Quality Assurance

Tutorials

MM Innovation Thinking: Evolve and Expand Your Capabilities

Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA, Inc.

Mon, 11/09/2015 - 1:00pm

Innovation is a word frequently tossed around in organizations today. The standard cliché is “Do more with less.” People and teams want to be innovative but often struggle with how to define, prioritize, implement, and track their innovation efforts. Jennifer Bonine shares the Innovation Types model to give you new tools to evolve and expand your innovation capabilities. Find out if your innovation ideas and efforts match your team and company goals. Learn how to classify your innovation and improvement efforts as core (to the business) or context (essential but non-revenue generating). With this data, you can better decide how much of your effort should be spent on core versus context activities. Take away new tools for classifying innovation and mapping your activities and your team’s priorities to their importance and value. With Jennifer’s guidance you’ll evolve and expand your innovation capabilities on the spot.

TJ Quality Assurance: Moving Your Organization Beyond Testing NEW

Jeffery Payne, Coveros, Inc.

Tue, 11/10/2015 - 1:00pm

Many organizations use the terms quality assurance and software testing interchangeably to describe their testing activities. But true quality assurance is much, much more than testing alone. Quality assurance encompasses a planned set of tasks, activities, and actions used to provide management with information about the quality of software so appropriate business decisions can be made. Jeffery Payne discusses the differences between software testing and quality assurance, examining the typical activities performed during a true quality assurance program. Topics discussed include evaluating software processes, validating software artifacts (requirements, designs, etc.), presenting a quality case to management, and how to start implementing a true quality assurance program. Leave with a working knowledge of quality assurance and a framework for incrementally improving your overall software quality assurance program.

Concurrent Sessions

AW1 Going Agile? Three Conversations to Have Before You Start

Heather Fleming, Gilt

Justin Riservato, Gilt

Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:30am

All too often, companies adopt a mission to “go agile” before truly understanding what that entails. Business managers are quick to jump on the agile bandwagon, believing that going agile will magically make projects happen faster. Teams are getting certified in Scrum believing it is the silver bullet that will suddenly make everyone more productive. Inevitably, cracks begin to develop, and expectations are not met, leaving everyone questioning the value of going agile at all. Heather Fleming and Justin Riservato say there is a better way! The truth is that going agile will result in more productive teams and faster delivery of projects—but only if everyone can agree on the rules of the game. Learn why gaining consensus on the principles of agile is more important than implementing a specific process. Explore how having three key conversations—about saying no to deadlines, ensuring business partner engagement, and experimenting with process—up front can save you from an agile disaster.

AW9 Agile Adoption in Risk-Averse Environments

Brian Duncan, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

Wed, 11/11/2015 - 2:45pm

Adopting agile development methods in a conservative environment can be a daunting and time-consuming venture, facing resistance at all levels of the organization. You may wonder: Will this organization ever get with the times? Will our leaders ever change their way of thinking? Brian Duncan shares personal experiences and lessons learned in bringing an agile development mindset to two distinct organizations—a bottom-line product-driven software development organization, and the conservative, risk-averse Space Department at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Sharing the Good (what worked well), the Bad (what set us back), and the Ugly (what we had to abandon), Brian shows how to bring a slow-to-change organization into the forward-thinking agile methods of today. He presents practical approaches (adoption committees, grassroots techniques) and creative endeavors (free classes, an innovation lab) along with their impact on the organization. With persistence and a multifaceted approach, even risk-averse organizations can adopt agile.

AT6 Actionable Customer Feedback: A Key to Product Success

Mario Moreira, Emergn Ltd

Thu, 11/12/2015 - 11:30am

Actionable customer feedback, although difficult to capture well, is critical to adapting to customer needs. How can you ensure you identify the right customers, get customers to feedback sessions, and capture the most useful feedback? Mario Moreira shares ways you can establish a customer vision focused on gaining that elusive customer feedback. He helps you identify customer types via personas for your product, service, or value stream. Mario discusses how you can incorporate customer personas into the way you capture requirements. He helps you identify various types of customer feedback loops you can used and determine strategies to get customers to your feedback sessions. Leave armed with a framework for establishing a customer feedback vision with ways to get more effective customer feedback leading to products and solutions that more closely align with customer needs. Instead of barely hitting the broad side of the “customer” barn, wouldn't you rather hit the “customer” bull’s-eye?