Software Development

Tutorials

MB Software Requirements Fundamentals for BAs, Testers, and Developers NEW

Lee Copeland, Software Quality Engineering

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 8:30am

You deal with software requirements all the time. Whether you are a developer in an agile environment, an analyst who identifies and documents requirements for plan-driven development, a software designer who studies requirements as the basis for agile development, a tester who employs or often must discover requirements as the foundation of test cases, or a technical user who describes your needs to development, you need the right approaches and skills to develop and interpret software requirements.

ME Build Product Backlogs with Test-Driven Thinking—and More NEW

David Hussman, DevJam

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 8:30am

Many product backlogs of user stories are nothing more than glorified to-do lists. Teams have lost the idea of prioritizing real business value and, instead, focus only on finishing stories and accumulating story points. Join David Hussman as he drives a stake into the heart of lame backlogs and breathes new life into test-driven thinking that is meaningful to testers, developers, product owners, and others. Using real-world examples, David shares his experiences and teaches tools you can use to fuse centered-product thinking with end-to-end testing.

MK Continuous Integration and Deployment through Continuous Testing NEW

Jared Richardson, Agile Artisans

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 1:00pm

Continuous integration and continuous testing are two vital agile feedback loops that lead to a continuous deployment environment. Continuous integration monitors your source code―recompiling after every change, running smaller tests, and notifying the developer if anything goes wrong. Continuous testing (and potentially continuous deployment) monitors integration builds, installs the product in a staging environment, and runs integration tests, again looking for problems.

TR Agile Estimation and Planning: Scrum, Kanban, and Beyond

David Hussman, DevJam

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 1:00pm

If you are new to agile methods—or trying to improve your estimation and planning skills—this session is for you. David Hussman brings years of experience coaching teams on how to employ XP, lean, Scrum, and kanban. He advises teams to obtain the estimating skills they need from these approaches rather than following a prescribed process. From start to finish, David focuses on learning from estimates as you learn to estimate.

Keynotes

K1 From Chaos to Order—Leading Software Teams Today

Ken Whitaker, Leading Software Maniacs

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 8:30am

To successfully lead “the nerd herd,” you’re expected to motivate your team to perform, encourage innovation, and produce software solutions that delight the customer. Prioritizing your time for what’s most important can be quite challenging—especially when you’re swamped with a steady stream of incoming requests, meeting overload, and the ever-present personnel issues. The expectation of even faster product deployment, the evolution of software development to agility, and the establishment of self-directed teams often require even more time devoted to planning.

Concurrent Sessions

BW2 Requirements Are Requirements—or Maybe Not

Robin Goldsmith, Go Pro Management, Inc.

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 11:30am

Many people talk about requirements. They use identical terms and think they have a common understanding. Yet, one says user stories are requirements; another claims user stories must be combined with requirements; and yet another has a different approach. These “experts” seem unaware of the critical inconsistencies of their positions. No wonder getting requirements right remains a major challenge for many projects.

BT10 Service Virtualization: Speed Up Delivery and Improve Quality

Anne Hungate, DIRECTV

Robb Kelman, DIRECTV

Thu, 11/13/2014 - 1:30pm

“We could not test this because…” Every technology professional has experienced issues during system testing when unit testing was overlooked or cut short. Every project team has hit roadblocks during system testing when dependent systems or complicated data have been unavailable. Service virtualization is a tool that eliminates the waiting and the excuses, making thorough and complete unit and system testing realistic. Done well, service virtualization improves defect detection and resolution in every phase of a project—driving down cost while improving quality.