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STARWEST 2010 Pre-conference Tutorials
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| Whether you are new to testing or looking for a better way to organize your test practices and process, the Systematic Test and Evaluation Process (STEP™) offers a flexible approach to help you and your team succeed. Dale Perry describes this risk-based framework—applicable to any development lifecycle model—to help you make critical testing decisions earlier and with more confidence. The STEP™ approach helps you decide how to focus your testing effort, what elements and areas to test, and how to organize test designs and documentation. Learn the fundamentals of test analysis and how to develop an inventory of test objectives to help prioritize your testing efforts. Find out how to translate these objectives into a concrete strategy for designing and developing tests. With a prioritized inventory and focused test architecture, you will be able to create test cases, execute the resulting tests, and accurately report on the effectiveness of your testing. Take back a proven approach to organize your testing efforts and new ways to add more value to your project and organization. |
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| Learn more about Dale Perry |
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All testers know that we can identify many more test cases than we will ever have time to design and execute. The major problem in testing is choosing a small, “smart” subset from the almost infinite number of possibilities available. Join Lee Copeland to discover how to design test cases using formal black-box techniques, including equivalence class and boundary value testing, decision tables, state-transition diagrams, and all-pairs testing. Explore white-box techniques with their associated coverage metrics. Evaluate more informal approaches, such as random and hunch-based testing, and learn the importance of using exploratory testing to enhance your testing ability. Choose the right test case design approaches for your projects. Use the test results to evaluate the quality of both your products and your test designs.
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| Learn more about Lee Copeland |
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| Even if you are not already involved in testing software aimed at mobile devices such as smartphones, that day may be just around the corner. Testing mobile software is particularly challenging especially if you are unfamiliar with the impact of network connectivity, phone provider, platform software, etc., or if you have to deal with multiple platforms and devices. Because test automation in this field is still immature, there are few references and examples to guide you toward quick and effective test techniques. In this interactive session, Julian Harty helps you understand how and when automation can aid your mobile wireless application testing and explains how to test mobile apps. Based on the several years Julian has spent testing mobile applications at Google and his collaboration with industry experts, the simple and practical tips you’ll learn for the typical and unusual problems mobile applications testers encounter may just make the difference between your success and failure. |
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| Learn more about Julian Harty |
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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 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, turning out 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 Dale Emery |
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| Critical thinking is the kind of thinking that specifically looks for problems and mistakes. Regular people don't do a lot of it. However, if you want to be a great tester, you need to be a great critical thinker, too. Critically thinking testers save projects from dangerous assumptions and ultimately from disasters. The good news is that critical thinking is not just innate intelligence or a talent—it's a learnable and improvable skill you can master. James Bach shares the specific techniques and heuristics of critical thinking and presents realistic testing puzzles that help you practice and increase your thinking skills. Critical thinking begins with just three questions—Huh? Really? and So?—that kick start your brain to analyze specifications, risks, causes, effects, project plans, and anything else that puzzles you. Join this interactive, hands-on session and practice your critical thinking skills. Study and analyze product behaviors and experience new ways to identify, isolate, and characterize bugs. |
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| Learn more about James Bach |
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| Testing generates a huge amount of raw data, which must be analyzed, processed, summarized, and presented to management so that effective decisions can be made quickly. As a test manager or tester, how can you present information about your test results so that decision-makers receive the correct message? Using his experiences as a test manager and consultant, Lloyd Roden shares ways to communicate with and disseminate information to management. Develop your skills so you become a “trusted advisor” to senior management rather than the classic “bearer of bad news.” Discover innovative ways to keep the information flowing to and from management and avoid losing control of the test process, particularly near the delivery date. Learn how to deal effectively with various controversies that often prevent senior managers from taking you seriously. |
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| Learn more about Lloyd Roden |
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Although many training classes and conference presentations describe processes and techniques meant to help you find bugs, few explain what to do when you find a good one. How do you know what the underlying problem is? What do you do when you find a bug, and the developer wants you to provide more information? How do you reproduce those pesky, intermittent bugs that come in from customer land? In this hands-on class, Jon Bach helps you practice your investigation and analysis skills—questioning, conjecturing, branching, and backtracking. For those of you who have ever had to tell the story about the big bug that got away, Jon offers up new techniques that may trap it next time so you can earn more credibility, respect, and accolades from stakeholders. Because collaboration and participation are encouraged in this class, bring your mental tester toolkit, tester’s notebook, and an open mind.
 Laptop required.
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| Learn more about Jon Bach |
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| How do you estimate your test effort? And how reliable is that estimate? Ruud Teunissen presents a practical and useful test estimation technique related directly to the maturity of your test and development process. A reliable effort estimation approach requires five basic elements: (1) Strategy – Determine what to test (performance, functionality, etc.) and how thoroughly it must be tested. (2) Size – Yes, it does matter—not only the size of the system but also the scope of your tests. (3) Expected Quality – What factors have been established to define quality? (4) Infrastructure and Tools – Define how fast you can test. Without the proper organizational support and the necessary tools, you’ll need time you may not have. (5) Productivity – How experienced and efficient is your team? Join Ruud to improve your test estimations and achieve more realistic goal setting and test strategies. |
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| Learn more about Ruud Teunissen |
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| Agile teams must deliver production-ready software every four-, two-, or one-week iteration—or possibly every day! This goal can't be achieved without automated tests. However, many teams just can't seem to get traction on test automation. The challenge of automating all regression tests strikes fear into the hearts of many testers. How do we succeed when we have to release so often? By combining a collaborative team approach with an appropriate mix of tools designed for agile teams, you can, over time, automate your regression tests and continue to automate new tests during each programming iteration. Lisa Crispin describes what tests should be automated, some common barriers to test automation, and ways to overcome those barriers. Learn how to create data for tests, evaluate automated test tools, implement test automation, and evaluate your automation efforts. An agile approach to test automation even helps if you’re a tester on a more traditional project without the support of programmers on your team. |
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| Learn more about Lisa Crispin |
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| For years, managers of every ilk have attended courses on various aspects of “management.” Although the word “leadership” has recently become the new buzzword of choice, many of today’s courses, books, and articles are repeats of the same basic management theory we’ve known for years. Not so with this tutorial session! Rick Craig, who is a retired Marine Colonel, engages participants with such provocative questions as: Are leaders made or born? What leadership traits do the best test managers exhibit? How can you develop a personal leadership style for your test team and organization? Who is responsible for the morale and motivation of test team members? Join this session to be challenged on how you can become a better—even great—leader within your organization’s structure and corporate culture. Learn to apply leadership principles to testing, explore the impact and importance of influence leaders, and learn how to “sell” testing within your organization. Leave with new skills and a renewed enthusiasm for leading your test team. |
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| Learn more about Rick Craig |
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| Has this happened to you? You try to implement a change in your organization and it doesn’t get the support that you thought it would. And, to make matters worse, you can't figure out why. Or, you have a great idea but can’t get the support from others required for successful implementation. Jennifer Bonine shares a toolkit of techniques to help you determine which ideas will—and will not—work within your organization. This toolkit includes five rules for change management, a checklist to help you determine the type of change process needed in your organization, techniques for communicating your ideas to your target audience, a set of questions you can ask to better understand your executives’ goals, and methods for overcoming resistance to change from teams you don’t lead. These tools—together with an awareness of your organization’s core culture—will help you identify which changes you can successfully implement and which you should leave until another day. |
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| Learn more about Jennifer Bonine |
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Classification trees are a structured, visual approach used to identify and categorize variables within test objects, enabling testers to build effective and efficient test cases quickly. Julie Gardiner describes the fundamentals of classification trees and how they can be applied in both traditional and agile test environments. Using real-world examples, Julie shows you how to employ the classification tree technique, identifies the benefits and rewards of this technique, explains how it complements other testing approaches, and reveals its value at every stage of testing. She demonstrates a classification tree editor available to aid in building, maintaining, and graphically displaying classification trees. Take back a powerful new approach for overcoming the constant struggle we have when maintaining and assessing the impact of changing requirements on our test suites.
Laptop required.
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| Learn more about Julie Gardiner |
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| Too often, testers have limited time and little or no money to purchase, learn, and implement commercial test tools. However, the most effective testers have accumulated and regularly use their own personal toolkit of free and cheap test tools. Since 2001, Randy Rice has been researching such tools and has compiled a set of tools that he and many others in his consulting practice have found very helpful. Randy shares a plethora of tools that you can employ to add power and efficiency to your test planning, execution, and evaluation. He’ll present and demonstrate tools for pairwise test design, test management, defect tracking, test data creation, test automation, test evaluation, Web-based load testing, and more. Randy shows you how to make the case for incorporating free and open-source tools into organizations that may resist such tools. Learn how you can combine these tools to achieve greater test speed and better test coverage—at little or no out-of-pocket cost. |
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| Learn more about Randy Rice |
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| The pressure is on—for everyone, including testing, to demonstrate their worth to their organization. As testers, we need to show our stakeholders, objectively and with compelling data, the value we add to projects. Instead of common test metrics that report test progress, test effectiveness, and defects discovered, we need new measures that relate directly to the way people outside testing measure success. Isabel Evans describes how to measure, analyze, and communicate the financial impact of testing—both costs and contributions—on a project and the organization. Learn to present financial and non-financial customer-focused data, using both quantitative and qualitative metrics. Isabel explains how to provide information that shows whether the organization’s and the project’s goals are at great risk or achievable. Learn measures that show testing’s value and success, how to make those measurements, and how to present informational metrics that stakeholders can use for decision making. |
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| Learn more about Isabel Evans |
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| Traditional test plans are incompatible with agile software development because we don't know all the details about all the requirements up front. However, in an agile software release, you still must decide what types of testing activities will be required—and when you need to schedule them. Janet Gregory explains how to use the Agile Testing Quadrants, a model identifying the different purposes of testing, to help your team understand your testing needs as you plan the next release. Janet introduces you to alternative, lightweight test planning tools that allow you to plan and communicate your big picture testing needs and risks. Learn how to decide who does what testing—and when. Determine what types of testing to consider when planning an agile release, the infrastructure and environments needed for testing, what goes into an agile “test plan,” how to plan for acquiring test data, and lightweight approaches for documenting your tests and recording test results. |
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| Learn more about Janet Gregory |
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