploratory testers; how to use data
types, value ranges, and other code summary information to populate test cases;
how to optimize record and playback tools during exploratory testing; and how exploratory
testing can impact churn, coverage, and other metrics.
Learn more about David
Gorena Elizondo |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Chris Condron, The Hanover Group |
|
|
If you think you’re doing everything right with test automation
but it just won't scale, join the crowd. If the amount of data you're managing and
the dynamic changes in applications and workflows keep you in constant maintenance
mode, this is the session for you. Encountering these problems, Chris Condron’s
group reviewed their existing automation successes and pain points. Based on this
analysis, they created a tool agnostic architecture and automation process that
allowed them to scale up their automation to include many more tests. By aligning
their test scripts with the business processes, his team developed a single test
case model they use for both manual and automated tests. They developed a test data
management system incorporating storage of and a review process for three types
of test data: scenarios, screen mappings, and references. Their new test scripts
contain only the application flow information and reference the test data system
for the input values. Join Chris and find out how you can enjoy the same success.
Learn more about Chris
Condron |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Krishna Iyer and Mukesh Mulchandani, ZenTEST
Labs |
|
|
In the era of SOA and Web 2.0, as it becomes more and more difficult
to accomplish comprehensive testing, Krishna Iyer and Mukesh Mulchandani describe
ten non-technical skills that will make you a better tester. The first five are
qualities we often look for in testers yet seldom practice scientifically and diligently—collaboration,
creativity, experimentation, passion, and alertness. The second five are abilities
that are seldom mentioned, yet equally important for testers—connect the dots,
challenge the orthodox, picture and predict, prioritize, and leave work at work.
Drawing from their experiences of building a testing team for their organization
and consulting with global firms in building “testing capability,” Krishna
and Mukesh show how you and your test team can improve each of these ten non-technical
skills. Practice these skills during the session and take back techniques you can
use to hone your skills at work.
Learn more about Krishna
Iyer
Learn more about
Mukesh Mulchandani |
  |
|
|
|
|
|
Thorkil Sonne, Specialisterne |
|
|
Specialisterne (“The Specialists”) is a Danish company
that employs people with very special capabilities to perform complex and difficult
tasks, including software testing, quality control, and data conversion. Their customers
are companies such as Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), Microsoft, and leading
Danish IT organizations. Their founder and our presenter, Thorkil Sonne, received
the IT Award 2008 from the Danish IT Industry Association for the company’s
ability to find and employ especially talented people in IT. Seventy-five percent
of the employees of Specialisterne have autism—Autistic Spectrum Disorder
(ASD)—typically Asperger’s Syndrome. Traditionally, society has viewed
people with ASD as handicapped. Yet, their abilities to concentrate, stick to tasks,
and quickly absorb highly complex technical information are exactly the characteristics
of the best software testers. Hear Thorkil’s vision and strategy on how he
believes the software testing industry worldwide can derive considerable benefit
from employing special people with autism.
Learn more about Thorkil
Sonne |
 |
|
Top of Page
|
|
|
 |
Software Quality Engineering • 330
Corporate Way, Suite 300 • Orange Park, FL 32073
Phone: 904.278.0524 • Toll-free: 888.268.8770 • Fax:
904.278.4380 • Email:
[email protected]
© 2008 Software Quality Engineering, All rights reserved.
|
|
|
|
