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Test Engineer

Tutorials

MF Acceptance Test-Driven Development: Mastering Agile Testing
Nate Oster, CodeSquads, LLC
Mon, 11/11/2013 - 8:30am

On agile teams, testers can struggle to keep up with the pace of development if they continue employing a waterfall-based verification process—finding bugs after development. Nate Oster challenges you to question waterfall assumptions and replace this legacy verification testing with acceptance test-driven development (ATDD). With ATDD, you “test first” by writing executable specifications for a new feature before development begins.

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MH Usability Testing in a Nutshell
Julie Gardiner, The Test People
Mon, 11/11/2013 - 8:30am

Because systems are now more complex and competition is extreme, testing for usability is critical for ensuring our products not only stand out from the crowd but even exceed our customer’s expectations. As testers, we often encounter requirements such as “The system must be user-friendly.” What does this mean? And, more importantly, how do we test against this vague notion? Join Julie Gardiner as she presents usability testing techniques to help evaluate system efficiency, effectiveness, and user satisfaction.

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TE Measurement and Metrics for Test Managers
Rick Craig, Software Quality Engineering
Tue, 11/12/2013 - 8:30am

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 are concerned that the metrics will be used against them.

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TF Design for Testability: A Tutorial for Devs and Testers
Peter Zimmerer, Siemens AG
Tue, 11/12/2013 - 8:30am

Testability is the degree to which a system can be effectively and efficiently tested. This key software attribute indicates whether testing (and subsequent maintenance) will be easy and cheap—or difficult and expensive. In the worst case, a lack of testability means that some components of the system cannot be tested at all. Testability is not free; it must be explicitly designed into the system through adequate design for testability.

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TG Agile Project Failures: Root Causes and Corrective Actions
Jeff Payne, Coveros, Inc.
Tue, 11/12/2013 - 8:30am

Agile initiatives always begin with the best of intentions—accelerate delivery, better meet customer needs, or improve software quality. Unfortunately, some agile projects do not deliver on these expectations. If you want help to ensure the success of your agile project or get an agile project back on track, this session is for you. Jeff Payne discusses the most common causes of agile project failure and how you can avoid these issues—or mitigate their damaging effects.

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TM Security Testing for Test Professionals
Jeff Payne, Coveros, Inc.
Tue, 11/12/2013 - 1:00pm

Your organization is doing well with functional, usability, and performance testing. However, you know that software security is a key part of software assurance and compliance strategy for protecting applications and critical data. Left undiscovered, security-related defects can wreak havoc in a system when malicious invaders attack. If you don’t know where to start with security testing and don’t know what you are—or should be—looking for, this tutorial is for you.

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TQ Patterns for Collaboration: Toward Whole-Team Quality SOLD OUT
Janet Gregory, DragonFire, Inc.
Matt Barcomb, odbox
Tue, 11/12/2013 - 1:00pm

A lot of talk goes on in agile about how collaboration among team members helps drive a shared responsibility for quality—and more. However, most teams don't do much more than just hold stand-up meetings and have programmers and testers sit together. Although these practices improve communications, they are not collaboration! Most teams simply don't understand how to collaborate. Janet Gregory and Matt Barcomb guide you through hands-on activities that illustrate collaboration patterns for programmers and testers, working together.

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Concurrent Sessions

AW8 Pivoting Your Testers to Become Agile
Howard Deiner, BigVisible Solutions
Wed, 11/13/2013 - 2:15pm

Many organizations struggle with transforming from the old-style specialized silos of skills into agile teams with generalized specialists. Without this pivot, we get sub-optimal agile/Scrum environments. Howard Deiner describes what can go wrong when integrating testers properly into an agile organization and how to fix that. Without a proper agile mindset, an organization will “revert to form” and return to their old practices after a frustrating failure to adapt agile.

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AW12 Test (and More) Patterns for Continuous Software Delivery
Andy Singleton, Assembla
Wed, 11/13/2013 - 3:45pm

Top web companies employ continuous delivery of software to build and deploy systems faster and gain a marked competitive advantage. You can do it, too! Andy Singleton shares the patterns for testing in real time that result in more frequent and more reliable releases. He explains why you will have to invest seriously in automated tests and shares experiences developing the most time-efficient types of automated tests, setting up a social structure to get the tests you need, and employing existing layers of testing and production monitoring.

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AT7 Test-Driven Development for Developers: Plain and Simple
Rob Myers, Agile Institute
Thu, 11/14/2013 - 2:15pm

Test-driven development (TDD) is not an easy discipline to establish. However, it provides considerable return on investment for the effort. Rob Myers describes the costs of TDD (the introduction of test-maintenance overhead) and its benefits (greatly improved quality, productivity, and throughput of real value)—but only when the TDD practices are given time to ripen.

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AT10 ATDD: Stop Testing at the End
Nate Oster, CodeSquads, LLC
Thu, 11/14/2013 - 3:45pm

Even the fastest agile teams can struggle when they “test at the end.” As automation efforts fall behind, untested features pile up—and so does the pressure to cut corners. In contrast, Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD) “tests first” by writing automated specifications for a new feature using concrete examples in plain language. This approach focuses everyone—from analysts and customers to developers and testers—on the same definition of “done.” Join Nate Oster as he explains his skeptical journey from traditional testing to ATDD.

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AT11 Step Away from the Waterfall: Using Agile for COTS Implementations
Jason Fair, Genesis Consulting
Thu, 11/14/2013 - 3:45pm

Have you wondered how to deliver your COTS projects quicker and realize their business value sooner? How do you remove all of the “ceremony” and “waste” of the implementation process, while maintaining the integrity of the delivered COTS package? Commonly, traditional waterfall project methodologies are used to implement comprehensive COTS projects. However, many of these implementations finish late and over budget. Stakeholders are often disappointed at the quality of the delivered product and the reduced or delayed realization of benefits.

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