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STARWEST 2008 Preconference Tutorials
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Elisabeth Hendrickson, Quality Tree Software, Inc. |
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When a development team adopts an agile process such as Scrum
or XP, testers find that their traditional practices no longer fit. The extensive
up-front test planning and heavyweight test documentation used in traditional development
environments just get in the way in an agile world. In this experiential workshop,
you experience the transition to agile through a paper-based simulation (no programming
required). In a series of iterations, the team attempts to deliver a product that
the customer is willing to buy, thus generating revenue for the company. As with
real projects, producing a working product on a tight schedule can be challenging.
After each iteration, your team reflects on key events and adjusts to increase productivity
for the next iteration. Learn to apply the principles of visibility, feedback, communication,
and collaboration to increase the team’s rate of delivery. By the end of the
workshop, you will have an intuitive understanding of agile and, in particular,
the shifting role of Test/QA in agile development. |
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Learn more about
Elisabeth Hendrickson |
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Lloyd Roden and Julie Gardiner, Grove Consultants |
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As a new or current test manager, you may have many questions—How
do I create a new team? How can I help my current team become 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. 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. |
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Learn more about Lloyd
Roden
Learn more about Julie
Gardiner |
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Rick Craig, Software Quality Engineering |
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The key to successful testing is effective and timely planning.
Rick Craig introduces proven test planning methods and techniques, including the
Master Test Plan and level-specific test plans for acceptance, system, integration,
and unit testing. Rick explains how to customize an IEEE-829-style test plan and
test summary report to fit your organization’s needs. Learn how to manage
test activities, estimate test efforts, and achieve buy-in. Discover a practical
risk analysis technique to prioritize your testing and help you become more effective
with limited resources. Rick offers test measurement and reporting recommendations
for monitoring the testing process. Discover new methods and develop renewed energy
for taking test management to the next level in your organization. |
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Learn more about Rick
Craig |
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Dale Perry, Software Quality Engineering |
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What does it take to properly plan and implement a performance
test? What factors need to be considered? What is your performance test tool telling
you? Do you really need a performance test? Is it worth the cost? These questions
plague all performance testers. In addition, many performance tests do not appear
to be worth the time it takes to run them, and the results never seem to resemble—yet
alone predict—production system behavior. Performance tests are some of the
most difficult tests to create and run, and most organizations don’t fully
appreciate the time and effort required to properly execute them. Dale Perry discusses
the key issues and realities of performance testing—what can and cannot be
done with a performance test, what is required to do a performance test, and what
the test “really” tells you. |
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Learn more about Dale
Perry |
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Rob Sabourin, AmiBug.com, Inc. |
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Turbulent Web development and other market-driven projects experience
almost daily requirements modifications, changes to user interfaces, and the continual
integration of new functions, features, and technologies. Rob Sabourin shares proven,
practical techniques to keep your testing efforts on track while reacting to fast-paced
projects with changing priorities, technologies, and user needs. Rob covers test
planning techniques and organization strategies, scheduling and tracking, blending
scripted and exploratory testing, identifying key project workflows, and using testing
and test management tools. Learn how to create key decision-making workflows for
test prioritization and bug triage, adapt testing focus as priorities change, identify
technical risks, and respect business importance. Come away with a new perspective
on your testing challenges and discover ways to take control of the situation—rather
than to be controlled by it. |
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Learn more about Rob
Sabourin |
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Testers use requirements as an oracle to verify the success
or failure of their tests. Richard Bender presents the principles of the Requirements-Based
Testing methodology in which the software's specifications drive the testing process.
Richard discusses proven techniques that ensure requirements are accurate, complete,
unambiguous, and logically consistent. Requirements-based testing provides a process
for first testing the integrity of the specifications. It then provides the algorithms
for designing an optimized set of tests sufficient to verify the system from a black-box
perspective. Find out how to design test cases to validate that the design and code
fully implement all functional requirements. Determine which test design strategy—cause-effect
graphing, equivalence class testing, orthogonal pairs, and more—to apply to
your applications. By employing a requirements-based testing approach, you will
be able to quantify test completion criteria and measure test status. |
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Learn more about Richard
Bender |
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Jon Bach, Quardev, Inc. |
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The agile nature of exploratory testing makes it a widely-used
and effective test approach, especially when testing time is limited. But despite
the ability of testers to rapidly apply their skill, exploratory testing is often
dismissed by project managers who regard exploration as unreproducible, immeasurable,
and unaccountable. If you find this to be true where you work, a solution may be
to use Session-Based Test Management (SBTM), developed by Jon Bach and his brother
James, to solve these problems. In SBTM, testers are assigned areas of a product
to explore, and testing is time-boxed in “sessions” which have mission
statements called “charters.” Together, these create a meaningful and
countable unit of work. Using a simulated project, you’ll practice elements
of sessions, including chartering, paired testing (working with another tester on
the same mission), storytelling (taking notes during your testing), and debriefing
(responding to questions after your session). Jon will use a freely available, open
source tool to help manage and measure testing effort done in sessions. |
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Laptop Required |
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Learn more about Jon Bach |
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Martin Pol and Ruud Teunissen, POLTEQ IT Services
BV |
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What is the maturity of your testing process? How do you compare
to other organizations and to industry standards? To find out, join Martin Pol and
Ruud Teunissen for an introduction to the Test Process Improvement (TPI®) model,
an industry standard for testing maturity assessments. Although many organizations
want to improve testing, they lack the foundations required for success. Improving
your testing requires three things: (1) understanding key test process areas, (2)
knowing your current position in each of these areas, and (3) having the tools and
skills to implement needed improvements. Rather than guessing what to do, begin
with the TPI® model as your guide. Using as examples real world TPI® assessments
that they have performed, Martin and Ruud describe a practical assessment approach
that is suitable for both smaller, informal organizations and larger, formal companies.
Take back valuable references, templates, examples, and links to start your improvement
program.
TPI® is a registered trademark of Sogeti USA LLC. |
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Learn more about Martin
Pol
Learn more about
Ruud Teunissen |
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Caleb Sima, Hewlett-Packard |
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Does your security testing focus mainly on user identification,
access control, and encryption? Although that’s a start, you also should be
concerned about application security from the outside world of dangerous hackers.
Caleb Sima, a white-hat hacker who has broken into countless Web applications, demonstrates
popular hacking techniques, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and more.
Using live Web sites, he takes you step-by-step through traditional Web site and
newer Ajax security vulnerabilities. Learn where these issues are present in your
systems, how you can find them, and what hackers can accomplish if you don’t.
Caleb describes attacks via server-side application “holes” and how
phishers, boters, and worm authors use these vulnerabilities to exploit Web-based
systems. He discusses browser/server interaction issues, the increasing attack surface
in newer Web applications, repudiation of HTTP requests, and how hackers expose
application logic. Get a “behind the scenes” look at the thought processes
of hackers who are actively working to circumvent your Web applications’ security
measures. |
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Learn more about Caleb
Sima |
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Dion Johnson, DiJohn Innovative Consulting,
Inc. |
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Automating functional tests for highly dynamic applications
is a daunting task. Unfortunately, most testers rely on automation tools that produce
static test suites that are difficult and expensive to change. With complex automation
frameworks and expensive testing tools, it is no wonder that automated testing often
fails to live up to its promise. But, there is another way that is simple and almost
free! By learning basic scripting language skills, you can begin immediately to
automate time-consuming, everyday testing tasks. Scripting saves valuable time doing
repetitive tasks so that you can focus on more important work. Using the Ruby scripting
language and Internet Explorer, you will practice scripted automation techniques
on an HTML application. These techniques address many of your test automation needs,
including dynamic data creation, automated input entry, and exception handling—all
of which can increase the coverage, maintainability, scalability, and robustness
of your tests. Participants should have scripting experience or knowledge of basic
programming control-flow statements and logic—if-then-else, for-next, etc. |
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Laptop Required |
Be sure to bring your Windows laptop with Internet Explorer
and Excel. Because working in pairs is encouraged, feel free to bring a friend to
share your PC. |
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Learn more about Dion
Johnson |
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Gerard Meszaros, Independent Consultant |
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The extensive use of automated testing has been a breakthrough
in improving the quality of software. By now, many companies have experimented with
automating functional tests and, perhaps, unit tests. Those companies that have
had good experiences rave about automation and cannot imagine having been successful
without it. However, for every success story, there are many untold stories of disappointment.
What separates the successes from the disappointments? Join Gerard Meszaros as he
describes common problems encountered when writing and running automated tests.
He characterizes the problems in the form of their visible symptoms, discusses their
root causes, and suggests possible solutions expressed in the form of patterns that
have worked for others. Many of these causes and patterns are equally applicable
to unit tests using xUnit, to automated functional and acceptance tests using tools
such as Watir, and to record and playback test tools such as Mercury’s QuickTest.
Gerard illustrates these concepts with demonstrations and short, hands-on exercises. |
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Learn more about Gerard
Meszaros |
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Ed Weller, Integrated Productivity Solutions,
LLC |
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Software inspections were first formally developed at IBM in
1972. More than three decades later, inspections remain relevant, and more importantly,
they are feasible and will work in most environments. Ed Weller has successfully
initiated numerous inspection programs that have stood the test of time. His experience
provides the practical basis for this tutorial covering the economics of inspections
and how they can improve the bottom line; the roles within the inspection process
and why they are important to success; the steps in the process and how to measure
their effectiveness; measurements needed to evaluate success and point out areas
for improvement; the relationship of inspections to unit testing; and the impact
of the global workforce on inspections and tools necessary to adapt inspections
to multiple locations and time zones. Join Ed for this inspection process overview
and learn more about the six critical factors you need to consider when you are
thinking about or planning to implement inspections.
CMMI® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by Carnegie Mellon
University
SCAMPI SM is a service mark of Carnegie Mellon University |
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Learn more about Ed
Weller |
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Antony Marcano, testingReflections.com |
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If you are part of a team that employs user stories or acceptance
tests as a way to document software requirements, this presentation is for you.
Join Antony Marcano to learn how to use these same tools for reporting incidents
and bugs you find. Whereas user stories and acceptance tests describe the system’s
desired behavior, defect reports describe misbehavior. And behind each misbehavior
is a desired behavior—a hidden user story. Every agile development team has
their unimplemented user stories held in the product backlog. Hiding in the shadows
is the secret backlog—your defect list. As the project progresses, the secret
backlog of defects can grow, never receiving as much attention as the new user stories.
Through a series of exercises to build the participant’s user-story and acceptance
test writing skills, Antony shows how these can be applied to represent defect reports
as acceptance tests. This enables you to reverse engineer the hidden user story—helping
to ensure that defects get the attention they deserve. |
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Learn more about Antony
Marcano |
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Paco Hope, Cigital |
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AJAX—Asynchronous, JavaScript, and XML—is a modern
application development technique that allows a Web-based application to look and
feel just like a full-fledged desktop or client/server program. AJAX applications
pose unique testing challenges because so much of the application's logic runs inside
the Web browser. To thoroughly test applications employing AJAX techniques, you
need to understand the technology and adopt specific testing approaches and special
testing tools. Paco Hope presents a short introduction to dynamic HTML, JSON, and
the core technologies that make AJAX possible. Then, he explores the approaches
required to adequately test AJAX applications—from the outside-in and the
inside-out. Paco demonstrates an AJAX application and shows you his strategies to
test it. Finally, he discusses trade-offs of different testing tools—some
open source and some commercial—that enable you to interactively and automatically
test AJAX. |
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Learn more about Paco
Hope |
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Hans Buwalda, LogiGear Corporation |
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Keyword-driven test automation has entered the mainstream of
testing. Keywords is a powerful approach for you to reach a high level of automation
with the lowest possible effort. This approach can bring you the flexibility, manageability,
and maintainability that test automation demands. Hans Buwalda introduces keyword-driven
test automation, based on his successful Action Based Testing methodology. Then,
he discusses how you can implement keywords by having good test design techniques,
a workable automation architecture, and the management skills for success. When
properly implemented, keyword-driven test automation projects can result in high
automation percentages with significant reusability and low maintenance. Learn how
you can start on the path to meeting Hans’ “5% challenges” for
test automation: No more than 5% of your test cases should be executed manually,
and no more than 5% of your total testing effort should be used to achieve this
automation. |
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Learn more about Hans
Buwalda |
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Krishna Iyer and Mukesh Mulchandani, ZenTEST
Labs |
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The most important skills that testers need in their work are
thinking skills. While often ignored in favor of testing techniques and automation
tools, improving testers’ thinking skills has the greatest benefit. Having
trained more than 5,000 testers in testing skills and more than 500 testers in essential
thinking skills, Krishna Iyer and Mukesh Mulchandani have proven this fact. They
present three vital thinking skills—critical thinking, creative thinking,
and coverage thinking. Designed for both testers and test managers, this class helps
you develop an eye to see what no one else sees, a nose to sniff out more defects,
and an ear to critically evaluate every claim you hear. Join Krishna and Mukesh
for the latest research in cognitive thinking; learn practical techniques such as
ideational fluency, test mapping, and filtering bias; and understand the mindset
of effective testers. |
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Learn more about Krishna
Iyer
Learn more about
Mukesh Mulchandani |
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Lisa Crispin, ePlan Services, Inc. |
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Software quality has many dimensions, so we must be ready with
different testing approaches. We test to find defects, ensure system reliability,
check that the system is easy to use, verify that it’s secure, and much more.
How do you know the different types of tests you need? How do you know when you're
“done” testing? Lisa Crispin shows you how to use the four categories
of the Agile Testing Quadrants method to make sure your team has covered all the
bases—programmer tests (test-driven development); customer tests that help
the team meet the users' requirements; business-facing tests that critique the product's
behavior and find the important bugs; and technology-facing tests that examine non-functional
qualities such as performance, load, scalability, reliability, and security. With
Agile Testing Quadrants, you and your team will be ready to cover all the bases—no
matter what testing challenges the project throws at you. |
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Learn more about Lisa
Crispin |
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Randall Rice, Rice Consulting Services,
Inc. |
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Pairwise testing is a technique for designing test cases to
include all possible discrete combinations of each pair of input parameters. Use
case scenarios define a dialogue between a user and the system with a tangible result.
Join Randall Rice to explore ways to employ these two techniques in combination
to design tests that provide a high level of test coverage while minimizing the
total number of tests needed. Learn practical ways to prioritize pairwise test scenarios
by risk level and execution effort as you gain a new tool to increase both coverage
and efficiency in your testing. This optimized scenario-based approach is useful
for establishing a strong baseline of regression tests that are both compact and
achievable in most project schedules. In addition, pairwise scenario-based test
designs used together are a powerful technique for system testing, user acceptance
testing, and testing new service-oriented architectures (SOAs). |
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Learn more about Randall
Rice |
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© 2008 Software Quality Engineering, All rights reserved.
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