Agile Dev East 2017 - Software Quality & Testing
Sunday, November 5
Software Tester Certification—Foundation Level
Agile Test Automation—ICAgile
Fundamentals of DevOps Certification—ICAgile *SOLD OUT*
Monday, November 6
Lean/Agile Data-Driven Decisions Demystified
For many agile practitioners, software metrics beyond a burndown chart are little understood or, perhaps, very scary because poor metrics can be worse than no metrics. In this enlightening session, Larry Maccherone explores how you and your organization can use metrics to bring management and lean/agile teams closer rather than allowing metrics to become a wedge that drives them into conflict. Larry covers the entire lifecycle of the metrics process—from metric selection to reporting data. Join Larry to gain an understanding of a wide range of concepts including common (101-level) metrics...
Essential Patterns of Mature Agile Teams
PreviewMany teams have a relatively easy time adopting the tactical aspects of agile methodologies. Usually a few classes, some tools introduction, and a bit of practice lead teams toward a fairly efficient and effective agile adoption. However, these teams often get “stuck” and begin to regress or simply start going through the motions—neither maximizing their agile performance nor delivering as much value as they could. Borrowing from his experience and lean software development methods, Bob Galen examines essential patterns—the thinking models of mature agile teams—so you can model...
Scrum: Answering the Tough Questions
You attend the two-day Scrum certification courses, pass your exam, and return to your team as a newly minted ScrumMaster—ready to take on the world. Then reality sets in. Your organization doesn’t understand the changes they are being asked to make, the developers have not bought in to agile practices, and your product owner has not been seen for days. Now what? Ryan Ripley addresses the most often asked—but seldom discussed—questions that ScrumMasters face during their projects. These questions range from What is management’s role on a scrum project? to How do we manage dependencies...
Leading Successful Organizational Change Efforts
Has this happened to you? You try to implement a change in your organization, and it doesn’t get the support 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 resources 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 organizational change management, a checklist to help you determine the type of change process needed in your organization, techniques for...
Get Started with Acceptance Test-Driven Development
PreviewDefining, understanding, and agreeing on the scope of work to be done is often an area of discomfort for product managers, developers, and quality assurance experts alike. The origin of many items living in our defect tracking systems can be traced to our difficulty performing these initial activities. Ken Pugh introduces acceptance test-driven development (ATDD), explains why it works, and outlines the different roles team members play in the process. ATDD improves communication among customers, developers, and testers. By decreasing re-work, ATDD has proven to dramatically...
Docker Jumpstart: Concepts, Features, and Real-World Examples
Docker, a mechanism for low-overhead virtualization, is emerging as a key aspect of DevOps architecture. Interest in Docker—with its lightweight, portable, “build once, configure once, and run anywhere” containers—is growing. If you want to jumpstart your Docker skills, join Aater Suleman to gain first-hand knowledge to help your organization streamline workflows, speed up product releases, and reduce hardware investments. He discusses the basics of Docker: concepts, terminology, commands, must-know features, and real-world examples of Docker projects. Aater presents and demonstrates best...
Tuesday, November 7
Stop Talking about DevOps: Start Applying Continuous Delivery Practices
DevOps. You think you need it because the market is telling you so, but the market is confused (and self-perpetuating). Agile, continuous delivery, and DevOps all promise the same dream—improved time to market through incremental delivery of quality software. So where should you focus? Max Griffiths begins by distinguishing DevOps from the other approaches and, rather than wrangling new words for old problems, helps refocus how to measure success. How long does it take you to commit and deliver code? Max shows how you can measure this through Value Stream Mapping, a crucial tool used to...
The Architecture of Microservices
Sold Out!Microservices—one of the latest software architecture styles—promises to deliver benefits such as fast and easy deployment, ease of testing, fine-grained scalability, architectural modularity, and high overall agility. Unfortunately, these benefits are coupled with a lot of complexity. In this product-agnostic architecture tutorial, Mark Richards provides you with an understanding of the microservices architecture style and what hybrids and alternatives exist. This helps you make the right architecture and design decisions for your organization. Mark discusses the core concepts of the...
Thinking Inside the Box: Root Cause Analysis with the Six Boxes
Improving business and user value delivery, quality, efficiency, and productivity of your software engineering team is a noble undertaking. However, poor productivity, quality issues, failing to meet commitments, and general team inefficiencies are still commonplace. And at the root of most of these problems? James Waletzky says it is those highly imperfect creatures—humans. To go about fixing the problems, we must discover the root causes, not just the symptoms, and those are not always obvious. In this hands-on tutorial, James focuses on the methodology of Human Performance Improvement (...
What DevOps Means for Testers
DevOps is more than a buzzword or a passing fad. It's a radically new approach to rapidly deliver high-quality software applications. However, many organizations don’t fully grasp the magnitude of this change or what it means for everyone involved in the software development lifecycle. Jeffery Payne says that DevOps—when done right—drives higher quality and efficiency into software development, software testing, and application management activities. It empowers teams to remove impediments to quality and productivity throughout the entire software lifecycle. However, when DevOps is done...
Advanced Test Automation in Agile Development
Agile teams are charged with delivering potentially shippable software at the end of each iteration. In fact, some high-performing agile teams with advanced automation can ship working software every day. They achieve regression confidence with extensive automated test suites and other advanced practices. Rob Sabourin shares automation techniques to improve story and feature testing, exploratory testing, and regression testing. Explore ways to fully integrate testing into agile delivery teams by combining test-driven development (TDD) techniques, precise test and tool selection,...
The Tester’s (New) Role in Agile Development
Avoiding siloed development is a tricky business. It’s so easy for agile teams to fall into the rut in which testers only do traditional testing activities, and programmers strictly do their time-worn coding activities. Rob Sabourin shares a number of examples of how testing skills can be applied to a wide variety of activities in an agile project. Testers are among the most skilled team members in story grooming, elicitation, and exploration. Risk analysis in self-organized agile teams empowers testers to drive design decisions. A tester’s affinity analysis skills help clear the way for...
Leading Your Agile Transformation: A Workshop
In the past decade agile development has become mainstream in software development and now is spreading beyond software to other domains. It is important for leaders and managers to understand how to build, develop, and lead agile teams—not just for the organization but for their own careers. Ray Arell introduces a cohesive set of methods, practices, and principles to maximize business results from agile and lean development, while also cultivating a workplace where people thrive. The workshop topics are highly dynamic and customizable, and more than 80 percent of the discussion will be...
Project Patterns: From Adrenaline Junkies to Template Zombies
Tim Lister, along with five of his partners at the Atlantic Systems Guild, have compiled project patterns from their combined 150 years of consulting, and have described them in their Jolt Award winning book, Adrenalin Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior. We all talk about best practices but only a tiny minority of organizations actually practice them all. Not to worry, think of “best practices” for human health. We know all about them, but very few of us actually practice them all. Maybe if someone did arduously practice all health practices, they...
The Lost Art of Live Communication
Have you ever been in the same room with co-workers and sent them a Slack or text message instead of having a live conversation? Many people are starting to prefer virtual or instant chat messaging to live conversations, but live communication can get better results at work. As technology professionals, we often focus more on technical skills and ignore the important communication skills. Join Jennifer Bonine to see how to make the most of—and get the best results from—your live conversations. Jennifer shares a toolkit to help you assess your core communication competencies and see how you...
Wednesday, November 8
Rightsizing User Stories
PreviewUser stories and their big brothers, epics, are an excellent way to describe requirements for a software system. They act as stakes in the ground to keep track of what the system needs to do, the type of user most interested in each feature, and the reason the requirement provides value. As projects reach a certain size, stories often become too large for a team to complete within a single sprint. The solution? Split them into smaller stories, each of which can be completed within the duration of one sprint. Dave Todaro describes proven techniques to split epics and stories, making...
Measure Anything: The Quality, Productivity, Predictability, and Engagement Model
Measuring software development is difficult. Measuring the return on investment (ROI) of complex initiatives (such as adopting agile) is even more difficult. One department at IBM struggled to reduce a list of 150 metrics down to a top twenty to use in consulting engagements. Through the years, nearly every one of Anthony Crain’s clients has asked him for help in proving that their teams were “getting better” at development. Nearly all of their measures were “adoption” measures showing how teams were doing agile. However, none of the metrics was focused on whether the development was...
Machine Data Is EVERYWHERE: Use It for Testing
As more applications are hosted on servers, they produce immense quantities of logging data. Quality engineers should verify that apps are producing log data that is existent, correct, consumable, and complete. Otherwise, apps in production are not easily monitored, have issues that are difficult to detect, and cannot be corrected quickly. Tom Chavez presents the four steps that quality engineers should include in every test plan for apps that produce log output or other machine data. First, test that the data is being created. Second, ensure that the entries are correctly formatted and...
Why Won’t They Pair?
Do your developers and testers pair—and do it in the best ways? If you can answer yes, then you are among the fortunate ones who have a trusting environment where people have confidence in their work. Unfortunately, a large number of development shops don’t practice pairing in any form. Pair programing was documented in Kent Beck’s book eXtreme Programming Explained, published in 1999. So why is it that eighteen years later many developers and testers do not practice this simple yet effective programming technique? Linda Cook addresses many reasons that people don’t pair. Drawing on...
Leverage Streaming Data in a Microservices Ecosystem
Imagine a world where operational data is continuously flowing from applications and devices at an extremely high rate. Now imagine services intercepting this data and analyzing it real time. Sounds futuristic? It's not—it's here today. Mark Richards describes what streaming architecture is all about—what it is, when to use it, and how to implement it in a microservices ecosystem. Mark describes the overall ecosystem for streaming architecture—including a brief discussion about the differences in Apache Spark, Flink, and Hadoop—and then explains how Apache Kafka works. Using live coding...
A Holistic Approach to Software Quality: Yes, You Can!
As software organizations grow, maintaining quality is vital. As digital transformation gains strength in the industry, both clients and IT demand increased delivery speed. Thus, traditional test methods are being challenged, and a paradigm shift is required that emphasizes testing and recognizes the need for expanded skill sets to meet this demand. However, quality is not all about testing. Niranjalee Rajaratne believes it is important to create a culture that supports a quality organization and understands the value it brings. She describes why we must choose and encourage processes that...
Make DevOps Work: Practices to Achieve High Quality Apps
PreviewAmir Rozenberg describes a pragmatic approach to help your team deliver apps to market faster while gaining insight into their behavior in production. He describes how a major bank, health care provider, and telco crossed the bridge from inefficient delivery processes. Now teams leverage Selenium automation tests to deliver quality applications that reduce churn, require less effort to support, and positively impact customer reviews. Amir details practices to accelerate application optimization by introducing production insight in sprint requirements, ensuring monitoring...
They Said, We Said: Bridge the Communication Gap with Behavior-Driven Development
PreviewHave you heard that only 36 percent of business features built into software are actually used by end users? And why do we get functionality that fails to work as expected? One of the age-old problems between IT and our clients is that we don’t speak the same language. Sheetal Patel shares her experience of how behavior-driven development (BDD) introduces the bridge of common language that both IT and non-technical, business clients can speak to build the right product. Sheetal explains how collaborating on agile teams with BDD gains a common understanding among developers, testers...
Word Smatter: Exploring Semantics, Testers, and Problems
“Testers [do|don’t] (help) [prevent|detect] problems.” Throughout his career, Damian Synadinos has encountered many variations of this phrase, which uses just a few small words to express many big ideas. It is important to understand what each word means individually to better understand the ideas they convey collectively. The study of the meaning in words is semantics. Damian begins with a brief and broad overview of semantics and some related ideas, which set the stage for deep analysis of each individual word and its potential meaning. We consider: Testers—What might this word mean in...
Thursday, November 9
Agile Testing Is All about Risk—Not Bugs and Quality
PreviewMany organizations make huge investments in software testing, and unfortunately they often don’t understand or extract full value from these activities. This can lead to testing being viewed as a mere formality or necessary evil within an organization. Fortunately, we can deliver more value with relatively minor adjustments to our approaches. The transition to agile practices provides a natural opportunity for test specialists and others to put these adjustments into practice. Plan-driven approaches can also be adjusted to increase the value delivered from testing activities....
To Estimate or Not to Estimate, is that the Question?
Wondering what NoEstimates means in practice, or why you would want to move toward NoEstimates? Perhaps you’ve heard the buzz or read Vasco Duarte’s book. Maybe you simply want to understand how you can spend less time estimating and more time delivering working software—all while providing your customers with some understanding of predictability. If so, Matthew Phillip will help you understand through lessons learned with NoEstimates what and to what degree different factors influence delivery time. Join Matthew to learn how to move from upfront intuition-based estimates to create a data-...
Task-Oriented Unit Testing for Agile and Traditional Projects
Developers are charged with developing software at lightning speed, often using new and unreliable technologies. Rob Sabourin shares a task-oriented method for organizing unit testing to help programmers and other team members get to consistently done working code, testing beyond the code. Rob approaches unit testing from the viewpoint of completing all the technical work required to fulfill a requirement, exercising the entire vertical technology stack and going beyond raw code. Programmers learn when and how unit test design can be implemented blending white box and black box techniques...
Fundamentals of Docker
Docker seems to be taking the IT world by storm. But why all the excitement about yet another virtual machine technology? Because Docker is much more. Korey Earl says that Docker solves many DevOps challenges including process isolation, build once-deploy anywhere, and automated scaling without the resource overhead that comes with virtual machines. Docker can improve resource utilization, infrastructure agility, and the transition from development to operations, allowing IT organizations to support the business rather than holding it back. Join Korey as he reviews the basics of the Docker...
Put Agile to the Test: A Case Study for Test Agility on a Large IT Project
PreviewAgile practices, although applicable to a variety of situations, are most commonly applied to IT projects, generally for software development. Can you apply agile methods to just part of a software implementation project? Todd Jones presents this case study where agile techniques were applied to the testing phase of a multiyear, multimillion-dollar IT program that included replacing a legacy system, new software development, creation of a new enterprise data model and document management solution, and complex financial balancing. After briefly describing the challenges faced by the...
Microservices and Docker at Scale: The PB&J of Modern Systems
After predominantly being used in the build/test stage, Docker has matured and is expanding into production deployment. Similarly, microservices are expanding from greenfield web services to use throughout the enterprise as organizations explore ways to decompose their monolithic systems to support faster release cycles. Anders Wallgren says running microservices-based systems in a containerized environment makes a lot of sense—both for build and test, and from a runtime perspective in production. This makes Docker and microservices natural companions, forming the foundation for modern...
Help! The Scrum Master *is* the Impediment
The change in mindset necessary to become a servant leader is incredibly hard for a scrum master who comes from a command and control background. As a newly minted Professional Scrum Master (PSM I), Ryan returned to his team excited and ready to get underway with a scrum adoption, but he had not fully grasped the concept of servant leadership. Instead of being a change agent, he was an impediment. Ryan’s cautionary tale is a common one. Attendees will learn about the difficulties of becoming a scrum master, how scrum team members need to embrace the scrum values to promote healthy team...
Mobile Testing: What—and What Not—to Automate
PreviewOrganizations are moving rapidly into mobile technology, which has significantly increased the demand for testing of mobile applications. David Dangs says testers naturally are turning to automation to help ease the workload, increase potential test coverage, and improve testing efficiency. But should you try to automate all things mobile? Unfortunately, the answer is not always clear. Mobile has its own set of complications, compounded by a wide variety of devices and OS platforms. Join David to learn what mobile testing activities are ripe for automation—and those items best left...
Putting the “Story” Back into the User Story
If you're using user stories for your agile requirements, you're not alone. They seem to have become the ubiquitous vehicle for communicating customer requirements to agile teams. And they work incredibly well in this regard. However, many teams are experiencing problems with them. Bob Galen does not believe it’s the story’s fault. Bob says we often forget the “conversation” part of the story—and more importantly, the storytelling part. When Kent Beck first described the idea of the user story, his original intent was to initiate or inspire a story-level conversation between a stakeholder...
Transform Test Organizations for the New World of DevOps
With the recent emergence of DevOps across the industry, testing organizations are being challenged to transform themselves significantly within a short period of time to stay meaningful within their organizations. It’s not easy to plan and approach these changes considering the way testing organizations have remained structured for ages. These challenges start from foundational organizational structures and can cut across leadership influence, competencies, tools strategy, infrastructure, and other dimensions. Sumit Kumar shares his experience assisting various organizations to overcome...
Friday, November 10
Building an Agile Organization at Light Speed
Everyone loves the idea of explosive growth. Unfortunately, explosive growth often lives up to its name. Everywhere you look, things are blowing up. Josh Anderson shows you how to corral the chaos and provide your company with the growth it desperately needs.
The two key challenges of explosive growth are diametrically opposed: protect and support your existing teams and processes, while simultaneously growing an organization around them. To make that happen, you must walk the tightrope of process evolution as you grow your team. Josh shares real-world strategies you can use to...
Transform a Product Team to Agile—and Live to Tell About It
The idea of transformation can be both exciting and frightening. How do we shake off old ways of thinking? What will emerge when the transformation is complete? How will I know the transformation is finished? These are questions and challenges that many product teams face as they make the transformation to agile.
Kevin Stilwell shares his experience and techniques for shaking off old paradigms and practices to break the organizational “muscle memory” that exists in many companies. What emerges will be a high performing product team—and the reward will be well worth the effort.
The Yin & Yang of Agile Success at Dude Solutions
In this mini-panel discussion Kevin Stilwell and Josh Anderson share their from-the-ground-up experiences building an agile organization and field participants’ questions. From their unique perspective Kevin and Josh share tactics and practices they used to build a high-performance agile organization. They are essentially sharing the “secret sauce” that made Dude Solutions a great example of “agile done well.”
Leverage Big Wall Planning for Truly Aligned Organizational Execution
Love it or hate it, the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) was found to be the most used framework for enterprise-level agility in Version One’s annual survey. That said, many aspects of SAFe—including effective portfolio management—are difficult for organizations to implement.
Laura Burke Olson shares Big Wall Planning, a technique that Ipreo uses to “seed” their release trains with high-priority, high-value, and balanced portfolio-level epics. Big Wall Planning engages all aspects of company leadership in deciding the product roadmaps. This is a huge challenge in organizations that...
Aligning Toward Business Agility–360° of Freedom
What happens when the product vision is unclear? Simply put, your teams struggle to build valuable features and your customers are not happy. This lack of alignment eats away not only at the value you’re trying to deliver but also at your customers’ good will—and it can demoralize your teams.
Ryan Ripley examines the why behind your current practices and shows you how the agile values, principles, and ceremonies of an agile organization are designed to create and maintain alignment all the way from customers to individual team members. Drawing from real-world examples, Ryan explains...